To give any detailed description of the architectural features of these various edifices, would extend beyond the space prescribed by the limits of our little Journal for a single paper; yet, as some description will be expected of us, we shall briefly state a few particulars.
The round tower—the more ancient remain upon the Rock—is fifty-six feet in circumference and ninety feet in height; it contains five stories, has four apertures at top, and has its doorway twelve feet from the ground.
Cormac’s Chapel consists of a nave and choir, but has neither transepts nor lateral aisles. It is richly decorated in the Norman style of the time, both exteriorly and interiorly; and the entire length of the building is fifty-three feet. There are crypts between the arches of the choir and nave and the stone roof; and there is a square tower on each side of the building, at the junction of the nave and choir. Taken as a whole, there is no specimen of its kind in the British empire so perfect or curious.
The cathedral, as already stated, consists of a choir, nave, and transepts, with a square tower in the centre. The greatest length, from east to west, is about two hundred and ten feet, and the breadth in the transepts is about a hundred and seventy feet. There are no side aisles, and the windows are of the lancet form, usual in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. A century has not yet elapsed since this magnificent pile was doomed to destruction, and that by one who should have been its most zealous preserver. Archbishop Price, who succeeded to this see in 1744, and died in 1752, not being able, as tradition states, to drive in his carriage up the steep ascent to the church door, procured an act of parliament to remove the cathedral from the Rock of Cashel into the town, on which the roof was taken off for the value of the lead, and the venerable pile was abandoned to ruin!
Of the remarkable historical events connected with these ruins, our space will only permit us to state, that in 1495 the cathedral was burned by Gerald, the eighth Earl of Kildare; for which act, being accused before the king, his excuse was, that it was true, but that he would not have done so but that he had supposed the archbishop was in it; and his candour was rewarded with the chief governorship of Ireland!
In 1647, the cathedral—being filled with a vast number of persons, many of whom were ecclesiastics, who had fled thither for refuge and protection, a strong garrison having been placed in it by Lord Taafe—was taken by storm by the Lord Inchiquin, with a considerable slaughter of the garrison and citizens, including twenty ecclesiastics. It was again taken by Cromwell in the year 1649.
In conclusion, we shall only remark, that the venerable group of ruins of which we have attempted this slight sketch, considered as an object of interest to pleasure tourists, and those of our own country in particular, have not as yet been sufficiently appreciated; and that, as Sir Walter Scott truly remarked, though the scenery of our lakes and mountains may be rivalled in many parts of the sister islands, there is nothing of their class, viewed as a whole, comparable in interest with the ruins on the Rock of Cashel.
P.
Poetical Prophecy of Bishop Berkeley.
—To our illustrious countryman. Bishop Berkeley, may be with justice applied what he himself says of his favourite, Plato, that “he has joined with an imagination the most splendid and magnificent, an intellect fully as deep and clear.” A morsel of poetry from such a writer ought to be preserved as a literary curiosity, and as a proof of the great variety of his talents; but when we consider that the following was written almost in a prophetic spirit, more than a century ago, and consequently long before the events to which he seems to allude could well have been anticipated, it has an additional claim upon our notice.