1829.] Walks in Ireland. 45 



riding so slowly that I could not avoid joining them. Now if there is 

 any thing that annoys us pedestrians in the superlative degree, it is 

 meeting fine acquaintances on public roads. On mountains, or in glens, 

 by waterfalls, or lakes, it is all as it should be ; our jackets and straw hats 

 look picturesque, and are in keeping ; we have a chance of being put in 

 a picture if not in a book ; if we are ugly, we look like banditti, if hand- 

 some, like shepherds or poets ; but on a dusty road, while our more 

 fortunate fellow-travellers whirl past us in their carriages, or charge by 

 us on their steeds, we cut an itinerant, vagaliond figure, besmirched with 

 dust, overtopped and outstripped as we are by every one, from the peer 

 to the carter. Let me do justice, however, to the parties in question : 

 they had too much politeness either to dash by with a flying salute, 

 shaking the dust off their feet in testimony against me at every bound, 

 or to make a dead halt, as if they were condoling with a cripple, so that 

 in spite of my sensitive pedestrian vanity we sauntered together through 

 the Dargle very agreeably. Now I am not going to inflict upon you for 

 the hundredth time a description of that celebrated glen : if you want to 

 read about it, and be never the wiser for your pains, go study Sir John, 

 or any other Irish tourist; if you want to know what it is, go and 

 visit it. 



A pleasant, shady road, varied with snatches of woodland scenery, and 

 mountain view, led me to a sequestered and romantic cottage in the 

 valley of Powerscourt, the residence of near and dear relatives. I love 

 to take my friends by surprise, especially in the course of my solitary 

 rambles : when the mind's eye as well as the body's, is tired with many a 

 mile of weary thought and silent contemplation, the quick look of joy- 

 ful welcome, or that sweetest of all music, the voice of a dear friend, is 

 like the first glimpse of a fountain in the desert, or the song of a bird 

 after a sleepless night. 



The solitude of mountains is not melancholy, it fills the mind with 

 awe, not with gloom, it opens a sealed fountain of deep and solemn 

 thought, and we drink alone and in silence and are refreshed : the 

 thronging rush of society would trouble and disturb it. But in cultivated 

 scenery it is otherwise : Nature has disappeared before man, or has yielded 

 to his sway ; he has covered her face with cities, he has called forth, 

 and fashioned, and distributed as seemed fit to him, her trees and plants, 

 and flocks and herds, and she has obeyed him like the slave of the 

 lamp ; every thing around you speaks of his combined intellect, and 

 demonstrates his social strength, and as the solitary wanderer looks upon 

 his Wiyrks, he feels his own helplessness and insignificance. 



The evening was falling when I left my friends, and kissing hand to 



merry little J from the first turn of the mountain path, resumed my 



walk. They call the great ugly brown lump, (God help the sheep 

 that starve on it !) which stops the way between Eniskerry and Round- 

 wood, the Long Hill, just as one would say of a tiresome bore of a 

 companion, '' that long, awkward fcUow, he seems longer and duller 

 every time I jneet him." I protest, I never heard any one pronounce the 

 name without a drawl ; tlie worst of men or hills, however, have some 

 redeeming attribute, or adjunct : tlie long man may have a pretty sister 

 or wife, and tlie Long Hill is own brother to romantic Sugar-loaf, and 

 has taken graceful, (juiet Powerscourt deer park under his protection. 

 IMay the curse of all poets light upon the custard-eating cockney, too 

 saucy or too stupid to learn our language, yet impudent enough to nick- 



