very happily displayed. Pressing the government on one occasion, for some information which it was not felt very convenient to give, his forbearance was solicited, upon the ground that the minister was not present whose duty it would have been to answer his question. Flood good humouredly assented to the appeal, observing, as he pointed to the empty bench, where the absent minister was used to sit, "Formerly the oak of Dodona is said to have uttered oracles itself; but the wooden oracle of our treasury is compelled to give his responses by deputy.” It is, however, time for us to conclude. Enough has, we trust, been said to enable the reader to form a just estimate of the various powers of this great man, and of his conduct as a senator both in England and in Ireland. But if our sketch has been defi cient, we are glad to know that that deficiency will shortly be supplied, in a memoir which is in progress of preparation, and intended to accompany a corrected edition of his speeches, by his kinsman Captain Warden Flood,* a gentleman already advantageously known to the literary public; † and in all respects qualified to do the subject ample justice. We take this opportunity of acknowledging our obligations to him for the kindness with which he put at our disposal much of the valuable information which he had been at the pains to acquire; and trust that nothing will prevent his speedy com. pletion of the good work which he has commenced; and that we may shortly have to congratulate our readers upon a valuable accession to the literature of Ireland. Of the Fifty First Regiment. He has written a very instructive and interesting "Sketch of the Military and Political State of Prussia." THE ATTRACTIONS OF IRELAND.-NO. I. SCENERY.* IRELAND is at the present day unquestionably one of the most interesting portions of Europe. In the midst of scenery, which alone insures us no inconsiderable share of attention from the ordinary tourist, we exhibit a state of society, in all respects most inviting to the philosophic traveller, and a condition of affairs, economically speaking, full of the deepest interest for the speculative and the practical man. Taking these attractions, local, social, and economical, in series, we will begin with the most obvious, because hitherto the most generally recognised, the scenery of the island. Irish scenery may be classed with that order known to painters by the epithet British ;" the characteristics of which are, moderate elevation, undulation and verdure, as opposed to the altitude, the abrupt The ness, and the aridity of the continent. In British scenery we find the mountains rolled and swelling, rarely attaining the limits of an enduring cap of snow, and distinguished more by simplicity and breadth, than by any fantastic forms of outline or configuration. In our horizons, peaks are but of occasional occurrence, and pinnacles are so rare as to be almost unknown. peaks again are not of the splintered and jagged Alpine character; but massive, comparatively smooth, and showing an easy outline on every side. In the intervals between our mountains, the ravine generally spreads into a glen, before it can attain the dimensions of an Alpine valley, and when our glen has expanded itself into an opener country, the undulations of other hills invariably contract it before it can com New Works for Tourists in Ireland.-Guide through Ireland, being a description of the country; its commerce, manufactures, scenery, and antiquities. With an Appendix, containing a brief account of its botany, geology, population, &c. With numerous useful tables. Dublin, William Curry, Jun. & Co. 1836.— Unpublished. Guide to the County of Wicklow, new edition, Dublin, same publishers, 1835. Guide to the Giant's Causeway, new edition. Dublin, same publishers, 1834. Guide to Killarney and Glengariff, new edition. Same publishers, 1835. Guide to Dublin, with a notice of the surrounding country, and its geology.— Dublin, same publishers, 1835. pare with a continental plain. Thus, in form and proportion we are less grand, but more graceful; so, in colouring, our superior verdure more than counterbalances our want of equal `va riety of hue. Our grasses, heaths, and timbers, present an effect so characteristic and distinctive, that the eye at once recognises a British meadow, a British mountain, or a British forest, whether on canvass or spread upon the face of the real landscape. The grasses indeed are green with a verdure peculiarly their own; the heaths throw a broader, browner shade athwart the mountain, and the forms of the forest trees give a distinctive air of massive and umbrageous leafiness to our woods, which we look for in vain in any other country. "Ever charming, ever new, When will the landscape tire the view? The windy summit, wild and high, The scenery of Ireland, however, while it falls in general outline and accompaniment, under the order of British landscape, is again distinguished by its own peculiarities of feature and expression. North and South Britain present respectively, the extremes of wild sterility and tame cultivation. Ireland, less rugged than the one, and more varied and undulating than the other, surpasses both in that combination of picturesque effect and arable facility, which seems to us to constitute the most happy physical characteristic of any country. Our streams are here more numerous, and more rapid than in England-less brawling and precipitous than in Scotland, but clearer, more copious, and more available for useful purposes than those of either South or North Britain. Barer of timber than the one, but much better wooded than the other, we can perhaps claim some similar, though slight advantages in this respect also, for it is quite as certain that the too close hedge-rows of England are detrimental to the productive ness of her fields, as that the bareness of timber is a material drawback both on VOL. VIII. the appearance and the comforts of many districts in Ireland. Where the glens are numerous, the streams lively, and the pastures good, we confess we sigh for no more sylvan honors than the natural drapery of their own hazels and hawthorns; but in the open country which never possessed the pastoral character that we would be sorry to see banished from our grazing borders, we do bitterly lament the absence of suffi cient timber to save us from the reproaches of certain members of the Twiss family-a clan not yet extinct, nor wholly left without a leader, since Mr. Barrow, we perceive, has latterly made serious pretensions to the honors of the vacant utensil. Still, few and far between as our wooded districts unfortunately are, even in these we find new characteristics of our native scenery. "It has been remarked by more than one artist of eminence," says Mr. Croker, "as a cominent on the Irish landscape, that the forms of the trees are more graceful and capricious than in England-" Your trees," said a gentleman to me, "partake of your national character; wild and irregular, they both assume extraordinary ramifications, that treated with justice by a master-hand, appear noble features, but of which, an unskilful delineator, produces only clumsy caricatures."But the grand characteristic which, logically speaking, puts the difference between the scenery of the two islands, is that of colour, and this not more in the verdure of our fields, than in the foliage of our woods, and the ever varying and delightful tints of our mountains; for, be the cause what it may, whether a peculiar moisture of our atatinosphere, or a soil resting for the most part upon a substratum of limestone, or both causes conjointly, certain it is that our Irish landscape presents a clearness, a brilliancy, a dewy, serene, and blooming freshness, solely and essentially its own. Even Barrow cannot help being struck with it. The long dry summer," he says, "had converted all the parks and the green fields of England, (and Scotland too had partaken of the same russet hue,) into the colour and appearance of a turnpike road; but from the moment of landing in Ireland, such was the fresh, vivid, and brilliant verdure, interspersed with waving corn fit for the sickle, that I was ready to exclaim,- This truly, is the Emerald Island! How fully sensible of our superiority in this respect, were our native bards will be in the recollection of all who have read the versions of some Irish songs, in former numbers of this Magazine. Here, however, are some stanzas even more deeply imbued with the national colours than any we have yet quotedthey are indeed verdurously national, and dripping with poetic dew. The poet is apostrophising the valleys of Ireland Vales of yews, knotty and branchy; Vales of cuckoos, sweet-singing thrushes and There's dew at high noon-tide there, and springs i' the yellow sand, On the fair hills of holy Ireland! Doctor Drennan of Belfast was the patriotic sponsor who first gave Ireland her proper name of "the Emerald Isle," and for this service the dutiful god-child will dress his grave with her greenest shamrocks, while there is a drop of dew in her veins. She owes another verdant sod to poor Ned Lysaght, for his tender appellation of "The world's Cushla-machree ;" and, although young Twiss maintains that she has neither right nor title to be called, First Flower of the Earth," unless by flower we are understood to allude figuratively as it were, to the flower of the potato, in which case he would admit her to a sort of farinaceous respectability, still we would be disposed, 66 with all submission humbly to plead for a daisy or two on the turf that awaitsand long may it await, the father of Irish poetry in his own loved "Land of Song." Let us not deny, however, that among the numerous epithets bestowed upon the sacred island from time to time, there have been some less complimentary than graphic. Mr. Croker tells us of an individual who had the hardihood to describe a highly romantic district of Munster, as "the back bone of the earth, picked bare by the devil ;" and we ourselves once overheard the wife of an English soldier, while toiling through the streets of a northern town, in a slight April shower, imprecate very dreadful curses on "Mud Hoireland," as she barbarously termed it; what rendered the blasphemy more shocking and unaccountable, being, that she was, at that very moment mounted on pattens, which effectually elevated her above the slightest inconvenience, while dozens of the ingenuous daughters of green Erin were tripping barefoot through rut and kennel, not only without a murmur, but actually smoothing down their glistening locks, and pluming themselves in the genial element like swans on Cydnus-fair black-feet that they were! Why that our skies are sometimes overcast that our horizons are occasionally bounded by a bog-that the flats of Mayo look dreary enough with their dry stone ditches and cabins of mud; that local guide books and Sunday tourists, have somewhat overrated the horrors of the Scalp, and the enchantments of the Dargle; these are plausible assertions, which we do not feel inclined altogether to deny. Next to Glasgow, indeed, we are free to admit that Belfast and Derry are but damp quarters in the rainy season. The fens of Lincolnshire excepted, we know not where the face of nature wears a more disconsolate aspect than in our own Bog of Allen. Save Dr. Johnson's description of that interesting terrene, where There's but ane tree in a' the land, And that's the goodly gallows treewe do confess that we have read nothing more disheartening to the arboricultural tourist, than a late account of the country between Tuam and Ballaghadereen. Nevertheless, the bogs notwithstanding, we are disposed to believe that in point of scenery, Ireland is even now not inferior either to England or Scotland, and are quite sure that she possesses the capability of being rendered, within half a century, vastly superior to either. To conclude the characteristics, we will only add, (and in truth it is but a drizzly consolation,) that the changeableness of our skies is in some measure made amends for by the variety of effect thereby imparted to the landscape, and by the breadth and beauty of our rainbows-"I wish," exclaims one of the most delightful writers on Irish scenery and Irish manners,-"I wish you were here, (in Connamara,) to enjoy in rapid succession, and with all its wild magnificence, the whirlwind, the tempest, the ocean's swell, and, as Burns beautifully expresses it— δι Some gleams of sunshine mid renewing storms." Today there have been fine bright intervals, and, while returning from a hasty ride, I have been greatly delighted with the appearance of a rainbow; gradually advancing before the lowering clouds, sweeping with majestic stride across the troubled ocean, then, as it gained the beach and seemed almost within my grasp, vanishing among the storm of which it had been the lovely but treacherous forerunner. It is, I suppose, a consequence of our situation, and the close connection between sea and mountain, that the rainbows here are so frequent and so peculiarly beautiful. Of an amazing breadth and with colours vivid beyond description, I knew not whether most to admire this aërial phenomenon when, suspended in the western sky, one end of the bow sinks behind the island of Boffin, while, at the distance of several leagues, the other rests upon the misty hills of Innis Turc; or when, at a later hour of the day, it has appeared stretched across the ample sides of Müllrea, penetrating far into the deep blue waters that flow at its base. With feelings of grateful recollection, too, we may hail the repeated visits of this heavenly messenger, occasionally as often as five or six times in the course of the same day, in a country exposed to such astonishing, and at times almost incessant, floods of rain." (Letters from the Irish Highlands.) So far of the general characteristics of Irish scenery: a species of the British; the dew-point, so to speak, putting the difference. We will now proceed to take a rapid survey of the face of the country. Ireland has been compared not inaptly to a dish ;* for, an extended field of limestone occupies almost without interruption the whole of the interior; and elevations, rising on all hands towards the coast, surround this central plain with a natural rim of mountain. The figure is an irregular parallelogram. A line drawn from Fairhead, in Antrim, to Erris-head, in Mayo, would be nearly equal and parallel with the southern coast as represented by a line drawn from Carnsore point, in Wexford, to Mizenhead in Cork. It follows that if we connect Fairhead and Carnsore point on the one side, and Erris-head and Mizen-head upon the other, we will have (making the necessary allowances) a rough rhomboid of about 210 English miles by 160 do; the diagonals, cutting one another about the confluence of the Suck and the Shannon, a little south of Athlone. If from this point as centre with Dublin, as radius we describe a circle, it will correspond pretty nearly with the central basin alluded to above. Now, the The following diagram may, perhaps, assist the imagination of the reader, as well as prove serviceable in affording an easy method of obtaining at any time a correct skeleton of the Map of Ireland. Describe a square (a b c d) and produce a side of it (cb) till the side and its produced part equal the diagonal. Produce the opposite side in a like manner at its remote extremity (to f), and join the extremities of these equal and parallel lines. There you will have a parallelogram (a e cf), the angles of which will coincide or very nearly so with the four leading points of the outline of the Irish coast, viz. either of the obtuse angles (c) may be taken as Tuskar Rock, off the south western extremity of Wexford; then will the remaining obtuse angle (a) coincide with ErrisHead in Mayo; and of the acute angles that to the north (e) will coincide with Fair-Head in Antrim, while the remaining one (f) falls ten miles due south of MizenHead in Cork. These great landmarks established, we will obtain some further chief elevations being external to this lozenge-shaped parallelogram, that the plain, it will readily be seen, from the main mountain groups must be sought consideration of a circle inscribed in a for in the unoccupied angles of the points of importance, by inscribing a circle (z h ky) in the square. The centre of this circle (g) will coincide with the confluence of the Suck and Shannon; its point of contact with the square upon the east (h) will coincide very nearly with Dublin ; on the west (y) with Kilkernan bay, and very nearly with Birterbuy and Roundstone; ou the south (k) with Lismore, and on the north (z) with Loch Melvin a little to the east of Sligo bay; while its whole circumference may be considered roughly to represent the great limestone field which occupies the centre of the island. Its intersections also, with the diagonals of the square, afford some other points worth marking as at (m) Mount Nephin, on the north west, and (n) Scullogh Gap, between Mount Leinster and Blackstairs mountains on the south-east. Its intersection on the southwest (0) makes pretty nearly the locality of the caves of Ballybunian. The upper half of its vertical diameter (z g) and the lower half of the diagonal (go) with which it makes the last mentioned intersection give pretty nearly the course of the Shannon. The eastern half of its horizontal diameter gives the line of the Grand Canal, and a straight line (pr) perpendicular thereto, bisecting the lower compartment of the square, marks not inaccurately the course of the Barrow, its intersection with the diagonal (s) being the eastern boundary of the Castlecomer coal district. The dimensions of the principal parts would be as follows: side of square and diameter of circle, 150 English miles; longer side of parallelogram, 212 English miles; shorter ditto, 163 ditto; area of ditto 34,556 sq. miles. A few other places of note which we have marked, although not immediately pointed out by the lines of the diagram, are the Twelve Pins (v); The Killery (w); The Giant's Causeway (x); Valentia Island (1); Lakes of Killarney (1). Owing to a slight error in the execution of the woodcut (w) and (v) are both north of their true places, as will readily be seen by reference to any larger sized map. |