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Contrast between corporate and private Property. Good
and bad Roads. Kenmare. New Road to Killarney. Mag-
nificent Views. Favourable State of the Atmosphere.-
Cheap Way of seeing Killarney. Arrival there. A Day
well employed

376 to 411

SKETCHES IN IRELAND.

LETTER I.

TO THE REV. SIR F. L. B -SSE.

MY DEAR SIR,

Fit Francis
Bloss

You are pleased to remind me of an offer that I committed myself to, of giving you some sketches of my occasional wanderings through my native land. I am glad it engages so much of your attention, and therefore I the more regret, called as I am to the performance of my promise, that I cannot summon to my assistance any notes or memoranda, but must trust to a memory that is daily acquiring a greater tendency to treachery, and returns what I committed to its keeping very much impoverished and very faded.

B

But take, Sir, as I can give it, my reminiscence of a three weeks' tour, during the summer of 1822, in the mountains of Donegal.

A friend who enjoys a College living in the north-western district of that county, invited me to come and see how snug he was in his mountain valley.-" Come," said he, "and ease your eyes, palled as they must be on the flats and and fields of Leinster, with the contrasted varieties of our northern hills -the iron cliffs that breast the Atlantic Ocean-our mountain ranges-the lake, the glen, the rushing river-these may afford subjects of surprise and excitement to your discursive mind; and after our day's ramble is over, when we come home at evening, a ring of salmon fresh from the river, a leg of mutton fed on our hills, may, when garnished with heart's-ease on your own part and a hearty welcome on mine, make your excursion to our valley as pleasant as you or I could wish." Who could resist such an invitation, that had time and opportunity to

accept of it? I could not; and therefore I stept into the Derry mail, a place of purgatorial suffering:-a public coach, travelling by night and full withal, is my antipathy ;with bent body and contracted limbs, and every sense in a state of suffering, hearing, smelling, feeling, seeing;—at all times the undertaking is hateful, but with a nurse and young child beside you-Oh, it is horrible!

By morning's dawn we had got into the province of Ulster. The moment you enter it, you perceive its peculiar features, its formation quite distinct from every other portion of Ireland. There are hills, swells, plains and flat table lands in the other portions of the kingdom; but here it is all hill and valley, all acclivity and declivity. Driving along the new line of road that winds around these never-ending hills, you seldom see for a quarter of a mile before you. At first you are struck with the beauty of these eminences, so minutely subdivided, so diversified with patches of grass, oats, flax, and potatoes; the intervening valley, either a

lake, bog, or meadow ;-but soon you get tired; your eye becomes tantalized with having a constant barrier presented to its forward prospect; you are displeased that you cannot obtain any extended view of the country you are going through; you are in an eternal defile. As I am no courier bearing despatches; as I leave home to exercise my eye and my mind, I like the old straight forward road over the hills; I can then see and breathe more freely. But I am not intending to describe the province of Ulster; and shall only say that its natural features explain why the English found this portion of the island so difficult to conquer. It was easy for O'Neil, amidst the interminable fortresses of his hills, woods, bogs, and defiles, often to defy, and always to elude his invaders. Madame de la Roche-Jacquelin, in her most interesting Memoir of the War in La Vendée, describes that country as very similar in its hills, valleys, and enclosures, to the province of Ulster. I was relieved from the tribulation of the mail coach at Strabane, a large

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