From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn. Field Henry Martyn

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СКАЧАТЬ set as in a bowl, in the hollow of rugged mountains, which are not like the Green Mountains, or the Catskills, wooded to the top, but bald and black, their heads being swept by perpetual storms from the Atlantic, that keep them always bleak and bare. Yet in the heart of these barren mountains, in the very centre of all this savage desolation, lie these lovely sheets of water. No wonder that they are sought by tourists from America, and from all parts of the world.

      Nor are their shores without verdure and beauty. Though the mountain sides are bare rock, like the peaks of volcanoes, yet the lower hills and meadows bordering on the Lakes are in a high state of cultivation. But these oases of fertility are not for the people; they all belong to great estates – chiefly to the Earl of Kenmare and a Mr. Herbert, who is a Member of Parliament. These estates are enclosed with high walls, as if to keep them not only from the intrusion of the people, but even from being seen by them. The great rule of English exclusiveness here obtains, as in the construction of the old feudal castles, the object in both cases being the same, to keep the owners in, and to shut everybody else out. Hence the contrast between what is within and what is without these enclosures. Within all is greenness and fertility; without all is want and misery. It will not do to impute the latter entirely to the natural shiftlessness of the Irish people, as if they would rather beg than work. They have very little motive to work. They cannot own a foot of the soil. The Earl of Kenmare may have thousands of acres for his game, but not a foot will he sell to an Irish laborer, however worthy or industrious. Hence the inevitable tendency of things is to impoverish more and more the wretched peasantry. How long would even the farmers of New England retain their sturdy independence, if all the land of a county were in a single estate, and they could not by any possibility get an acre of ground? They would soon lose their self-respect, as they sank from the condition of owners to tenants. The more I see of different countries, the more I am convinced that the first condition of a robust and manly race is that they should have within their reach some means, either by culture of the soil or by some other kind of industry, of securing for themselves an honest and decent support. It is impossible to keep up self-respect when there is no means of livelihood. Hence the feeling of sadness that mingles with all this beauty around me; that it is a country where all is for the few, and nothing for the many; where the poor starve, while a few nobles and rich landlords can spend their substance in riotous living. Kingsley, in one of his novels, puts into the mouth of an English sailor these lines, which always seemed to me to have a singular pathos:

      "Oh! England is a pleasant place for them that's rich and high;

      But England is a cruel place for such poor folks as I."

      That is the woe of Ireland – a woe inwrought with its very institutions, and which it would seem only some social convulsion could remove. Sooner or later it must come; we hope by peaceful methods and gentle influences. We shall not live to see the time, but we trust another generation may, when the visitor to Killarney shall not have his delight in the works of God spoiled by sight of the wretchedness of man; when instead of troops of urchins in rags, with bare feet, running for miles to catch the pennies thrown from jaunting cars, we shall see happy, rosy-cheeked children issuing from school-houses, and see the white spires of pretty churches gleaming in the valleys and on the hills. That will be the "sunburst" indeed for poor old Ireland, when the glory of the Lord is thus seen upon her waters and her mountains.

      CHAPTER III.

      SCOTLAND AND THE SCOTCH

Edinburgh, June 3d.

      In making the tour of Great Britain, there is an advantage in taking Ireland first, Scotland next, and England last, – since in this way one is always going from the less to the more interesting. To the young American traveller "fresh and green," with enthusiasm unexpended, it seems on landing in Ireland as if there never was such a bit of green earth, and indeed it is a very interesting country. But many as are its attractions, Scotland has far more, in that it is the home of a much greater people, and is invested with far richer historical and poetical associations; it has been the scene of great historical events; it is the land of Wallace and Bruce, of Reformers and Martyrs, of John Knox and the Covenanters, and of great preachers down to the days of Chalmers and Guthrie; and it has been immortalized by the genius of poets and novelists, who have given a fresh interest to the simple manners of the people, as well as to their lakes and mountains.

      And after all, it is this human interest which is the great interest of any country – not its hills and valleys, its lakes and rivers alone, but these features of natural beauty and sublimity, illumined and glorified by the presence of man, by the record of what he has suffered and what he has achieved, of his love and courage, his daring and devotion; and nowhere are these more identified with the country itself than here, nowhere do they more speak from the very rocks and hills and glens.

      Scotland, though a great country, is not a very large one, and such are now the facilities of travel that one can go very quickly to almost any point. A few hours will take you into the heart of the Highlands. We made in one day the excursion to Stirling, and to Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine, and felt at every step how much the beauties of nature are heightened by associations with romance or history. From Stirling Castle one looks down upon a dozen battle-fields. He is in sight of Bannockburn, where Bruce drove back the English invader, and of other fields associated with Wallace, the hero of Scotland, as William Tell is of Switzerland. Once among the lakes he surrenders himself to his imagination, excited by romance. The poetry of Scott gives to the wild glens and moors a greater charm than the bloom of the heather. The lovely lake catches, more beautiful than the rays of sunset,

      "A light that never was on sea or shore,

      The inspiration and the poet's dream."

      Loch Katrine is a very pretty sheet of water, lying as it does at the foot of rugged mountains, yet it is not more beautiful than hundreds of small lakes among our Northern hills, but it derives a poetic charm from being the scene of "The Lady of the Lake." A little rocky islet is pointed out as Ellen's Isle. An open field by the roadside, which would attract no attention, immediately becomes an object of romantic interest when the coachman tells us it was the scene of the combat between Fitz James and Roderick Dhu. The rough country over which we are riding just now is no wilder than many of the roads among the White Mountains – but it is the country of Rob Roy! I have climbed through many a rocky mountain gorge as wild as the Trossachs, but they had not Walter Scott to people them with his marvellous creations.

      A student of the religious part of Scottish history will find another interest here, as he remembers how, in the days of persecution, the old Covenanters sought refuge in these glens, and here found shelter from those pursuing rough-riders, Claverhouse's dragoons. Thus it is the history of Scotland, and the genius of her writers, that give such interest to her country and her people; and as I stood at the grave of John Wilson (Christopher North), I blessed the hand that had depicted so tenderly the "Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life," presenting such varied scenes in the cottage and the manse, in the glen and on the moor, but everywhere illustrating the patient trust and courage of this wonderful people. It is a fit winding-up to the tour of Scotland, that commonly the traveller's last visit, as he comes down to England, is to Abbotsford, the home of Walter Scott; to Melrose Abbey, which a few lines of his poetry have invested with an interest greater than that of other similar ruins; and to Dryburgh Abbey, where he sleeps.

      Edinburgh is the most picturesque city in Europe, as it is cleft in twain by a deep gorge or ravine, on either side of which the two divisions of the city, the Old Town and the New Town, stand facing each other. From the Royal Hotel, where we are, in Princes Street, just opposite the beautiful monument to Walter Scott, we look across this gorge to long ranges of buildings in the Old Town, some of which are ten stories high; and to the Castle, lifted in air four hundred feet by a cliff that rears its rocky front from the valley below, its top girt round with walls, and frowning with batteries. What associations cluster about those heights! For hundreds of years, even before the date of authentic history, that has been a military stronghold. It has been besieged again and again. Cromwell tried to take it, but its battlements of rock proved inaccessible СКАЧАТЬ