174 Walks in Ireland : |]AuG. 



■with most edifying attention, and never interrupts my longest soliloquy 

 by a single unmannerly bark. I frequently commence my excursion by 

 moonlight, and sunrise often finds me on the brow of sorpe lofty hill, 

 ■watcliing the death of the night and the birth of the morning, though 

 not with a poet's eye, at least with that deep and thrilling feeling, which, 

 were my star a brighter one, had been inspiration to me. 



You are not to suppose, from my choosing a dog for my companion, 

 that I am a cynic or a misanthrope ; — far from it, — but, believe me, it is 

 harder to find an agreeable associate for a long walk (thct is to say, 

 what / call a long walk), than you are at all aware of. I have tried the 

 experiment so often without success, that I am entitled to speak from 

 experience ; and I can assure you, that I have given up the pursuit from 

 sheer disappointment, and despair of meeting any one, who, like myself, 

 can not merely tolerate bad quarters, and endure a little fatigue — for 

 that any active, healthy young man ought to think nothing of — but who, 

 without gim, angling-rod, or sportsmanlike equipment of any descrip- 

 tion — nay, almost without definite or explainable object — can find real' 

 genuine pleasure in a stretch of perhaps from thirty to fortj^ Irish miles, 

 through a country wild, difficult, and mountainous, though occasionally 

 romantic and beautiful, to a degree little known except to those who, 

 like myself, have seen it under every aspect — in sunshine and in storm, 

 in leafy summer, and in bare and sterile winter. 



The visitor who is whirled in a chaise-and-four to the various " Lions" 

 of Wicklow or Kerry, sees nothing but the bright side of the picture, 

 and, for that very reason, but half appreciates the very beauties which 

 "WOO his admiration : he is sated with sweets ; he has not earned a healthy 

 appetite; he glides through woodland and glen, by lake and stream, and 

 he thinks all very pretty indeed ; but he has not given time enough to 

 his mind to suit itself to the character of the scenery, and it leaves no 

 stronger impression on him than a diorama ; it has pleased his eye, but 

 has not touched his heart ; he has looked at the picture, not entered into 

 the reality ; but, had he toiled up the steep ascent, e^er and anon looking 

 back upon the changing scene — or lain for hours, as I have, on the 

 mountain-side, awaiting the coming of the Spirit of the Mist, or listening 

 to the solemn, eternal voice of the cataract — or watching the dim, sliift- 

 ing shadows, as they fled from the unseen winds along the mirror of the 

 lake — he would feel the deep, overpowering inspiration of Nature, and 

 bow down in reverence before the Genius of the Place. 



I remember once suffering a robustious, beef-eating, port-drinking 

 fellow to over-persuade me into taking him as a companion on one of 

 my rambles. For the first five or six miles he got on very well ; but, 

 when we left the smiling lowlands behind us, and entered on a solitary 

 waste of uninhabited upland, scarcely to be called mountain — a long, 

 undulating succession oJ hills, rising gradually, and, as it were, step by 

 step — a fitting prelude, a suitable introduction, a kind of overture, in 

 my mind, to the grand and solemn scenery that lay beyond — he began 

 to xi/lk, and protested that he could not see any pleasure or amusement 

 in plodding over moor and waste, without so much as a gun in one's 

 hand : I wished liim in a bog-hole, in the bitterness of my heart. 



I have gone the same route frequently since, and more than once in 

 severe winter weather, raid I declare to you it seemed six times as long 

 that day as ever it did before or after, so nmch did that man's ill-humour 

 weary me ! Not that I attempted to argue the point Avith him ; I 



