“AMERICA, 1730.
There shall be sung another golden age,
The rise of empires and of arts,
The good and great inspiring epic rage,
The wisest heads and noblest hearts.
Not such as Europe breeds in her decay;
Such as she bred when fresh and young,
When heavenly flame did animate her clay,
By future poets shall be sung.
Westward the course of empire bends its way—
The four first acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama and the day;
Time’s noblest offspring is the last.”
THE SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF IRELAND ILLUSTRATED,
BY BARTLETT AND WILLIS.
“Know thyself,” was the wise advice of the ancient Greek philosopher; and it is certainly desirable that we should know ourselves, and take every pains in our power to acquire self-knowledge. But the task is by no means an easy one; and hence the poet Burns well exclaims,
“Oh, wad some power the giftie gi’e us,
To see oursells as others see us;
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
And foolish notion.
What airs in dress and gait wad lea’ us,
And e’en devotion!”
Determined, however, as we for own part always are, to acquire a knowledge of ourselves, we felt no small gratification at the opportunity which, we presumed, would be amply afforded us by the work of Messrs Bartlett and Willis, the first an English artist, and the second an American litterateur, who have left their homes, in a most commendable spirit of philanthropy, to depict our scenery and antiquities, and to tell us all that it behoves us to know about them and ourselves. We accordingly lost not a moment in possessing ourselves of the precious treasure that would, as we hoped, “the giftie gi’e us, to see oursells as others see us;” and verily we must acknowledge that our wonderment during its perusal has been excessive, and that it has convinced us that we never knew ourselves before, or ever saw any thing about us with proper eyes. Henceforward we shall be cautious how we trust to the evidence of our senses for any thing we may see, for it is pretty plain that hitherto they have been of no manner of use to us. They have deceived and bamboozled us our whole lives long; and from the present moment we will trust to none save those of Messrs Bartlett and Willis—at least we will never trust to our own.
The very vignette on the title-page gave us some startling notification of the fearful discovery that awaited us. We had flattered ourselves that we were quite familiar with all the remarkable features of Irish scenery, and should not fail at a glance to identify any delineation of them, inasmuch as there is not a river or lake in Ireland of any extent that we have not sailed on, not a mountain that we have not climbed, not a headland or island on our coast that we have not visited. But here was a subject of a striking and most remarkable character that appeared quite new to us, nor should we ever have been able to guess at it, if a friend to whom we applied for information had not assured us, to our utter astonishment, that he was informed it was nothing less than our old acquaintance the Giants’ Causeway! The wonder at our blindness, however, in some degree diminished when we perceived—if we can guess at the only point from which such a view could be obtained—that the ingenious artist had represented the sun setting in the north; for as often as we had been at the Causeway, we never had the observation or good fortune to witness such a sight. We must confess, moreover, that our feelings of mortification at our ignorance were partly soothed, when we turned over to the next vignette, which we at once recognised by its bridge to have been intended for Poul-a-phuca, or, as Messrs Bartlett and Willis name it, more correctly we presume, Phoula Phuca! We cannot, however, state the impression left on our minds by each of the prints in succession; but we shall take a glance at two or three of them; and when we have pointed out the particulars that most confounded us in each, we can have little doubt that such of our readers as have never seen the places they are intended to represent, will concur in the conviction that has been forced upon us by our inspection of them.