[Illustration: THE TOWN AND CASTLE OF LEIXLIP, COUNTY OF KILDARE.]
Localities are no less subject to the capricious mutations of fashion in
taste, than dress, music, or any other of the various objects on which
it displays its extravagant vagaries. The place which on account of its
beauties is at one period the chosen resort of pleased and admiring
crowds, at another becomes abandoned and unthought of, as if it were
an unsightly desert, unfit for the enjoyment or happiness of civilized
man. Some other locality, perhaps of less natural or acquired beauty,
becomes the fashion of the day, and after a time gets out of favour in
turn, and is neglected for some other novel scene before unthought of or
disregarded. Yet the principles of true taste are immutable, and that
which is really beautiful is not the less so because it has ceased to
attract the multitude, who are generally governed to a far greater extent
by accidental associations of ideas than by any abstract feelings of the
mind.
Perhaps it is less attributable to any characteristic volatility in the
character of the inhabitants of our metropolis, than to the singular
variety and number of the beautiful localities which surround our city,
and in emulous rivalry attract our attention, that this inconstancy
of attachment to any one locality is more strikingly instanced among
ourselves, than among the citizens of any other great town with which
we are acquainted. But, however this may be, the fact is unquestionable,
that there is scarcely a spot of any natural or improved beauty, within
a few miles of us, which has not in turn had its day of fashion, and its
subsequent period of unmerited neglect. Clontarf, with its sequestered
green lanes, and its glorious views of the bay--Glasnevin, the classical
abode of Addison, Parnell, Tickell, Sheridan, and Delany--Finglas,
with its rural sports--Chapelizod, the residence of the younger
Cromwell--Lucan, Leixlip, with their once celebrated spas, and all
the delightful epic scenery of the Liffey--Dundrum, with its healthy
mountain walks and atmosphere, and many others unnecessary to mention,
all experiencing the effects of this inconstancy of fashion, have found
their once admired beauties totally disregarded, and the admiration of
the multitude almost wholly transferred to a wild and unadorned beauty on
the rocky shores of Kingstown and Bullock, which our forefathers deemed
unworthy of notice. But let that beauty take warning from the fate of her
predecessors, and not hold her head too high in her day of triumph, for
she too will assuredly be cast off in turn, and find herself neglected
for some rival as yet unnoticed.
Of such unmerited inconstancy and neglect there are no localities in
the neighbourhood of Dublin which have greater reason to complain than
the village of Lucan and that which forms the subject of our prefixed
embellishment. As the establishment of peace in Ireland led to an
increase of civilization, which exhibited itself in improved roads and
vehicles of conveyance, and the citizens, emerging from their embattled
strongholds, ventured to enjoy the pleasures of nature and rural life,
Lucan and Leixlip, with the beautiful scenery in which they are situated,
became the favourite places of resort; and their various natural
attractions becoming heightened by art, were described by travellers,
and chaunted in song. About “sixty years since” they had reached their
greatest glory, and Leixlip was the favourite of the day. It is thus
described at this period by the celebrated Doctor Campbell:--“All the
outlets of Dublin are pleasant, but this is superlatively so which leads
through Leixlip, a neat little village about seven miles from Dublin, up
the Liffey; whose banks being prettily tufted with wood, and enlivened
by gentlemen’s seats, afford a variety of landscapes, beautiful beyond
description.” It was at this period also that O’Keefe, in his popular
opera of “The Poor Soldier,” makes Patrick sing--
“Though Leixlip is proud of its close shady bowers,
Its clear falling waters and murmuring cascades,
Its groves of fine myrtle, its beds of sweet flowers,
Its lads so well dressed, and its neat pretty maids.”
But though Leixlip no longer holds out attractions sufficient to gratify
those whose tastes are dependent on fashion, it has never ceased to be
a favourite with all whose tastes had a more solid foundation. It was
here, and in its immediate vicinity, that the two Robertses, genuine
Irish landscape painters, found many of the most congenial subjects
for their pencils. It was here, too, that the strong-headed painter of
strong heads--the Rembrandt of miniature painters, John Comerford--used
occasionally to retire, abandoning for a week or two the intellectual
society of Dublin which he so much enjoyed, and the acquisition of gain
which he no less relished, to make some elaborate study of one of the
scenes about the Bridge of Leixlip, which he, in his own dogmatic way,
asserted, “for genuine landscape beauty, could not be surpassed or
even rivalled any where!” This estimate of the beauties of Leixlip’s
“close shady bowers, &c.” was, we confess, a somewhat extravagant one;
yet, like most other honestly formed opinions of Comerford’s, it would
not have been an easy task to shake his belief in its truth, and to
sustain it he could, if combated, adduce the testimony of his and our
friend Gaspar Gabrielli, the first of Italian landscape painters of our
times, who notwithstanding his pride in being a Roman, and his national
predilections in favour of the classic scenery of his dear Italy, has
often declared in our hearing that he had never seen in his own country
scenery of its kind comparable with that of the Liffey, in the vicinity
of Lucan and Leixlip.
But enthusiastic admiration of the scenery of Leixlip has not been
confined to the painters. Hear with what gusto our friend C. O. lets
himself out on this subject, not in his drawing-room character as the
clerical Connaught tourist, but in his more natural, buoyant, and Irish
one, as Terence O’Toole, our co-labourer in the first volume of the
_Dublin Penny Journal_:--
“Any one passing over the Bridge of Leixlip, must, if his eye is worth a
farthing for anything else than helping him to pick his way through the
puddle, look up and down with delight while moving over this bridge. To
the right, the river winning its noisy turbulent way over its rocky bed,
and losing itself afar down amidst embossing woods; to the left, after
plunging over the Salmon-leap, whose roar is heard though half a mile
off, and forming a junction with the Rye-water, it takes a bend to the
east, and washes the rich amphitheatre with which Leixlip is environed. I
question much whether any castle, even Warwick itself [bravo, Terence!]
stands in a grander position than Leixlip Castle, as it embattles the
high and wooded grounds that form the forks of the two rivers. Of the
towers, the round one of course was built by King John, the opposite
square one by the Geraldines. This noble and grandly circumstanced pile
has been in latter days the baronial residence of the White family, and
subsequently the residence of [lord-lieutenants] generals and prelates.
Here Primate Stone, more a politician than a Christian [churchman],
retired from his contest with the Ponsonbys and the Boyles to play at
cricket with General Cunningham; here resided Speaker Connolly before
he built his splendid mansion at Castletown; here the _great_ commoner,
as he was called, Tom Connolly, was born. Like many such edifices, this
castle is haunted: character and keeping would be altogether lost if
towers of 600 years’ standing, with rich mullioned ‘windows that exclude
the light, and passages that lead to nothing,’ with tapestried chambers
that have witnessed pranks of revelry and feats of war, of Norman,
Cromwellian, and Williamite possession, if such a place had not its
legend; and one of Ireland’s wildest geniuses, the eccentric and splendid
Maturin, has decorated the subject with the colourings of his vivid
fancy.”
Terence adds:--“Leixlip is memorable in an historic point of view as the
place where, in the war commencing 1641, General Preston halted when on
his way to form a junction with the Marquis of Ormonde to oppose the
Parliamentarians. Acknowledging that his army was not excommunication
proof, he bowed before the fiat of the Nuncio, and lost the best
opportunity that ever offered of saving his cause and his country from
what has been called the ‘curse of Cromwell.’”
To this brief but graphic sketch of our friend we can add but little.
Leixlip is a market and post town of the county of Kildare, situated in
the barony of North _Salt_--a name derived from the Latin appellation of
the cataract called the _Saltus Salmonis_, “Salmon Leap,” in the vicinity
of the town--and is about eight miles from Dublin. It contains between
eleven and twelve hundred inhabitants, and consists of one long street of
houses, well, though irregularly built, but exhibiting for the greater
number an appearance of negligence and decay. It is bounded on one
extremity by the river Liffey, which is crossed by a bridge of ancient
construction, and on the other by the Rye-water, over which there is a
bridge of modern date. As the focus of a parish, it has a church and a
Roman Catholic chapel, both of ample size and substantial construction,
but, like most edifices of their class in Ireland, but little remarkable
for the purity of their architectural styles. The latter is of recent
erection. Its most imposing architectural feature is, however, its
castle, which is magnificently situated on a steep and richly wooded
bank over the Liffey; but though of great antiquity, it exhibits in its
external character but little of the appearance of an ancient fortress,
having been modernised by the Hon. George Cavendish, its present
occupier. On its west side it is flanked by a circular, and on its east
by a square tower. This castle is supposed to have been erected in the
reign of Henry II. by Adam de Hereford, one of the chief followers of
Earl Strongbow, from whom he received as a gift the tenement of the
Salmon Leap, and other extensive possessions. It is said to have been the
occasional residence of Prince John during his governorship of Ireland in
the reign of his father; and in recent times it was a favourite retreat
of several of the Viceroys, one of whom, Lord Townsend, usually spent
the summer here. From an inquisition taken in 1604, it appears that the
manor of Leixlip was part of the possessions of the abbey of St Thomas in
Dublin. In 1668, the castle, with sixty acres of land, belonged to the
Earl of Kildare. They afterwards passed into the hands of the Right Hon.
Thomas Connolly, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, and are now the
property of Colonel Connolly of Castletown.