Recent Antiquarian Explorations. 2 J 



Roman Catholic Chapel in the city. It is adorned with the 

 highest and finest steeple I have seen in Ireland. The interior 

 is richly furnished, and the windows are all of stained glass. A 

 few of our party drove out to Mungret Abbey, a distance of 

 three miles from the city. There are ruins of an ancient 

 church of the sixth century, an oratory of so-called cyclopean 

 masonry dating from the seventh or eighth century, and the 

 monastic buildings and square tower ranging in date down to 

 the fourteenth century. There is a collegiate school at 

 Mungret at present, where students are prepared for the 

 Universities. Limerick owes its origin to the Danes, who built 

 a stronghold in an island near to where the cathedral now stands, 

 and their kings ruled over it and the surrounding district for 

 over 200 years. The Shannon is a noble river at Limerick, and 

 adds greatly to the beauty of the city. Thackeray's description 

 of what it was half a century ago is worth repeating : " They 

 say there are three towns to make one Limerick ; there is the 

 Irish town on the Clare side ; the English town, with its old 

 castle, which has sustained a deal of battering from Danes, from 

 fierce Irish kings, from English warriors who took an interest 

 in the place, Henry Secundians, Elizabethians, Cromwellians, 

 and vice versa, Jacobites, King Williamites, and nearly escaped 

 being in the hands of the Robert Emmettites ; and finally the 

 district called NeWton-Pery. In walking through this latter 

 you are at first half led to believe that you are arrived in a 

 second Liverpool, so tall are the warehouses and broad the 

 quays, so neat and trim a street of nearly a mile which stretches 

 before you. But even this mile-long street does not in a few 

 minutes appear so wealthy and prosperous as it shows at first 

 glance, for, of the population that throng the streets, two-fifths 

 are barefooted women and two-fifths more ragged men ; and 

 the most part of the shops, which have a grand show with 

 them, appear, when looked into, to be no better than they 

 should be, being empty, make-shift looking places, with their 

 best goods outside." This description would not hold good 

 to-day, as the barefooted, ragged people have to a great extent 



