Letters of a Traveller Part 10

On the north sh.o.r.e, the hills had a gentler slope, and on their skirts, which spread into something like a meadow, we saw a solitary dwelling. "In that," said he, "Rob Roy was born." In about two hours, our strong-armed rowers had brought us to the head of the lake. Before we reached it, we saw the dark crest of Ben Lomond, loftier than any of the mountains around us, peering over the hills which formed the southern rampart of Loch Katrine. We landed, and proceeded--the men on foot and the women on ponies --through a wild craggy valley, overgrown with low shrubs, to Inversnaid, on Loch Lomond, where a stream freshly swollen by rains tumbled down a pretty cascade into the lake. As we descended the steep bank, we saw a man and woman sitting on the gra.s.s weaving baskets; the woman, as we pa.s.sed, stopped her work to beg; and the children, chubby and ruddy, came running after us with "Please give me a penny to buy a scone."

At Iversnaid we embarked in a steamboat which took us to the northern extremity of the lake, where it narrows into a channel like a river. Here we stopped to wait the arrival of a coach, and, in the mean time, the pa.s.sengers had an hour to wander in the gra.s.sy valley of Glenfalloch, closed in by high mountains. I heard the roar of mountain-streams, and pa.s.sing northward, found myself in sight of two torrents, one from the east, and the other from the west side of the valley, throwing themselves, foaming and white, from precipice to precipice, till their waters, which were gathered in the summit of the mountains, reached the meadows, and stole through the gra.s.s to mingle with those of the lake.

The coach at length arrived, and we were again taken on board the steamer, and conveyed the whole length of Loch Lomond to its southern extremity. We pa.s.sed island after island, one of which showed among its thick trees the remains of a fortress, erected in the days of feudal warfare and robbery, and another was filled with deer. Towards the southern end of the lake, the towering mountains, peak beyond peak, which overlook the lake, subside into hills, between which the stream called Leven-water flows out through a rich and fertile valley.

Coaches were waiting at Balloch, where we landed, to take us to Dumbarton.

Near the lake we pa.s.sed a magnificent park, in the midst of which stood a castle, a veritable castle, a s.p.a.cious ma.s.sive building of stone, with a tower and battlements, on which a flag was flying. "It belongs to a dry-goods merchant in Glasgow," said the captain of the steamboat, who was in the coach with us; "and the flag is put up by his boys. The merchants are getting finer seats than the n.o.bility." I am sorry to say that I have forgotten both the name of the merchant and that of his castle. He was, as I was told, a liberal, as well as an opulent man; had built a school-house in the neighborhood, and being of the Free Church party, was then engaged in building a church.

Near Renton, on the banks of the Leven, I saw a little neighborhood, embosomed in old trees. "There," said our captain, "Smollet was born." A column has been erected to his memory in the town of Renton, which we saw as we pa.s.sed. The forked rock, on which stands Dumbarton Castle, was now in sight overlooking the Clyde; we were whirled into the town, and in a few minutes were on board a steamer which, as evening set in, landed us at Glasgow.

I must reserve what I have to tell of Glasgow and Ayrshire for yet another letter.

Letter XXIV.

Glasgow.--Ayr.--Alloway.

Dublin, _July_ 24, 1845.

I promised another letter concerning Scotland, but I had not time to write it until the Irish Channel lay between me and the Scottish coast.

When we reached Glasgow on the 18th of July, the streets were swarming with people. I inquired the occasion, and was told that this was the annual fair. The artizans were all out with their families, and great numbers of country people were sauntering about. This fair was once, what its name imports, an annual market for the sale of merchandise; but it is now a mere holiday in which the princ.i.p.al sales, as it appeared to me, were of gingerbread and whisky. I strolled the next morning to the Green, a s.p.a.cious open ground that stretches along the Clyde. One part of it was occupied with the booths and temporary theatres and wagons of showmen, around and among which a vast throng was a.s.sembled, who seemed to delight in being deafened with the cries of the showmen and the music of their instruments. In one place a band was playing, in another a gong was thundering, and from one of the balconies a fellow in regal robes and a pasteboard crown, surrounded by several persons of both s.e.xes in tawdry stage-dresses, who seemed to have just got out of bed and were yawning and rubbing their eyes, was vociferating to the crowd in praise of the entertainment which was shortly to be offered them, while not far off the stentor of a rival company, under a flag which announced a new pantomime for a penny, was declaiming with equal vehemence. I made my way with difficulty through the crowd to the ancient street called the Salt Market, in which Scott places the habitation of Baillie Jarvie. It was obstructed with little stalls, where toys and other inconsiderable articles were sold. Here at the corner of one of the streets stands the old tower of the Tolbooth where Rob Roy was confined, a solid piece of ancient architecture. The main building has been removed and a modern house supplies its place; the tower has been pierced below for a thoroughfare, and its clock still reports the time of day to the people of Glasgow. The crowd through which I pa.s.sed had that squalid appearance which marks extreme poverty and uncertain means of subsistence, and I was able to form some idea of the prodigious number of this cla.s.s in a populous city of Great Britain like Glasgow. For populous she is, and prosperous as a city, increasing with a rapidity almost equal to that of New York, and already she numbers, it is estimated, three hundred thousand inhabitants. Of these it is said that full one-third are Irish by birth or born of Irish parents.

The next day, which was Sunday, before going to church, I walked towards the west part of the city; where the streets are broad and the houses extremely well-built, of the same n.o.ble material as the new town of Edinburgh; and many of the dwellings have fine gardens. Their sites in many places overlook the pleasant valley of the Clyde, and I could not help acknowledging that Glasgow was not without claim to the epithet of beautiful, which I should have denied her if I had formed my judgment from the commercial streets only. The people of Glasgow also have shown their good sense in erecting the statues which adorn their public squares, only to men who have some just claim to distinction. Here are no statues, for example, of the profligate Charles II., or the worthless Duke of York, or the silly Duke of Cambridge, as you will see in other cities; but here the marble effigy of Walter Scott looks from a lofty column in the princ.i.p.al square, and not far from it is that of the inventor Watt; while the statues erected to military men are to those who, like Wellington, have acquired a just renown in arms. The streets were full of well-dressed persons going to church, the women for the most part, I must say, far from beautiful. I turned with the throng and followed it as far as St. Enoch's church, in Buchanan-street, where I heard a long discourse from a sensible preacher, Dr. Barr, a minister of the established Kirk of Scotland.

In the afternoon I climbed one of the steep streets to the north of my hotel, and found three places of worship, built with considerable attention to architectural effect, and fresh, as it seemed, from the hands of the mason. They all, as I was told, belonged to the Free Kirk, which has lately been rent from the establishment, and threatens to leave it a mere shadow of a church, like the Episcopal church in Ireland. "Nothing,"

said an intelligent Glasgow friend of mine, "can exceed the zeal of the friends of the Free Church. One of our Glasgow merchants has just given fifteen hundred pounds towards the fund for providing _manses_, or parsonages, for the ministers of that Church, and I know of several who have subscribed a thousand. In all the colleges of Scotland, the professors are obliged, by way of test, to declare their attachment to the Presbyterian Church as by law established. Parliament has just refused to repeal this test, and the friends of the Free Church are determined to found a college of their own. Twenty thousand pounds had already been subscribed before the government refused to dispense with this test, and the project will now be supported with more zeal than ever."

I went into one of these Free churches, and listened to a sermon from Dr.

Lindsay, a comfortable-looking professor in some new theological school.

It was quite common-place, though not so long as the Scotch ministers are in the habit of giving; for excessive brevity is by no means their besetting infirmity. At the close of the exercises, he announced that a third service would be held in the evening. "The subject," continued he, "will be the thoughts and exercises of Jonah in the whale's belly."

In returning to my hotel, I pa.s.sed by another new church, with an uncommonly beautiful steeple and elaborate carvings. I inquired its name; it was the new St. John's, and was another of the buildings of the Free Church.

On Monday we made an excursion to the birthplace of Burns. The railway between Glasgow and Ayr took us through Paisley, worthy of note as having produced our eminent ornithologist, Alexander Wilson, and along the banks of Castle Semple Loch, full of swans, a beautiful sheet of water, sleeping among green fields which shelve gently to its edge. We pa.s.sed by Irvine, where Burns learned the art of dressing flax, and traversing a sandy tract, close to the sea, were set down at Ayr, near the new bridge. You recollect Burns's dialogue between the "auld brig" of Ayr and the new, in which the former predicted that vain as her rival might be of her new and fresh appearance, the time would shortly come when she would be as much dilapidated as herself. The prediction is fulfilled; the bridge has begun to give way, and workmen are busy in repairing its arches.

We followed a pleasant road, sometimes agreeably shaded by trees, to Alloway. As we went out of Ayr we heard a great hammering and clicking of chisels, and looking to the right we saw workmen busy in building another of the Free Churches, with considerable elaborateness of architecture, in the early Norman style. The day was very fine, the sun bright, and the sky above us perfectly clear; but, as is generally the case in this country with an east wind, the atmosphere was thick with a kind of dry haze which veils distant objects from the sight. The sea was to our right, but we could not discern where it ended and the horizon began, and the mountains of the island of Arran and the lone and lofty rock of Ailsa Craig looked at first like faint shadows in the thick air, and were soon altogether undistinguishable. We came at length to the little old painted kirk of Alloway, in the midst of a burying ground, roofless, but with gable-ends still standing, and its interior occupied by tombs. A solid upright marble slab, before the church, marks the place where William Burns, the father of the poet, lies buried. A little distance beyond flows the Doon under the old bridge crossed by Tam O'Shanter on the night of his adventure with the witches.

This little stream well deserves the epithet of "bonnie," which Burns has given it. Its clear but dark current, flows rapidly between banks often shaded with ashes, alders, and other trees, and sometimes overhung by precipices of a reddish-colored rock. A little below the bridge it falls into the sea, but the tide comes not up to embitter its waters. From the west bank of the stream the land rises to hills of considerable height, with a heathy summit and wooded slopes, called Brown Carrick Hill. Two high cliffs near it impend over the sea, which are commonly called the Heads of Ayr, and not far from these stands a fragment of an ancient castle. I have sometimes wondered that born as Burns was in the neighborhood of the sea, which I was told is often swelled into prodigious waves by the strong west winds that beat on this coast, he should yet have taken little if any of his poetic imagery from the ocean, either in its wilder or its gentler moods. But his occupations were among the fields, and his thoughts were of those who dwelt among them, and his imagination never wandered where his feelings went not.

The monument erected to Burns, near the bridge, is an ostentatious thing, with a gilt tripod on its summit. I was only interested to see some of the relics of Burns which it contains, among which is the Bible given by him to his Highland Mary. A road from the monument leads along the stream among the trees to a mill, at a little distance above the bridge, where the water pa.s.ses under steep rocks, and I followed it. The wild rose and the woodbine were in full bloom in the hedges, and these to me were a better memorial of Burns than any thing which the chisel could execute. A barefoot la.s.sie came down the gra.s.sy bank among the trees with a pail, and after washing her feet in the swift current filled the pail and bore it again over the bank.

We saw many visitors sauntering about the bridge or entering the monument; some of them seemed to be country people,--young men with their sisters and sweethearts, and others in white cravats with a certain sleekness of appearance I took to be of the profession of divinity. At the inn beside the Doon, a young woman, with a face and head so round as almost to form a perfect globe, gave us a dish of excellent strawberries and cream, and we set off for the house in which Burns was born.

It is a clay-built cottage of the humblest cla.s.s, and now serves, with the addition of two new rooms of a better architecture, for an ale-house. Mrs.

Hastings, the landlady, showed us the register, in which we remarked that a very great number of the visitors had taken the pains to write themselves down as shoemakers. Major Burns, one of the sons of the poet, had lately visited the place with his two daughters and a younger brother, and they had inscribed their names in the book.

We returned to Ayr by a different road from that by which we went to Alloway. The haymakers were at work in the fields, and the vegetation was everywhere in its highest luxuriance. You may smile at the idea, but I affirm that a potato field in Great Britain, at this season, is a prettier sight than a vineyard in Italy. In this climate, the plant throws out an abundance of blossoms, pink and white, and just now the potato fields are as fine as so many flower gardens.

We crossed the old bridge of Ayr, which is yet in good preservation, though carriages are not allowed to pa.s.s over it. Looking up the stream, we saw solitary slopes and groves on its left bank, and I fancied that I had in my eye the sequestered spot on the banks of the Ayr, where Burns and his Highland Mary held the meeting described in his letters, and parted to meet no more.

Letter XXV.

Ireland.--Dublin.

Dublin, _July_ 25, 1845.

We left Glasgow on the morning of the 22d, and taking the railway to Ardrossan were soon at the beach. One of those iron steamers which navigate the British waters, far inferior to our own in commodious and comfortable arrangements, but strong and safe, received us on board, and at ten o'clock we were on our way to Belfast. The coast of Ayr, with the cliff near the birthplace of Burns, continued long in sight; we pa.s.sed near the mountains of Arran, high and bare steeps swelling out of the sea, which had a look of almost complete solitude; and at length Ailsa Craig began faintly to show itself, high above the horizon, through the thick atmosphere. We pa.s.sed this lonely rock, about which flocks of sea-birds, the solan goose, and the gannet, on long white wings with jetty tips, were continually wheeling, and with a gla.s.s we could discern them sitting by thousands on the shelves of the rock, where they breed. The upper part of Ailsa, above the cliffs, which reach more than half-way to the summit, appears not to be dest.i.tute of soil, for it was tinged with a faint verdure.

In about nine hours--we were promised by a lying advertis.e.m.e.nt it should be six--we had crossed the channel, over smooth water, and were making our way, between green sh.o.r.es almost without a tree, up the bay, at the bottom of which stands, or rather lies, for its site is low, the town of Belfast.

We had yet enough of daylight left to explore a part at least of the city.

"It looks like Albany," said my companion, and really the place bears some resemblance to the streets of Albany which are situated near the river, nor is it without an appearance of commercial activity. The people of Belfast, you know, are of Scotch origin, with some infusion of the original race of Ireland. I heard English spoken with a Scotch accent, but I was obliged to own that the severity of the Scottish physiognomy had been softened by the migration and the mingling of breeds. I presented one of my letters of introduction, and met with so cordial a reception, that I could not but regret the necessity of leaving Belfast the next morning.

At an early hour the next day we were in our seats on the outside of the mail-coach. We pa.s.sed through a well-cultivated country, interspersed with towns which had an appearance of activity and thrift. The dwellings of the cottagers looked more comfortable than those of the same cla.s.s in Scotland, and we were struck with the good looks of the people, men and women, whom we pa.s.sed in great numbers going to their work. At length, having traversed the county of Down, we entered Lowth, when an immediate change was visible. We were among wretched and dirty hovels, squalid-looking men and women, and ragged children--the stature of the people seemed dwarfed by the poverty in which they have so long lived, and the jet-black hair and broad faces which I saw around me, instead of the light hair and oval countenances so general a few miles back, showed me that I was among the pure Celtic race.

Shortly after entering the county of Lowth, and close on the confines of Armagh, perhaps partly within it, we traversed, near the village of Jonesborough, a valley full of the habitations of peat-diggers. Its aspect was most remarkable, the barren hills that inclose it were dark with heath and gorse and with ledges of brown rock, and their lower declivities, as well as the level of the valley, black with peat, which had been cut from the ground and laid in rows. The men were at work with spades cutting it from the soil, and the women were pressing the water from the portions thus separated, and exposing it to the air to dry. Their dwellings were of the most wretched kind, low windowless hovels, no higher than the heaps of peat, with swarms of dirty children around them. It is the property of peat earth to absorb a large quant.i.ty of water, and to part with it slowly. The springs, therefore, in a region abounding with peat make no brooks; the water pa.s.ses into the spongy soil and remains there, forming mora.s.ses even on the slopes of the hills.

As we pa.s.sed out of this black valley we entered a kind of glen, and the guard, a man in a laced hat and scarlet coat, pointed to the left, and said, "There is a pretty place." It was a beautiful park along a hill-side, groves and lawns, a broad domain, jealously inclosed by a thick and high wall, beyond which we had, through the trees, a glimpse of a stately mansion. Our guard was a genuine Irishman, strongly resembling the late actor Power in physiognomy, with the very brogue which Power sometimes gave to his personages. He was a man of pithy speech, communicative, and acquainted apparently with every body, of every cla.s.s, whom we pa.s.sed on the road. Besides him we had for fellow-pa.s.sengers three very intelligent Irishmen, on their way to Dublin. One of them was a tall, handsome gentleman, with dark hair and hazel eyes, and a rich South-Irish brogue. He was fond of his joke, but next to him sat a graver personage, in spectacles, equally tall, with fair hair and light-blue eyes, speaking with a decided Scotch accent. By my side was a square-built, fresh-colored personage, who had travelled in America, and whose accent was almost English. I thought I could not be mistaken in supposing them to be samples of the three different races by which Ireland is peopled.

We now entered a fertile district, meadows heavy with gra.s.s, in which the haymakers were at work, and fields of wheat and barley as fine as I had ever seen, but the habitations of the peasantry had the same wretched look, and their inmates the same appearance of poverty. Wherever the coach stopped we were beset with swarms of beggars, the wittiest beggars in the world, and the raggedest, except those of Italy. One or two green mounds stood close to the road, and we saw others at a distance. "They are Danish forts," said the guard. "Every thing we do not know the history of, we put upon the Danes," added the South of Ireland man. These gra.s.sy mounds, which are from ten to twenty feet in height, are now supposed to have been the burial places of the ancient Celts. The peasantry can with difficulty be persuaded to open any of them, on account of a prevalent superst.i.tion that it will bring bad luck. A little before we arrived at Drogheda, I saw a tower to the right, apparently a hundred feet in height, with a doorway at a great distance from the ground, and a summit somewhat dilapidated. "That is one of the round towers of Ireland, concerning which there is so much discussion," said my English-looking fellow-traveller.

These round towers, as the Dublin antiquarians tell me, were probably built by the early Christian missionaries from Italy, about the seventh century, and were used as places of retreat and defense against the pagans.

Not far from Drogheda, I saw at a distance a quiet-looking valley. "That,"

said the English-looking pa.s.senger, "is the valley of the Boyne, and in that spot was fought the famous battle of the Boyne." "Which the Irish are fighting about yet, in America," added the South of Ireland man. They pointed out near the spot, a cl.u.s.ter of trees on an eminence, where James beheld the defeat of his followers. We crossed the Boyne, entered Drogheda, dismounted among a crowd of beggars, took our places in the most elegant railway wagon we had ever seen, and in an hour were set down in Dublin.

I will not weary you with a description of Dublin. Scores of travellers have said that its public buildings are magnificent, and its rows of private houses, in many of the streets, are so many ranges of palaces.

Scores of travellers have said that if you pa.s.s out of these fine streets, into the ancient lanes of the city, you see mud-houses that scarcely afford a shelter, and are yet inhabited.

"Some of these," said a Dublin acquaintance to me, "which are now roofless and no longer keep out the weather, yet show by their elaborate cornices and their elegant chimney-pieces, that the time has been, and that not very long since, when they were inhabited by the opulent cla.s.s." He led me back of Dublin castle to show me the house in which Swift was born. It stands in a narrow, dirty lane called Holy's court, close to the well-built part of the town: its windows are broken out, and its shutters falling to pieces, and the houses on each side are in the same condition, yet they are swarming with dirty and ragged inmates.

I have seen no loftier nor more s.p.a.cious dwellings than those which overlook St. Stephen's Green, a n.o.ble park, planted with trees, under which the showery sky and mild temperature maintain a verdure all the year, even in midwinter. About Merrion square, another park, the houses have scarcely a less stately appearance, and one of these with a strong broad balcony, from which to address the people in the street, is inhabited by O'Connell. The park of the University, in the midst of the city, is of great extent, and the beautiful public grounds called Phenix Park, have a circ.u.mference of eight miles. "Do not suppose," said a friend to me, "that these s.p.a.cious houses which you see about you, are always furnished with a magnificence corresponding to that of their exterior. It is often the case that a few rooms only of these great ranges of apartments are provided with furniture, and the rest left empty and unoccupied. The Irishman of the higher cla.s.s, as well as of the humbler, is naturally improvident, generous, fond of enjoying the moment, and does not allow his income to acc.u.mulate, either for the purpose of h.o.a.rding or the purpose of display."

I went into Conciliation Hall, which resembles a New York lecture-room, and was shown the chair where the autocrat of Ireland, the Liberator, as they call him, sits near the chairman at the repeal meetings. Conciliation Hall was at that time silent, for O'Connell was making a journey through several of the western counties, I think, of Ireland, for the purpose of addressing and encouraging his followers. I inquired of an intelligent dissenter what was the state of the public feeling in Ireland, with regard to the repeal question, and whether the popularity of O'Connell was still as great as ever.

"As to O'Connell," he answered, "I do not know whether his influence is increasing, but I am certain that it is not declining. With regard to the question of repealing the Union, there is a very strong leaning among intelligent men in Ireland to the scheme of a federal government, in other words to the creation of an Irish parliament for local legislation, leaving matters which concern Ireland in common with the rest of the empire to be decided by the British Parliament."

I mentioned an extraordinary declaration which I had heard made by John O'Connell on the floor of Parliament, in answer to a speech of Mr. Wyse, an Irish Catholic member, who supported the new-colleges bill. This younger O'Connell denounced Wyse as no Catholic, as an apostate from his religion, for supporting the bill, and declared that for himself, after the Catholic Bishops of Ireland had expressed their disapproval of the bill, he inquired no further, but felt himself bound as a faithful member of the Catholic Church to oppose it.