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MUCKROSS ABBEY—LIMERICK—DUBLIN.

The time for visiting Muckross Abbey is most auspicious, the sun being still above the horizon; and the approaching tranquillity befits a trip of the kind. The ruins we have before inspected have been castles, or fort-like structures, designed as a home for some royal family, yet sufficiently strong and impregnable to ward off the attacks of a formidable enemy. What we are now to see is not a place designed for ease, comfort, and defence against ill conditions in this life, but rather to ensure pleasure and safety in the life to come.

The spot is about five miles from Killarney, and owned by Mr. Herbert, a gentleman held in the highest esteem by rich and poor. There is a neat gate-lodge, beyond which the visitor finds gratuitous admission at any hour before 6 p. m.; after that, and properly enough, a shilling is due to the gatekeeper. Our team left outside the gate, we pass through a grand avenue, and soon opens to view one of the finest and most enchanting mediæval ruins to be found in Ireland—exquisitely interesting in every part, and beyond the power of any one to adequately describe. The ruins are on a large knoll, surrounded by trees, conspicuous among which is the yew. These trees are formed much like large cedars, and resemble them in general outline; but the foliage is dark-green, so dark as at first sight to appear almost black. The branches are very large, and spread out into flat or fanlike masses, to near the ground.

The abbey was founded in 1140, and is now 742 years old. As we examine it, and more especially an ancient yew-tree, surrounded by the cloisters, known to have been there for more than 600 years, we are deeply impressed with the thought that we are communing with things relating to long past generations. It had its last repairs in 1602, was soon after abandoned, and is now without a roof, but is otherwise in good preservation. The ruins are very large and varied. They consist of both an abbey and a church. The cloisters belong to the former, and form a stone colonnade, some ten feet wide, connected by the arches with the open-to-the-sky area, some seventy-five feet square, in the centre of which stands the venerable yew already mentioned.

In the retirement and obscurity of these cloisters, walked and meditated and prayed hundreds—and in the large aggregate of years it may be thousands—to whom no other spot on the broad earth was, in their judgment, so good and befitting for their pious purpose. Here for centuries piety intensified, was transformed into superstition, germinated, blossomed, and fruited.

The different rooms of the abbey are still in good preservation, the entire structure being of masonry. The kitchen, with its immense fireplace, appears as it was centuries ago; and a little room about six feet square in one of the towers, and opening out of the kitchen, was occupied for eleven years as a sleeping-room by the hermit, John Drake, a hundred or more years ago. His patriarchal demeanor and solemn yet cheerful aspect obtained for him a people's veneration, and his piety and general seclusion excited general interest. To this day he is spoken of with scarcely less esteem than would be one of the early monks of the abbey itself. The floors of the rooms in the second story, the building being roofless, are well overgrown with the finest lawn grass. As one walks thoughtfully up the narrow, winding, stone stairs, into the dormitory, hospital, lavatory and other apartments—in all but few in number—the solid and venerable walls, the open sky above him, and the green grass (emblematic of human life in its best estate) beneath his feet—under the influence of these, in spite of himself he becomes absorbed in meditation, and holds communion with those who lived and labored here centuries ago, and at length passed on to "the house appointed for all the living."

Reluctantly we left the abbey, and walked through the antique passage-ways and cramped stone stairway down into the church, where, in the midst of singular beauty, were the unwelcome evidences of inevitable decay. Here are the roofless walls of the nave, choir, and transept; here are windows elegant in design, with their stone traceries yet perfect. In places, the friendly, sombre ivy is spread, like a kind mantle of charity, covering defects of broken wall, and disguising the empty place of some fallen stone.

"How old all material is," we instinctively say; and yet how new the results of labor—the vine, the shrub, the tree. How velvety and carpet-like is the grass on parts of this very floor, once pressed by the toil-worn, blistered feet of pious penance-doers, and even now a place of deposit for their mouldering bodies. Instead of desk or altar or font, of kingly stall or peasant's seat, are ancient mural stones. Here are monuments, the outward tokens of reverence and respect for the blue blood of royalty, or the saintship of those who hundreds of years ago—their work done, the checkered scenes of life over—went down to the "silent mansions of the dead."

In the piscina, in the lavatory, in the place for sacred vessels, the swallow unscared builds its nest; and along the altar-steps the lizard crawls, or basks in the sunshine unalarmed. Here sleep in their low, common—and yet uncommon—resting-places, they of the old dispensation, side by side with men of the new. O'Sullivan, O'Donohue, Mc'Carthy—nobles and kings of Munster, before whom the multitude trembled and reverentially bowed—mingle their dust with nineteenth-century leaders.

An incident, showing a notable instance of faithfulness in the performance of an agreement, may be related. At the time of the surrender of these ruins, it was stipulated that, in consideration of the fact of their being the repository of dust so peculiar and sacred, no Protestant should ever be buried within these walls; and while it would otherwise have been the choice of the late owner of the premises—Mr. Herbert the elder, Member of Parliament for Kerry and Chief Secretary of Ireland—to be here buried, this was not done. On elevated grounds outside the abbey precincts, a very large, ornamental, mediæval, granite cross was erected by subscription of both Catholics and Protestants as a mark of love and esteem for him whom they call "One of the best of men."

Muckross Abbey Mansion, not far away, the seat of H. A. Herbert, Esq., the present owner of the grounds, is a fine stone building, of Elizabethan architecture. We knew of the Torc Cascade not far off; but as darkness had imperceptibly come upon us, and we were informed that little water was then passing over the fall, we did not go there, but listened to a description from our guide, who told us that the waters are precipitated in a sheet of splendid foam over a ledge of rocks, breaking into mist and spray; that the volume of water then resumes its hurried course through a deep ravine, narrow and irregular, through groups of fir and pine trees, and at last crosses the beautiful pleasure-grounds, till it falls into Muckross Lake.

At no time shall we probably have a more appropriate place to speak of the mountains of Ireland; and, at the risk of being charged with digression, we make the venture. Ireland is not a prairie-like country; yet, though for the most parts hilly and undulatory, it cannot be called mountainous. In this vicinity are the principal mountains of the Emerald Isle. It was for a long time thought that Mangerton, of the Macgillicuddy's Reeks, was the highest peak in Ireland, but a late survey makes Carrantual, of the same range, the highest. They are respectively 2,756 and 3,414 feet high. For the aid of those who may not be able to judge heights readily, yet are familiar with our New England mountains, we will say that the Grand Monadnock, at Jaffrey, N. H., is 3,186 feet high, and the Wachusett, at Princeton, Mass., 2,018 feet. The distance from Muckross to the summit of Carrantual is not far from five miles. The ascent is easy, and may be made with horses. Four miles from Muckross is what is called the Devil's Punch Bowl, a tarn or mountain lake, 2,206 feet above the level of the sea, and more than two thousand feet above the surface of the lakes, they being not far from two hundred feet above sea-level. It is an ovalish basin containing about twenty-eight acres, being two thirds the size of Boston Common, the latter having within its fence lines an area of a few feet over forty-three and three fourths acres. On all sides of the tarn are shelving cliffs. History has it that C. J. Fox swam entirely around it in 1772. Purple Mountain, opposite Macgillicuddy's Reeks, with the Gap of Dunloe between, is somewhat lower than these, but we have not the figures of its elevation. After our visit to the abbey, we returned to the hotel—in name only, Innisfallen—and remained over night. Having breakfasted, valise in hand we wended our way back through the village streets to the railroad station, and took passage to Limerick.

"And sure," says the reader, "that is another Irish city, and no mistake," and you are right. Our ride was exceedingly pleasant. The country was at its best, so far as vegetation was concerned—especially its grass, for cattle-raising is the general farm occupation of the people. Here and there was a patch of potatoes, but no fruit-trees, and few good vegetable gardens. There were no stone walls or fences; if there were any land divisions they were hedges, and few at that.

The more one travels in foreign countries, the more he is convinced of the folly of so much fence-work as we have on New England farms. It is a waste of labor and material, an abuse of the ground itself, and a loss of the land, usually uncultivated, lying close against the partitions; and, in addition, the shade is objectionable. Of course some divisions are needed; but many of them exist, as a necessity, only in the farmer's imagination. There are but few New England farms where a large amount of labor and time are not worse than wasted in repairs of cross walls, set up by our fathers and grandfathers, which would be used to a much better purpose if employed in their demolition.