DEAR MR. POPLAR, Having rested for a few months after my literary rovings amidst the cliffs, lakes, straths, and mountains of Donegal, I lately donned anew my travelling habiliments, bent on a second exploration, and as anxious to investigate place, people, and particulars as if I were a "Times Commissioner" for the nonce, or travelling agent for that muchmaligned book, "Lewis's Topographical Dictionary." In congruity with my title of "Pilgrim," my garments were as follow:-My " amice," a beaver bodycoat of Buckmaster's; my "wrought Spanish baldrick," a doublebreasted plaid waistcoat, buckled behind; my "scrip," of that kind vulgarly denominated of the Bank of Ireland, invested in new crisp notes, and doubled up into a capacious crumena, or purse; my "scallop-shell" represented by a railroad ticket, elegantly stuck in the band of my hat; my "sandal shoon," a pair of double-soled boots; and my "staff" an oak stick, which had once borne engrailed leaves in the bonnie woods of Shillelagh. Thus supplied and accoutred, I was "all right," and ready for the start, but knew not where to go. Was I to turn northward, like the magnetic needleshoot on the steam pinions of an express train past Clontarf and its bathing-sheds; Malahide, its castle and its cockle-beds; Balbriggan and its stocking-looms; Balrothery and its biscuits till I came to that "dim, smokified" old city, Drogheda, fuligi nous and foul, and done black like a piece of burnt toast, with smoke, and

VOL. XLIV.NO. CCLXI.

damp, and dirt-yet poetical, inasmuch as she exhibits a "broken wall," like Ehrenbreiststein, when Byron saw and sung it; and historical, too, inasmuch

as

"Oliver Cromwell

He did her pummel,

And made a breach in her battlement;"

thence cross, at a snail's pace, the awful wooden viaduct which spans the Boyne, and which seems to have been constructed so as to bring the train passengers into the closest possible proximity with the very most imminent danger, and give them the fairest contrivable chance of being annihilated each time of their perilous transit over its dizzy planks? There it stands, lifting its skeleton of slender pole and slim rafter, like an exhumed preAdamite fossil- some bony megatherium, towering in the air, a monument of ill-contrived accommodation and ugly unsuitableness-yclept "temporary," yet making us each time we venture over it, think much more of eternity than time. This wooden conveniency creates abhorrence among the good people of Belfast, inspires a panic amidst the folk of Newry, and has shaken more or less the nervous system of the whole northern population. Thence on through the marshes of Dundalk and the sierras of Downshire, and the green bleaching lawns of pleasant Antrim, dotted all with whitest webs, like oblong patches of snow, till I reached the ancient forts of the Mac Mullans, gazed on Dunseverick Castle, and saw the white feet of the strong, black, Boreal ocean, racing, and run

T

ning, and leaping in thousands up, and along, and over the Giant's pillared Causeway paths. This I had done, and I did not choose to do again. Or was I to descend into Kerry, that land of high peaks and low ponies- of large creeks and little cows-of heather on the hill and arbutus in the groveof health in the gale and beauty in the vale (I am, unconsciously, becoming poetical) the land of the Mac Gillicuddy and the O'Donoghoe, and the O'Mahony and the O'Sullivan, the descendants of Irish princes and chiefs, living amidst their grand kingly mountains the land of Daniel O'Connell and of Daniel O'Ruark, and the "great aigle" of the kingdom of Kerry, the most gentlemanly of all birds on ornithological record—the land where the purple Iveraghs melt away in the far distance where the stately Reeks lift their piercing pinnacles into the blue heaven for many a romantic mile; where the wild, Spanish-named "Sibyl-Head," like a Pythoness of stone, bends over the vexed Atlantic, as, towering six hundred feet above its surface, she spurns into creamy foam the blue deep water which welters round her ebon feet, while all around, is toss, and tumble, and rush, and wrestle; and the dim "Blasquets," like castles chained amidst the foam, or pyramids of the sea, loom like giants in the misty distance ;-the land

But hold! Let me pause. Do I not hear, in fancy's ear, some sound much resembling "Pooh-pooh!" proceeding from that editorial glass-house of yours, Mr. Poplar, at No. 50, where you sit and deliver judgment on erring contributions? Methinks, or rather mehear you say, "Did not this man set forth in his programmic title, that he was to undertake a Pilgrimage to the Queen's County for the good of posterity and the public; and lo! here he is, ranting and roving-ay, and raving, toodown amidst the cliffs of Kerry? Is not this proceeding to Belfast via Cork? or like the Irishman who, wishing to drive a porcine beast to Dublin, and knowing its retrograde obstinacy of instinct, faced the compliant animal towards Bray, and thus backed him into the metropolis?

Dear Mr. Poplar, you must allow a little for enthusiasm when the kingdom of Kerry is on the tapis, and an Irishman holds the pen. It is now about twelve months ago that I paid you a

special visit on your return from that country. You sat, as I remember, in the aforesaid Crystal Palace of criticism, where, for your own comfort, and at the instigation of your many anxious friends, you have at last established a patent gas and asbestos stove, dependant from your wall, which, however ingenious as regards the maker, and enjoyable by yourself, you will pardon me for saying has an auto-da-fe appearance, and looks consumedly like a gridiron to roast literary San-Benitos at. On this occasion, you had just come back from Killarney. You had been accompanied thither by English friends, loveable and literary, and had enjoyed yourself and them, and all things about you, and above you, toto cœlo. You were, in fact, at the time, thoroughly Killarneyised, and might have cried to me, "Ed Io sono anche Pittore!" Never did I see you, Anthony, so beside yourself. Your natural gravity had thawed like frost before the fire of your enthusiasm. The severity of the critic, the dignified precision of the editor, were ingulfed in the rapture of your reminiscences. Your chest heaved, your brow brightened, your cheek kindled, your nostril dilated like that of a warhorse, your eye flashed and corruscated. First you threw out the left hand, a la Tom Belcher; presently you forked out with the right; while your whole being seemed so big with the furor and the afflatus of the remembered enjoyment, that I almost expected to see you ignite, and go blazing up through the skylight like a rocket, showering a golden rain behind you of sparks, and perhaps setting fire to your respectable establishment and its contents of price. Now, as I pardoned - nay, admiredyour enthusiasm then, so you must forgive my excursiveness now, when I promise that I never more will wander, save selon régle, but keep as steadily on the rail as an express train after an accident; and as "Dimidium facti qui cæpit habet;" so, andiamo

I will at once begin. In selecting the lands of "Leix and Ossory" for my pilgrimage, by which I mean what has been called the Queen's County since Philip and Mary's time, I am aware that there is not much of what is striking or beautiful in the natural landscape of this shire; nor yet that the peasantry offer any salient angle of character or out-jutting peg of pe

culiarity to hang my pilgrim's hat on. The land, too, for the most part is champaign, save where broken by the rich forest - timber of the many noblemen and gentlemen's seats scattered over the soil, or a few ranges of hills. Among these are the Escars (quære from Escarp, a slope?), one of which, "The Ridge," rising near Athlone, intersects the Queen's County, and is seen at Maryborough. This Escar consists of coal-shale, limestone, and sand. The Dysart Hills, also running eastward towards Carlow, present one or two bold features, such as the ancient Rock of Dunamace and the Doon of Clopoke; while, outtopping all, the Slieve Bluimh mountains, with their mellowing shadows and lights, run south-west, and divide this from the King's County, the ancient Offalia of Leinster. Amidst these solitary hills, which even a fastidious Ruskin would admire for the beauty of their colouring, rises Ard-Eirin, or the Height of Ireland; and amongst their gorges is a wild ravine, which opens a bridle-path clear through the mountain called the "Pass of Glandine," which I think is visible from Ballyfin. Lough Annagh, the only lake in the county, like a jewelled clasp, connects these two shires, King's and Queen's, and has a shore in each.

To a traveller proceeding from Dublin, Portarlington is the frontier town, and first to be visited. Now I remember when Lien Chi Altangi, the discontented Chinese wanderer, proposed to make a pilgrimage from London to Kentishtown, he discovered that there were two ways to perform the journey, "one by coach, which cost sixpence, and one on foot, which cost nothing." So in going to Portarlington, which is the frontier town of Leix, you may travel by rail, which saves time-by coach, which shows you the landscape; or you might (at all events, some years ago) have sailed there in a ditch, called the Grand Canal, sitting up on the bench of an oblong trunk, called a cabin, of a giddy gadabout Irish gondola, termed a "flyboat," though resembling that insect in nothing but its fidgetiness; and thus if you were not drowned, or smothered, or swamped in passing through the "locks," you reached Portarlington in about six hours. I preferred a two hours' journey, so took the train, and at ten o'clock, A.M., in a carriage fully equal to those between

Bath and London in equipment and speed, we started, passing on the right the gigantic milestone monument yclept the Wellington Testimonial, which evinces nothing of architecture but its angularities, nothing of sculpture except its nudity; and is not a testimonial of anything under the sun but want of cash, eventuating in want of completion. Three miles further on, at Clondalkin, a picturesque round tower rises; it stands on one side of the village street, draperied half-way up with greenest ivy. In the interior are modern lofts, by the help of which and a crazy ladder, I once, in the days of my injudicious juvenility, attained the summit, endangering my youthful neck, and enacting on the occasion "Pate in Peril." Thence onward, shortening the way by pleasant converse. On the seat of the railroad carriage beside me sat a tall, emaciated clergyman from the county of Cork, with the richest, raciest, broadest brogue of that fine country on his lips I ever heard; he seemed a most amiable theorist, and full of fancies, which he delivered in an extraordinary way as we rolled along.

"Power," said he, "is the snare of the day; and England has arrayed herself into sections, each of which represents this Godless system. First, there is the Aristocracy, or power of the high-born, engendering and perpetuating pride, the Devil's sin, and hateful to God. Next, there is the Bureaucracy, or power of diplomacy, generating cunning, reserve, and mental reservation. Then there is the Siderocracy, or iron master's power, which, in its production of machinery, annihilates the natural quality of locomotion ordained by God, which is slowness, and deteriorates manual labour, which is man's original doom for sin. Then there is Woolocracy, representing the power of the cotton lordsa linsey-woolsey aristocracy, and opposed to truth, inasmuch as their eyes and ears being all stuffed with cotton, they cannot see, or hear, nor understand. Then there is the Hierocracy, or power of rampant Churchism, whose progeny are Popery, Puseyism, and illiberal Sectarianism; and, lastly, there is Democracy, engendering rebellion and contempt of order, and acting out by brute force. There are just six of them," continued he, repeating the names slowly; "and six in the Bible