Mr. and Mrs. Smith set out with me to explore the scene. The house is modern; the land on the level of the house of the richest quality, and beautified with fine trees; the views up and down the river, and over it into the woods of Lord Listowell, with the tower of his castle peeping over them, are rich and beautiful. We descended into the meadows below the house, attended by four of the finest greyhounds ever seen, one of them as white as snow, and three or four terriers; and the dogs were soon in full chase of rabbits, up among the rocks and trees. We were soon below the house, and at the foot of the precipice on which it stands. The place was fit for Spenser's Pan, with all his fauns and sylvans. In the meadow, which extended to the banks of the river, grazed the fine herd of cattle, and amid them the sturdy bull; and all around us, above us on the rocks, in the meadow itself, and on the banks and green slopes on the other side of the river, grew the most prodigal trees. The whole scene told of ancient possession and a most affluent nature. At the foot of the precipice under the house, laurels and filberts, which must have been planted long ago, and probably by Spenser himself, had attained the most enormous size; the laurels were as large as forest-trees; they had, some of them, stems, I suppose, half a yard in diameter, and had assumed a shape of sylvan massiveness and woodland rudeness, such as before I had no conception of in laurels. Some had been blown down by the winds and grew half prostrate; others had been sawed off, and had left huge stumps, knit, as it were, into one mass with the foot of the rocks. All was one scene of Arcadian greenness, and excess of growth.
Beneath the rock there was a sort of damp cave, where water stood as if oozing through from the river, and the plants above hung down their long arms, and made a fitting retreat for Spenser's satyrs. Around, seen from the shadow of this spot, lay the deep-green meadow, the swift, broad river, the rich masses of trees, closing in a little world of solitude; and as if to mark it for a spot in which the poet of fairy-land had sojourned, and left the impress of his spirit, in his own words:
"Beside the same a dainty place there lay,
Planted with myrtle-trees and laurels green,
In which the birds sung many a lively lay
Of God's high praise, and of their sweet loves' teene,
As it an earthly paradise had been."
Perhaps Spenser might revel here till his castle was fitted up for his reception; perhaps it might be a retreat at times from the more open perils of the desolate Kilcolman; and a sweet change from moorland wildness to a sort of Italian richness and softness of scenery.
The way was still enchanting. Now down into the Valley of the Blackwater, among mills and rocks, and resounding waters; now aloft again, overlooking the white house of Rennie on its precipice, and opposite to it spreading out the woods and mountains of Ballynahoolly. Now arose a bare district of hedgerows without trees, and little brown huts, with geese, and goats, and swine. Now, again, passing some gentleman's park, with its ocean of trees, and under a sort of tunnel rather than avenue of beeches, which are planted on banks, so that they meet close above, sometimes for half a mile, and which at night are as dark as a dungeon. Then, again, I passed between hedges of cider-apple, all grown into trees, and giving the country—for the fields right and left were inclosed with the same—a very wild look; and I came out on bare heights, and with view of far-off bleak and brown mountains. Near Doneraile, I saw the ocean of green woods belonging to Lord Doneraile's park and domain lying before me in the valley, and passed through it for a mile or more in highest admiration of the splendid growth and richness of foliage of its beeches, its superb wayside ashes, and its other trees. Surely where it is allowed to produce trees, Ireland does exhibit them in a beauty and prodigality of growth which is almost unrivaled by those of England. To this contributes, not merely the fertility of the soil, but the moisture of the atmosphere.
About two miles beyond Doneraile I found, on a wide plain, the ruins of Kilcolman. These ruins have frequently been drawn and engraved, and the views we have of them are very correct. Indeed, so vividly were the features of the scene impressed on my mind by the views, and by reading of it, that I seemed to know it quite well. Its old black mass of wall catches your eye as soon as you have passed the woody neighborhood of Doneraile, standing up on the wild moorland plain, a solitary object amid its nakedness. A tolerable highway, newly constructed, leads up near to it, along which you advance amid scattered Irish cabins, and their usual potato plots. To reach the castle, you have to turn to the left up one of those stony lanes that threaten to jolt a car to pieces, and then have to scale a gate belonging to the farm on which the ruin stands, and advance on foot, through a farm-yard, and along the lake side. The remains of the castle, which consist only of part of the tower, at the southernmost corner, stand on a green mound of considerable extent, overlooking the lake, or rather a winding sort of pond, overgrown with potamogeton. On one side, masses of limestone rock, on which the castle, too, stands, protrude from the banks, and on the other extends the green marsh, and the black peat bogs, with their piles of peat stacks. To the north, at about a mile's distance, stretch those brown moorland mountains, called by the natives the Ballyhowra Hills, but dignified by Spenser with the name of Mole. Of either of these names the peasants seemed to know nothing, but assured me the one nearest to the castle eastward was called Slieve Ruark. Southward, at a couple of miles' distance, stands another somber-looking tower, the remains of an ancient castle, which they called Castle Pook. On a hill, nearer Doneraile westward, are also the ruins of an abbey; so that, probably, in Spenser's time, this scene might be well wooded; these places inhabited by families of the English settlers; and might form some society for him; but at present, nothing can be more wild, dreary, and naked than this scene, and the whole view around. Turn which way you will, you see nothing but naked moorlands, bare and lonely, or scattered with the cabins and potato plots of the peasantry. To the northeast stands, at perhaps half a mile's distance, a mass of plantations, inclosing the house of a Mr. Barry Harold; and that is the only relieving object, except the distant mass of the woods of Doneraile Park, and the bare ranges of mountains that close in this unpicturesque plain at more or less distance.
As I stood on the top of the massy old keep, whose walls are three yards thick, and its winding stairs of slippery gray marble, I seemed to be rather in a dream of Spenser's castle, than actually at it. The sun was hastening to set, and threw a clear shining light over the whole silent plain, and thousands of pewets and of rooks from Lord Doneraile's woods spread themselves over the green fields near the weedy water, and seemed to enjoy the calm dreamy light and stillness of the scene. The hour and the scene naturally brought to my mind the melodious stanza of Mickle, which has special reference to this solitary memorial of the history both of Ireland and its troubles, and the English poet of fairy-land and his fate:
"Awake, ye west winds, through the lonely dale,
And Fancy, to thy fairy bower betake;
Even now, with balmy sweetness breathes the gale
Dimpling with downy wing the stilly lake;
Through the pale willows faltering whispers wake
And evening comes with locks bedipped with dew;
On Desmond's mold'ring turrets slowly shake
The withered rye-grass, and the harebell blue,
And ever and anon sweet Mulla's plaints renew."
Looking round over this stripped and lonely landscape, over the "looming flats," over the dark moorland hills that slumber to the north and east, and then far away to more distant but equally sterile mountain ranges, a strange feeling crept over me of the force of events which could compel, nay, make it desirable for the most imaginative spirit of the age, next to Shakspeare, to quit