This very beautiful tower is built entirely of limestone undressed, except around the doorway and other apertures, and is of admirable masonry. It has two projecting ledges or steps at its base, and six rests for stories, with intermediate projecting stones or brackets in its interior. These stories are each, as usual, lighted by a single aperture, with the exception of the upper one, which has two openings, one facing the east, and the other the west; and the apertures present all the architectural varieties of form observable in our most ancient churches. The circumference of this tower, near its base, is 66 feet 6 inches, and its height, to the slant of the roof, which is wanting, is about 100 feet. The wall is 3 feet 9 inches in thickness, and the doorway is 12 feet from the ground. This doorway—which is of very beautiful execution, and, as usual, faces the west end of the church—is 5 feet 2 inches in height, and has inclined sides, and a semicircularly arched top. It is 2 feet 3 inches wide at bottom, and 2 feet beneath the spring of the arch at top. Over the door there is a figure of the Saviour sculptured in relief, partly on the keystone and partly on the stone over it; and on each side of the architrave there is a human head also in relief, as on the doorway of the church of Kells.
Some antiquaries, in their zeal to support the theory of the Pagan origin and the antiquity of the Round Towers, have asserted that this doorway is not the original one, but an “after work.” But there is not the slightest ground for such a supposition, and this sculpture, as a profoundly skilled architectural antiquary, the late Sir Richard Colt Hoare, well observed, furnishes “a decided proof that these buildings were not (as some writers have conjectured) built by the Pagans.”
A similar argument against the application of the Round Towers to the purposes of a belfry, has been grounded on the circumstance of the western front of the church having three apertures for bells above its gable. But it should not be forgotten that this structure has no claim to an earlier date than the thirteenth century, when a variety of bells, and a different mode of hanging them, were brought into use by the Anglo-Norman settlers.
The Church of Donaghmore has been confounded by Archdall and subsequent writers with the ancient church of Domnach-Tortain, also founded by St Patrick, but which was situated near Ardbraccan.
P.
THE DRUNKARDS,
A TOO TRUE STORY.
In one of those admirable tales which Mrs Hall is now publishing with the praiseworthy object of the melioration of the Irish character, the ordinary effects of a too faint resistance to the fascinations of strong drink are faithfully detailed. The moral which our generous countrywoman intended to convey is undoubtedly of universal application, but I am afraid that the circumstances I am about to relate will convey no moral. It is the simple and true record of an appalling calamity which befell the subjects of my story, with all the melancholy unaccountableness and fatality of lunacy. No one would warn his fellow-creatures against the danger of madness—against any unforeseen dispensation of God’s wrath: it is in this sense, then, that I am afraid I have no moral to convey in narrating an event of which I was all but a spectator.
It must have struck every observer of human character that there are two classes of drunkards in this country. One class is composed of those persons, who, at first being well enough disposed to be temperate in all things, are insensibly led on by the charm of good fellowship to create for themselves an artificial want, which in the end leaves them the helpless victims of a miserable disease: they begin with a little—they continue the draught under the self-deceiving sophism “it’s only a drop”—they fall into excess—they lose all sense of decorum and proper spirit—they become mean and unbashful in their craving after spirituous liquor, which condition unfits them for an upright and honourable course of thought and action in any of the details of daily existence—a mental dissipation accompanies the bodily languor: while the hand trembles, the brain wanders, and the last scene of the tragedy is delirium tremens.
But there is another class of drunkards—God forbid that I should attribute any thing to the decrees of Providence inconsistent with mercy and justice—but I am almost tempted to designate this class the drunkards by necessity. However worldly condition, education, or other causes, may modify the result in individual cases, it is not the less certain that there are persons—very many of them—who appear to have come into the world predisposed to an inordinate desire for intoxicating liquors. These wretched people do not begin with thimblesful, and end with gills—the stroke seizes them like a thief in the night—sometimes in the prime of manhood—sometimes in the flush of youth—sometimes (it is a fearful truth) in the thoughtlessness of boyhood. It is a passion with them—a madness. You may know one of these unhappy beings, especially if he be a very young man, by the sullen and dogged air with which, early in the morning, he enters the public house, and sits down in solitude and silence to his double-shotted measure of undiluted whisky—whisky is the only drink for one of this calibre—alas! the worst and fiercest stuff that can be made is the most acceptable to him—his palate is too long palled to distinguish between tastes and flavours—it is the liquid fire he wants; you may know him at other times by the pitiable imbecility which prompts him in his awful craving to reach his tumbler to his lips with both his hands, till he finishes the draught with all the apparent eagerness of intense thirst; you may know such a one by his frightful sleeps, begun, continued, and closed in terrific dreams! The wife and family of the progressive or occasional drunkard are wretched enough as every body knows; but, oh! who can possibly estimate the amount of misery which the wife and children of a madman like this are destined to endure.
I have not overdrawn the picture in the abstract—take an individual instance:—