[Illustration: Initial: "The Sexton of Casbel"]
All over Ireland, from Cork to Belfast, from Dublin to Galway, are
scattered the ruins of churches, abbeys, and ecclesiastical buildings, the
relics of a country once rich, prosperous and populous. These ruins raise
their castellated walls and towers, noble even in decay, sometimes in the
midst of a village, crowded with the miserably poor, sometimes on a
mountain, in every direction commanding magnificent prospects; sometimes
on an island in one of the lakes, which, like emeralds in a setting of
deeper green, gem the surface of the rural landscape and contribute to
increase the beauty of scenery not surpassed in the world.
Ages ago the voice of prayer and the song of praise ceased to ascend from
these sacred edifices, and they are now visited only by strangers, guides,
and parties of humble peasants, the foremost bearing on their shoulders
the remains of a companion to be laid within the hallowed enclosure, for
although the church is in ruins, the ground in and about it is still holy
and in service when pious hands lay away in the bosom of earth the bodies
of those who have borne the last burden, shed the last tear, and succumbed
to the last enemy. But among all the pitiable spectacles presented in this
unhappy [Illustration: THE ROCK OF CASHEL.]