each of which was capable of containing one hundred and twenty men. I ordered one of them to be rowed about the water, in order to find out the most convenient place for landing upon the enemy, which they perceiving, thought fit, by timely submission, to prevent the danger threatened them.
After the surrender five thousand Munster men laid down their arms, and Lord Broghill, who had accompanied Ludlow, received a grant of £1,000 ($5,000) yearly out of the estate of Lord Muskerry, the defender of the castle.
We have ended our tour over the lakes, and have visited these justly celebrated ruins, and are now ready for a walk of three quarters of an hour to our hotel at Killarney. To say that we enjoyed the day, even beyond our most sanguine anticipations, would not overcolor the picture. The drive of the morning through that sublime old scenery, to us so new; the ever fresh and pleasing emotions continually awakened; the romantic ride through the Gap of Dunloe, where the mountains are so near us, and we so near them; Kate's cottage; the Inferno-like look of the Black Valley; the walk to the upper lake, and the fairy-like sail over its waters—all these recollections are enough for one day. At 6 p. m., as the sun declined, and the mellow tints of its evening rays were thrown aslant the waters, we wended our way home. Yet were we not entirely content, but must make one more tour, this time to Muckross Abbey.
CHAPTER III.
MUCKROSS ABBEY—LIMERICK—DUBLIN.
The time for visiting Muckross Abbey is most auspicious, the sun being still above the horizon; and the approaching tranquillity befits a trip of the kind. The ruins we have before inspected have been castles, or fort-like structures, designed as a home for some royal family, yet sufficiently strong and impregnable to ward off the attacks of a formidable enemy. What we are now to see is not a place designed for ease, comfort, and defence against ill conditions in this life, but rather to ensure pleasure and safety in the life to come.
The spot is about five miles from Killarney, and owned by Mr. Herbert, a gentleman held in the highest esteem by rich and poor. There is a neat gate-lodge, beyond which the visitor finds gratuitous admission at any hour before 6 p. m.; after that, and properly enough, a shilling is due to the gatekeeper. Our team left outside the gate, we pass through a grand avenue, and soon opens to view one of the finest and most enchanting mediæval ruins to be found in Ireland—exquisitely interesting in every part, and beyond the power of any one to adequately describe. The ruins are on a large knoll, surrounded by trees, conspicuous among which is the yew. These trees are formed much like large cedars, and resemble them in general outline; but the foliage is dark-green, so dark as at first sight to appear almost black. The branches are very large, and spread out into flat or fanlike masses, to near the ground.
The abbey was founded in 1140, and is now 742 years old. As we examine it, and more especially an ancient yew-tree, surrounded by the cloisters, known to have been there for more than 600 years, we are deeply impressed with the thought that we are communing with things relating to long past generations. It had its last repairs in 1602, was soon after abandoned, and is now without a roof, but is otherwise in good preservation. The ruins are very large and varied. They consist of both an abbey and a church. The cloisters belong to the former, and form a stone colonnade, some ten feet wide, connected by the arches with the open-to-the-sky area, some seventy-five feet square, in the centre of which stands the venerable yew already mentioned.
In the retirement and obscurity of these cloisters, walked and meditated and prayed hundreds—and in the large aggregate of years it may be thousands—to whom no other spot on the broad earth was, in their judgment, so good and befitting for their pious purpose. Here for centuries piety intensified, was transformed into superstition, germinated, blossomed, and fruited.
The different rooms of the abbey are still in good preservation, the entire structure being of masonry. The kitchen, with its immense fireplace, appears as it was centuries ago; and a little room about six feet square in one of the towers, and opening out of the kitchen, was occupied for eleven years as a sleeping-room by the hermit, John Drake, a hundred or more years ago. His patriarchal demeanor and solemn yet cheerful aspect obtained for him a people's veneration, and his piety and general seclusion excited general interest. To this day he is spoken of with scarcely less esteem than would be one of the early monks of the abbey itself. The floors of the rooms in the second story, the building being roofless, are well overgrown with the finest lawn grass. As one walks thoughtfully up the narrow, winding, stone stairs, into the dormitory, hospital, lavatory and other apartments—in all but few in number—the solid and venerable walls, the open sky above him, and the green grass (emblematic of human life in its best estate) beneath his feet—under the influence of these, in spite of himself he becomes absorbed in meditation, and holds communion with those who lived and labored here centuries ago, and at length passed on to "the house appointed for all the living."
Reluctantly we left the abbey, and walked through the antique passage-ways and cramped stone stairway down into the church, where, in the midst of singular beauty, were the unwelcome evidences of inevitable decay. Here are the roofless walls of the nave, choir, and transept; here are windows elegant in design, with their stone traceries yet perfect. In places, the friendly, sombre ivy is spread, like a kind mantle of charity, covering defects of broken wall, and disguising the empty place of some fallen stone.
"How old all material is," we instinctively say; and yet how new the results of labor—the vine, the shrub, the tree. How velvety and carpet-like is the grass on parts of this very floor, once pressed by the toil-worn, blistered feet of pious penance-doers, and even now a place of deposit for their mouldering bodies. Instead of desk or altar or font, of kingly stall or peasant's seat, are ancient mural stones. Here are monuments, the outward tokens of reverence and respect for the blue blood of royalty, or the saintship of those who hundreds of years ago—their work done, the checkered scenes of life over—went down to the "silent mansions of the dead."
In the piscina, in the lavatory, in the place for sacred vessels, the swallow unscared builds its nest; and along the altar-steps the lizard crawls, or basks in the sunshine unalarmed. Here sleep in their low, common—and yet uncommon—resting-places, they of the old dispensation, side by side with men of the new. O'Sullivan, O'Donohue, Mc'Carthy—nobles and kings of Munster, before whom the multitude trembled and reverentially bowed—mingle their dust with nineteenth-century leaders.
An incident, showing a notable instance of faithfulness in the performance of an agreement, may be related. At the time of the surrender of these ruins, it was stipulated that, in consideration of the fact of their being the repository of dust so peculiar and sacred, no Protestant should ever be buried within these walls; and while it would otherwise have been the choice of the late owner of the premises—Mr. Herbert the elder, Member of Parliament for Kerry and Chief Secretary of Ireland—to be here buried, this was not done. On elevated grounds outside the abbey precincts, a very large, ornamental, mediæval, granite cross was erected by subscription of both Catholics and Protestants as a mark of love and esteem for him whom they call "One of the best of men."
Muckross Abbey Mansion, not far away, the seat of H. A. Herbert, Esq., the present owner of the grounds, is a fine stone building, of Elizabethan architecture. We knew of the Torc Cascade not far off; but as darkness had imperceptibly come upon us, and we were informed that little water was then passing over the fall, we did not go there, but listened to a description from our guide, who told us that the waters are precipitated in a sheet of splendid foam over a ledge of rocks, breaking into mist and spray; that the volume of water then resumes its hurried course through a deep ravine, narrow and irregular, through groups of fir and pine trees, and at last crosses the beautiful pleasure-grounds, till it falls into Muckross Lake.
At no time shall we probably have a more appropriate place to speak of the
