“I am delighted to find,” said I, “the lower ranks of a country, to which I am now so endeared, thus rescued from the obloquy thrown on them by prejudiced illiberality; and from what you have said, and indeed from what I have myself observed, I am convinced, that were endeavours for their improvement more strictly promoted, and their respective duties obviously made clear, their true interests fully represented by reason and common sense, and their unhappy situations ameliorated by justice and humanity, they would be a people as happy, contented and prosperous, in a political sense, as in a natural and a national one. They are brave, hospitable, liberal and ingenious.”
We now continued to proceed through a country rich in all the boundless extravagance of picturesque beauty, where Nature’s sublimest features everywhere present themselves, carelessly disposed in wild magnificence; unimproved, and indeed, almost unimproveable by art. The far-stretched ocean, mountains of Alpine magnitude, heaths of boundless desolation, vales of romantic loveliness, navigable rivers, and extensive lakes, alternately succeeding to each other, while the ruins of an ancient castle, or the mouldering remains of a desolated abbey, gave a moral interest to the pleasure derived from the contemplation of Nature in her happiest and most varied aspect.
“Is it not extraordinary,” said I, as we loitered over the ruins of an abbey, “that though your country was so long before the introduction of Christianity inhabited by a learned and ingenious people, yet, that among your Gothic ruins, no traces of a more ancient and splendid architecture are to be discovered. From the ideas I have formed of the primeval grandeur of Ireland, I should almost expect to see a Balbec or Palmyra arising amidst these stupendous mountains and picturesque scenes.”
“My dear sir,” he replied, “a country may be civilized, enlightened, and even learned and ingenious, without attaining to any considerable perfection in those arts, which give to posterity _sensible_ memorials of its past splendour. The ancient Irish, like the modern, had more _soul_, more genius than worldly prudence, or cautious, calculating forethought. The feats of the hero engrossed them more than the exertions of the mechanist; works of imagination seduced them from pursuing works of utility. With an enthusiasm bordering on a species of mania, they were devoted to poetry and music; and to ‘_Wake the soul of song_’ was to them an object of more interesting importance, than to raise that edifice which would betray to posterity their ancient grandeur Besides, at that period to which you allude, the Irish were in that era of society, when the iron age was yet distant, and the artist confined his skill to the elegant workmanship of gold and brass, which is ascertained by the number of warlike implements and beautiful ornaments of dress of those metals, exquisitely worked, which are still frequently found in the bogs of Ireland.”