XXXIX 



THE country all about Kilcoultra is typically wild and 

 melancholy. The fields stretch, barren and yellowing, 

 strewn with giant stones. Except where sombre belts of 

 woodland mark the great estates, there is scarcely a tree 

 to break the monotony,- a monotony intensified by the 

 low, unending lines of rough grey walls that border every 

 road. But there 

 is a kind of 

 poetry even 

 in this deso- 

 lation, and a 

 satisfaction to 

 who love the f 

 dom of unbounded 

 horizons. Then the 



mountains of Clare stretch their incomparable plum and 

 grape colours against the sky. The colour of Ireland is a 

 thing scarcely realized over here, where, somehow, hues 

 seem washed out. " In England everything has got grey 

 in it/' an artist friend of ours discontentedly avers. 

 We are taken across the county to a castle standing by a 

 lake, which is a place of wonder. It is a castle no older, 

 in its mediaeval sturdiness, than the Gothic mansion we 

 are staying in, but quite as convincingly built. Loughcool 

 is a realm of beauty. At the end of the long approach 

 the road rises very steeply through a stern grove of pines. 

 All at once, as you approach the summit of this dark 

 woodland, the ground breaks away abruptly on the right, 

 and, between the pines, far, far below, lies the lake smiling, 

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