Dublin

“ Let us take Dublin first, a city the approach to which from the sea is as charming as that of London is imposing. The Bay of Dublin is the most beautiful of the whole British Island Kingdom, and is even compared by the Irish with the Bay of Naples. The city, too, possesses great attractions, and its aristocratic districts are better and more tastefully laid out than those of any other British city. By way of compensation, however, the poorer districts of Dublin are among the most hideous and repulsive to be seen in the world. ”

“ Dublin is the same dirty, ill-cared-for, broken-windowed, tumble-down concern it used to be—the country the same untilled, weed-grown, unfenced thing I remember it fifty years ago—the society pretty much the same mixture of shrewd lawyers, suave doctors, raw subalterns, and fat, old, greasy country gentlemen, waiting in town for remittances to carry them on to Cheltenham—that paradise of Paddies, and elysium of Galway belles. ”

“ Those later days of the eighteenth century were the days of Dublin's glory, for then she was really, as well as sentimentally, the capital of Ireland. Her most beautiful public buildings date from that period, and all her fine spacious dwelling-houses. After the Union, nobody built wide spacious dwellings, but only narrow mean ones, to suit the new spirit; and the new spirit was so incapable of living in the lovely old houses that it turned them into tenements, and put a family in every room, without any sense of crowding! ”

“ Socially, too, they considered Dublin—and with reason—second to no city of Europe; for there was a period, brief but glorious, when the highest breeding of the courtier mingled with the most polished wit and refined conversation, and when the splendor of wealth, freely displayed as it was, was only inferior to the more brilliant lustre of a society richer in genius and in beauty than any capital of the world. ”

“ I know Dublin somewhat better now, and I no longer think of it as a gay town—rather as a supremely tragic one. Turn the corner from any of the main thoroughfares, and you will soon find yourself in a foul alley of crowded tenements, in the midst of a misery and squalor that wring the heart. You will wonder to see women laughing together and children playing on the damp pavements. ”

“ Irish society leaders of the good old days, when the sporting season did not keep them to their castles in Connaught or Ulster, used on a grand scale to keep up their houses in Fitzwilliam or Merrion Square in their native metropolis. All that had gone. Huge, overgrown, vulgar London had snuffed out select, elegant, and refined Dublin, whose stately quadrangles and picturesque avenues were deserted by their proper occupants for some spick-and-span new mansions which stared one out of countenance in Tyburnia, or some more modest tenement in a dingy angle of Mayfair. ”

“ Surely earth has not many things to show more fair. Yet when you climb the hill (a tram will take the infirmer) and first see eastward over the wide blue, then, gradually ascending, get sight of Dublin Bay’s southern shore with the Wicklow Mountains behind it, and finally of Dublin itself, lying between beauty and beauty—beauty of sea, beauty of plain, beauty of mountain, beauty of azure, of purple, of green—then, I think, the southward view will seem to you richer in variety and incident. ”

“ In Dublin the mammoth brewery of Guinness and Sons can be viewed under the conductorship of a servant of the firm employed for the sole purpose of showing visitors through the great concern. But it is the lesser industries in Ireland which are really attractive. The law of the survival of the fittest stands to these—the homespuns woven in the cottages, the beautiful Dublin poplin, the delicate lace of Youghal and Limerick, the exquisite pottery of Belleek, these good things are beyond compare. ”

“ The wondrous extent of London excites our amazement; the compact uniformity of Dublin our admiration. But a dispersion is less within the coup-d’oil of observance, than aggregation, the small, but harmonious features of Dublin sieze at once on the eye, while the scattered but splendid traits of London, excite a less immediate and more progressive admiration, which is often lost in the intervals that occur between those objects which are calculated to excite it. ”

“ We crossed the Boyne, entered Drogheda, dismounted among a crowd of beggars, took our places in the most elegant railway wagon we had ever seen, and in an hour were set down in Dublin.
I will not weary you with a description of Dublin. Scores of travellers have said that its public buildings are magnificent, and its rows of private houses, in many of the streets, are so many ranges of palaces. Scores of travellers have said that if you pass out of these fine streets, into the ancient lanes of the city, you see mud-houses that scarcely afford a shelter, and are yet inhabited. ”

“ With their elaborate, plaster-moulded ceilings, their beautiful entrance fanlights, and all the other marks of that admirable period in domestic architecture, they house squalid poverty to-day, each room a tenement. The growth of Dublin is illusory. ”

“ There is a great deal that is green about Dublin, and the remark is not intended as a joke. There are several fine parks and breathing-places scattered about the city. Many of the residences have large back yards filled with trees and flowers that are hidden from the public by the high walls that guard them from the street, but one can see them from the tops of the tram cars as he rides about. ”

“ Dublin was an old fortress of the Danes. They held the whole eastern seaboard of Ireland until 1014 when Brian Boru defeated them and broke their power at the battle of Clontarf. Historic remains of the old city—the Ford of the Hurdles the Irish call it—there are none. The Danes, the Normans, the Elizabethan, the Cromwellian, the Jacobite, all made history in Dublin in their day, but the city as it stands is practically modern. ”

“ Dublin is like Paris, in that it is built on both sides of a river, and the view from this point reminds one somewhat of the view along the Seine. There are many bridges, and many domed buildings, many boats moored to the quays—and many patient fishermen waiting for a bite!
A short distance beyond the bridge is the great granite structure with curving façade and rain-blackened columns, a queer but impressive jumble of all the Greek orders, which now houses the Bank of Ireland. Time was when it housed the Irish Parliament, and that time may come again ”

“ But even the Irish, and above all, the natives of Dublin, want to be told something that may be new to some of them about a city which so many of them seem neither to love nor admire as they should. There is, unfortunately, a certain class of people in Dublin who, although many of them were born there, think that it is one of the most backward and unpleasant places in Europe. They do not admire the beauty of its environs, and will not acknowledge willingly that it has been improved so much as it has been during the last twenty-five years. ”

“ If there is any other city in Europe as large as Dublin, with environs more beautiful, where life is more enjoyable, and where life and property are more secure, it would be interesting to know where that city is. Dublin is a great deal too good for a good many who live in it.
The history of Dublin may be said to commence with the Danish invasions of Ireland. It is rarely mentioned in Irish annals before the time when the Danes took it, and first settled in it in the year 836, according to the Four Masters. ”

“ Dublin, which, I dare say, you know is the capital of Ireland, is an elegant city, with fine houses and good streets. The churches, the castle, the linen hall, exchange, bank, custom-house, and post-office, are all very noble buildings. ”

“ Heaven help the gentleman so left in Dublin, say I. It is, perhaps, the only city of its size in the world, where there is no lounge—no promenade. Very little experience of it will convince you that it abounds in pretty women, and has its fair share of agreeable men; but where are they in the morning? I wish Sir Dick Lauder, instead of speculating where salmon spent the Christmas holidays, would apply his most inquiring mind to such a question as this. ”

“ DUBLIN AND ABOUT THERE THE environment of Dublin, so far as its immediate surroundings are concerned, is exceedingly attractive to the jaded inhabitant of brick and mortar cities.
Phœnix Park, belonging anciently to the Knights Templars, is more beautiful, as a city park, than those possessed by any other city of the size of Dublin in the British Isles, and is, moreover, of great extent. It is densely wooded, has lovely glades, and is plentifully stocked with herds of deer, who seem unconsciously to group themselves picturesquely at all times. ”

“ England had never done anything for Dublin or any other town in Ireland, and the progress of the capital had been made in the face of the bitterest opposition and the most relentless persecution. London, Bristol, and the other ports of England were jealous of Dublin, and they were able to get edicts passed interfering with the shipping and the trade of the country, in order that they might not lose in competition. Dublin, however, rose superior to edicts and statutes, and by the end of the seventeenth century it was not a mean city. ”

“ Dublin is a good deal like an American city. It is full of business and not as Irish as the inland towns or Cork, although it has statues to O’Connell, Curran and Grattan, and will have one to Parnell. The lord lieutenant-governor, the representative of the king, resides at Dublin, and a big garrison of soldiers gives it an English tone. There is a fine university, which we visited. It was started by Queen Elizabeth, and has only recently been opened to Catholics and to women. Dublin has some great stores where Irish linen and Irish lace should naturally be cheap. ”

“ It is said, that there are Eighty four thousand Houses or Families in London, which is Twenty one times more than are in Dublin; and yet the Births and Burials of London are but Twelve times those of Dublin: which shews that the Inhabitants of Dublin are more crowded and streightned in their Housing, than those of London; and consequently, that to increase the Buildings of Dublin, will make that City more conformable to London. ”

“ Where life is worth the living.”
One great charm of the country around Dublin, like one of the great charms of Killarney, is its diversity. There are mountain, bay, woodland, and river. There is a variety of scenery in the immediate vicinity of Dublin such as cannot be found so near any other European capital, and such as not even Naples itself can boast of. Great indeed is the difference in the style of scenery between the cliffs of Howth and the green lanes of Clontarf, although both places are hardly more than four miles apart. ”

“ We lay that night at Kilcullen, and the next day I made my entry into the city of Dublin, with four horses to my carriage, five thousand guineas in my purse, and one of the most brilliant reputations in Europe, having quitted the city a beggarly boy, eleven years before.
The citizens of Dublin have as great and laudable a desire for knowing their neighbours’ concerns as the country people have ”

“ Why, the town over there, the biggest fair day ever it seen, or the finest day of a races 'd be no more to Dublin any day in the week than a tin whistle 'd be to the double-barrelled bugle of a brass band! You'd think that every man, woman an' child in Dublin took a pledge every mornin' to make somebody bothered before night with the fair dint o' noise, or die in the attempt. ”

“ Dublin is not altogether an ugly town; the Liffey runs through the chief street much like the Seine at Paris, which is good: yet a dirty and slatternly city is Dublin, and Guinness seems the only thing of importance there. I set off at about midday for my aristocrats; the train running through a very flat country with the aforesaid Dublin mountains on the left; you pass the Curragh, where our army of occupation sits, a fine moorland swelling up toward the Dublin mountains: then you see Kildare, with a great ruined mediæval church and a tall round tower beside it. ”

“ Then there is Howth on the north side, and only nine miles from Dublin, one of the most wonderful spots of earth for its size in Europe. It is a hill-promontory that juts out into nearly the middle of the bay, about three miles in width and nearly the same in length. It is over five hundred feet high, and in autumn is a pyramid of crimson and gold; for wherever there are not trees or cultivation, there are furze and heath. ”

“ THE REAL CHARLOTTE. CHAPTER I. An August Sunday afternoon in the north side of Dublin. Epitome of all that is hot, arid, and empty. Tall brick houses, browbeating each other in gloomy respectability across the white streets; broad pavements, promenaded mainly by the nomadic cat; stifling squares, wherein the infant of unfashionable parentage is taken for the daily baking that is its substitute for the breezes and the press of perambulators on the Bray Esplanade or the Kingston pier. Few towns are duller out of the season than Dublin, but the dullness of its north side neither waxes nor wanes ”

“ If this be so, the gentle and refined ought to be very plentiful in Dublin and its environs, for in no other part of this planet known to man are there as many wild flowers to be seen so near a great city as in the environs of Dublin. ”

“ YESTERDAY was a great day in Dublin. At an early hour the bells began their merry peals, and the people were soon seen in groups in the streets and public squares. The hour of ten was fixed for the procession to leave Kingstown, and it was expected to enter the city at eleven. The windows of the houses in the streets through which the Royal train was to pass, were at a premium, and seemed to find ready occupants. ”