222 WINTER SUNSHINE 



the American is a stranger to. It is not the age of 

 nature, the unshaken permanence of the hills through 

 long periods of time, but the weight of human years 

 and human sorrows, as if the earth sympathized 

 with man and took on his attributes and infirmi- 

 ties. 



I did not go much about Dublin, and the most 

 characteristic thing I saw there were those queer, 

 uncomfortable dog-carts, — a sort of Irish bull on 

 wheels, with the driver on one side balancing the 

 passenger on the other, and the luggage occupying 

 the seat of safety between. It comes the nearest to 

 riding on horseback, and on a side-saddle at that, 

 of any vehicle-traveling I ever did. 



I stopped part of a day at Mallow, an old town 

 on. the Blackwater, in one of the most fertile agri- 

 cultural districts of Ireland. The situation is fine, 

 and an American naturally expects to see a charm- 

 ing rural town, planted with trees and filled with 

 clean, comfortable homes; but he finds instead a 

 wretched place, smitten with a plague of filth and 

 mud, and offering but one object upon which the 

 eye can dwell with pleasure, and that is the ruins 

 of an old castle, "Mallow Castle over Blackwater," 

 which dates back to the time of Queen Elizabeth. 

 It stands amid noble trees on the banks of the river, 

 and its walls, some of them thirty or forty feet 

 high, are completely overrun with ivy. The Black- 

 water, a rapid, amber-colored stream, is spanned at 

 this point by a superb granite bridge. 



And I will say here that anything like a rural 



