RUINS AND RAILROADS. 117 



handsome meadow, and a race-course runs round it. On this 

 course, by the way, the greatest number of horses ever en 

 gaged in a single match have been run. In 1848, the entries 

 were one hundred and fifty-six, of which one hundred and six 

 accepted. 



Right below us, on the meadow, there is pitched a mar 

 quee. It belongs to a cricket club. I want you to notice 

 the beautiful green sward of their playing ground. It is 

 shaven so clean and close. You see men are sweeping it 

 with hair-brooms. 



Here again, in this garden on the other side of the wall, 

 there used to be a nunnery. There is the entrance to a sub 

 terranean passage, by which, if you could keep a candle burn 

 ing, you might pass under the city back to the cathedral. 



.... Are you tired of ruins 1 Here is one more that 

 may rouse your Puritan blood : a heavy tower built into 

 the wall, connected with a larger one at some distance out 

 side. How old they look ! No paintings and no descriptions 

 had ever conveyed to me the effect of age upon the stone it 

 self of these very old structures. How venerable! how 

 stern ! how silent yet telling what long stories ! We will 

 not ask for the oldest of them, but you see there, where 

 the battlements are broken down in one place that breach 

 was made by a ball thrown from the hill yonder ; and the 

 cannon that sent it was aimed by OLIVER CROMWELL. 



How beautiful, how indescribably beautiful, are those thick 

 masses of dark, glossy, green ivy, falling over the blackened 

 old ramparts, like the curls of a child asleep on its grand 

 father s shoulder ! Whew I dont let the sparks get in your 

 eye \ They have pierced the wall right under us, and here 

 goes an express train fifty miles an hour, from Ireland to 

 London by way of Holyhead, with dispatches for her Ma- 



