It was Thackeray, who, if possessed of a certain smugness, was often moved by patriotic and sometimes by charitable motives, said:
"What sends picturesque tourists (What, if you please, Mr. Thackeray, are picturesque tourists?) to the Rhine or Saxon Switzerland, when, within five miles of the pretty inn at Glengarriff, there is a country of the magnificence of which no pen can give an idea? I would like to be a great prince, and bring a train of painters over to make, if they could, and according to their several capabilities, a set of pictures of the place. Were such a bay lying upon English shores, it would be the world's wonder."
Glengarriff is all that Thackeray pictured it in prose. It is more than that,--more, indeed, than is within the power of words to describe, though its beauty is somewhat of the stage-scenery and landscape-painting order.
Travellers from all the corners of the earth have raved over its charm; but they all fail utterly to describe the insinuating peacefulness of its mirrored sky and emerald-clad hills. No one but the artist can at all successfully portray its moods: at times brilliant with sunshine and verdure, and again, sombre and mist-laden with the rains of autumn; but never, or seldom ever, even in the most abnormal winter, bare or bleak. Indeed, this region, together with many others in Ireland, has been, by many eminent scientists, proclaimed one of nature's most famous _sanitoria_.
Prince Puckler Muskau, in his tour of Ireland, wrote thus of Glengarriff: "The climate is most favourable for vegetation, moist and so warm that not only azaleas and rhododendra, and all sorts of evergreens stand
abroad through the winter, but, in favourable aspect, even camellias, dates, pomegranates, magnolias, etc., attain their fullest beauty." Lord Macaulay and Sir David Wilkie called it the fairest spot in the British Isles.
The former's stanzas, as given below, are perhaps not of his usual heroic order, and may, once and again, appear unduly sentimental, but they are emphatically true and appreciative:
"Hail, charming scene! Glengarriff's bay, Yon mountains, streams, and dells, The Atlantic waters' foaming spray, Creation's wonder tells.
"Hail, Bantry's noble harbour deep, Where Britain's fleet may ride, And giant ships, in safety's keep, May in or outward glide.