Place elephants for want of towns.
Here would be towns and elephants too, the popular and the prodigious.
How much would not Swift do for Ireland, in this geography of wit and
talent! What a figure would not St. Patrick's Cathedral make! The other
day, mention was made of a 'Dean of St. Patrick's' _now living_; as if
there was, or ever could be, more than one Dean of St. Patrick's! In the
Irish maps we should have the Saint himself driving out all venomous
creatures (what a pity that the most venomous retain a property as
absentees!); and there would be the old Irish kings, and O'Donoghue with
his White Horse, and the lady of the 'gold wand' who made the miraculous
virgin pilgrimage, and all the other marvels of lakes and ladies, and
the Round Towers still remaining to perplex the antiquary, and
Goldsmith's 'Deserted Village', and Goldsmith himself, and the
birthplaces of Steele and Sterne, and the brief hour of poor Lord Edward
Fitzgerald, and Carolan with his harp, and the schools of the poor Latin
boys under the hedges, and Castle Rackrent, and Edgeworth's-town, and
the Giant's Causeway, and Ginleas and other classical poverties, and
Spenser's castle on the river Mulla, with the wood-gods whom his pipe
drew round him.--J. H. LEIGH HUNT. _The World of Books._