The objects we have just taken a review of, gave me such pleasure in
the contemplation, that I cannot help wondering at those, who profess
themselves disappointed in them, and affect to decry them: Men should be
cautious in admitting preconceptions. If they expect to see something
altogether great, and stupendous, in a circuit of ten or twelve miles;
the variety of objects, and the narrow limits of the scene, must
necessarily disappoint them: for greatness in natural objects requires
an unbroken uniformity of appearance, and that uniformity reigning over
a wide extended surface. If they look for the aweful and terrible; the
happy temperature of the climate, which cloaths even the rocks and
precipices with a rich covering, and overspreads the rugged face of the
mountains with luxuriance, is a natural bar to it. But if beauties will
content them, in every degree of the scale, from wild magnificence,
downwards; it is strange to me if they go away unsatisfied. Indeed
what can be more beautiful, than the several views of a fine piece of
water, studded with islands, encompassed by mountains, resounding with
waterfalls, and reflecting, on all sides, the umbrageous trees, and
evergreens, that adorn its banks? What can be more surprising than the
fertility of the rocks, where the trees, too ponderous for their feeble
roots, are often bent towards the earth, and flourish thus distorted?
What more curious than different species of shrubs springing from the
same decayed stock; which, no longer able to push forth leaves itself,
serves as a nidus to others? And is there any thing more wonderful than
the power of the echoes; which not only multiplies and reiterates the
most ordinary sounds, but swells them to the pitch of natural thunder?
To hazard an opinion: The prevailing character of Killarney is Variety;
the second Beauty; Magnificence is subordinate. Here Beauty, by her
magic, and diffusive influence, gives a grace to Variety; whilst
Variety furnishes her benefactress with flattering contrasts: United,
they present the fancy with the most delightful images, of repose,
tranquillity, unstudied order, natural wildness, and rural magnificence.
Objects, desirable in themselves, derive new beauties from their position
with respect to others; and even such as excite no pleasing emotions
when viewed singly, have often an agreeable effect in combination. But
these relative beauties, as they result from the harmonious proportion of
a number of parts, are entirely lost by an injudicious jumble of them;
so that to see a multiplicity of objects to advantage, it is necessary
to class them with taste, and consider them in those lights, and points
of view, where they neither run into a perplexing confusion, on the one
hand, nor a tiresome sameness, on the other.
The most magnificent view of the Great Lake and its environs is that
from the Yellow Mountain (1), about two miles to the Northward. The eye
passing over a rich valley, meets the lake in the center, with the Eagles
Nest, and the other mountains which stretch to the upper lake, behind
it: on one side are Glená, Tomé, and M’Gilly Cuddy’s Ricks, which lose
themselves to the Westward; on the other, Turk, Mangerton, Glanflesk, and
the Paps, in the opposite direction; all together forming a range of more
than twenty miles. The waving outline of these mountains is uncommonly
beautiful: the lake is happily placed in the center; and there is a
degree of unstudied regularity in the whole, which, added to the majesty
of the single parts, makes a noble, regular, and striking picture.
Aghadoe (2) was of old an episcopal seat, and a place of some
consequence: a ruined turret, and the shattered walls of a cathedral, are
the only vestiges of it remaining. It stands on an eminence to the North
of the lake, near the western extremity, and commands a most extensive
prospect of its borders, and islands. Innisfallin, and the western
cluster, appear from hence in perfect beauty: the shaggy sides of Glená,
and Tomé, are finely opposed to the level shores; the distant islands,
referred to their contiguous banks, have the air of so many promontories;
and the stately mountains, Turk and Mangerton, rising from behind the
peninsula of Mucrus, complete one of the most beautiful scenes in nature.
Dunlow castle (3), the seat of Mr. Crosby, is the best station for
viewing the lake from the West. It stands on a perpendicular cliff over
the river Lune, about a mile from its source, and with the surrounding
scenery is a very fine object. From hence the islands are seen in a
different, but less pleasing situation; the view is bounded to the right
by Tomé, and Glená; and, taking in the sloping bank, and the village of
Killarney, to the left, terminates agreeably on Mucrus, and the high
grounds beyond it: The several doublings, and turns, of the river, that
winds through the rich valley beneath, have a pleasing effect; and for
a contrast, the bleak sides of the Ricks, and the hollow Glynn which
divides them from Tomé, afford one sufficiently glaring.
The views from the East (4) are very numerous, and beautiful: there is
scarce a break, or height, along the Peninsula, that does not present a
new face of things, or a different arrangement of them. The eminence near
the abbey, the meadows and gardens at Mucrus, and the point of Camillan,
where Turk, Glená, and the Eagles Nest, meet the eye at once, must be
noted by the most careless observers.
To those who would have a perfect knowledge of the lakes, the top of
Turk (5) is the best station. From thence they appear as distinctly,
as if delineated on canvass; but the minuter beauties are lost by the
height of the mountain, and at best, a prospect from such an overtopping
eminence, is better calculated for the Ichnographist, than the man of
taste and fancy.
From the side of Mangerton (6), about one fourth of the common ascent,
there is a very commanding prospect of the Great Lake, and the adjacent
country, which shews the objects more in the light of perspective
than that from Turk, at the same time that it preserves the natural
arrangement of the islands, and the sinuosity of the bays. Here the
Peninsula seems to float on the surface of the water like a vast serpent,
and, when illuminated by the sun’s rays, displays its green spiry length,
every where distinct with shining beauties, in a manner at the same time
singular, and pleasing.
From the top of this mountain, ascended by a tedious path of three miles,
the prospect is wild, commanding, and in a manner unbounded. On one side
lie the lakes, diminished almost in the scale of Shakespear’s fancied
simpler: On the other, at some distance, the noble river of Kenmare,
along which the eye passing for near thirty miles reposes at length on
the swelling bosom of the Atlantic. On all sides save one the country is
mountainous; to the East the mountains trend away in an irregular ridge,
till obscured and lost in the opaque vapours; to the West, and indeed in
every other direction, they are thrown together in as tumultuous, and
wild an assemblage, as if Chaos had been here arrested in his billowy
career, and chained to stability by the supreme _fiat_. The lakes are
seen from hence but partially, and in truth appear only as a drop of
water, to the vast ocean in view: while the mountains which encompass
them, compared with Mangerton itself, hide their diminished heads,
declining all rivality. Taken together, tho’ far inferior even to the
maritime Alps in grandeur, and as much to the mountains in Switzerland,
and the Esterelles in Provence, in fertility, they exhibit an appearance
of nature so uncommon, as must furnish the best informed fancy with new,
and picturesque images.
And now, traveller, having satisfied thy curiosity, plod thy way
downwards; for the clouds begin to marshal, the vapours to accumulate,
and soon will the scene thou gazest at vanish, and the spot where thou
standest become the seat of darkness; unless thou indeed wouldest inhabit
the clouds, and _sensibly experience_ that palpable Obscure, which thou
hast only _read of_ in Milton.
The most desirable view of the upper lake is from the East, on the cliffs
of Crom-a-glaun, or Bolinendra (7). The islands, and mountains, are seen
from hence in a very happy arrangement; and there is a certain air of
wildness in the prospect, which borders on the romantic.
These are some of the views from the banks, and eminences, in the
neighbourhood of the lakes, that appeared to me the most pleasing. Those
from the lake itself, though not so extensive, are no less beautiful; but
they are so numerous, and it is so difficult to convey an adequate idea
of their nice varieties, and differences, that I shall barely hint at one
or two in the most distinguished classes.
Turk, when viewed from the lake below (8), has some pretensions to
grandeur: it rises to a respectable height, fills the eye with an
unbroken surface of two miles in extent, and is one great and uniform
object: but greatness is a relative term, and that degree of it we speak
of, is rather calculated to give the mind a certain taste of grandeur,
than to satisfy it with a complete idea.
From the river immediately beneath (9), the rugged appearance of the
Eagles Nest inspires surprise, and awe; but the sportive hand of Nature
has so managed it, that these feelings never border upon that anxious
uneasiness which attends the contemplation of objects properly speaking
terrible.
From the upper lake between Arbutea, and Rossburkree (10), the western
isles are seen at a due distance, and appear to great advantage. The eye
is confined on each side by two uniform risings, and the back ground
of the picture is occupied by the amphitheatre of mountains which
encompasses the western valley. There is a beauty in the islands, a
wildness in the mountains, and a magnificence in the air of the whole
prospect, which not only amuses the mind, but seems to exalt and expand
it, and awakens such sentiments as one feels from a sublime passage in
Homer or Milton.
The effect of many of these views is, in my opinion, much heightened by
the hourly revolutions in the face of the heavens. The vast volumes of
clouds, which are rolled together from the Atlantic, and rest on the
summits of the mountains, cloath them with majesty: the different masses
of light and shade, traversing the lakes in succession, as the shifting
bodies above float across them, exhibit all the varieties of night, and
day, almost at the same instant: the mists interposing their dull, yet
transparent coverings to the view, raise new desires of a fuller, and
clearer prospect: and the wandering vapours flitting from cliff to cliff,
as if in search of the clouds from which they have been separated, amuse
the eye with their varieties, and irregular motions.
After all, this happy spot labours under one disadvantage, and one
too I am the more averse to mention, since so celebrated a writer as
Doctor Johnson has thought it sufficient, in the case of Loch Lomond, to
counterbalance so many natural beauties; and this is no other than the
immense rains; which fall here more abundantly, and that even in the best
seasons for visiting the lake, than in all other parts of the kingdom.
But surely Philosophy will suggest many topics to quiet our complainings
on this head. She will tell us, that to expect perfection in things
sublunary, is to wish where we cannot hope: that the cup of pleasure,
even when presented to us by the pure hand of Benevolence, is never
without some unpalatable ingredients: that where Nature has provided us
with so rich a repast, where she has displayed such enchanting scenery to
the eye, and gratuitously accumulated all this variety of entertainment;
we ought to enjoy her bounties, in the time, manner, and circumstances
she chooses to exhibit them. But if we should further discover, that
the limitations she sets to our pleasures, are necessary to our being
pleased at all; that what we call a disadvantage is the spring and source
of all we admire; that the Hyades are here the handmaids of Flora; for
that without these perpetual effusions of rain we complain of, the rocks
must resign their vegetable inhabitants, the rivers mourn their exhausted
urns, and the cascades no longer resound save in the dull ear of Memory;
that the living lake itself must dwindle into an inconsiderable pool,
and the mountains, stript of their honours, become a dreary waste, the
abode of gloom and barrenness: In this case, surely, our complaints must
be turned to admiration, and our regrets to a grateful acquiescence.
Shall we not here exclaim in the spirit of Homer!
With gold-embraided locks, the exulting Seasons
Received her from the hands of forming Nature;
And round her silver margin did encircle,
With never-fading forms, umbrageous hills,
Sweet vocal vallies, plains enamel’d o’er
With many a flower.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES
[1] Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland.
[2] By the experiment of the barometer, Mangerton was found to be 3060
feet in perpendicular height. But the sudden variations of the state of
the air, at considerable heights, in a climate so changeable as ours,
seem to require the concurrence of repeated experiments as the basis of
admissible conclusions.
[3] I have included the several ranges of mountains which form the
shores of this lake, under the name of the most considerable, to avoid
multiplying uncouth terms. What I have called Ghirmeen is known by the
several denominations of Doogery, Ghirmeen, and Derry-Carnagh: On the
opposite side, besides Cahirnee, are Derry-Lishigane, Galloveely, and
Derry-Arde: and to the East, under Crom-a-glaun are included, Bolinendra,
Derry-Dimna, and Derry-Cannihy.
[4] Vide _Collectanea Hibernica_.