graduates and undergraduates (o my brothers, how gladly shall i meet you once again, when the long vacation is past!), did you ever dine, as i have dined, with an elderly don, severe in deportment and of boundless lore, who happened to be at once the author of a great treatise on “the verbs in [greek],” and (strange antithesis!) of a pretty daughter? if so, you will remember that hour of solemn converse, before the coffee was announced, when the grave professor, broad of brow, took you, as it were, by the hand up the solemn heights of olympus, and showed to you, awfully admiring, the grand sublimities of longinus, the sombre valleys of parnassus, and philosophy's everlasting hills. and memory will suggest to you, more happily, more vividly, how, summoned by the butler, you at length came down from those amazing steeps, entered the drawing-room, found the pretty daughter; and, while papa chuckled in the distance, over a play of aristophanes, easy to his apprehension as buckstone to ours, discoursed to her of the commemoration ball, and forgot minerva in the sunnier presence of aphrodiet.
and you, my general readers, you, who, with that refinement of taste for which you are remarkable above all other readers, go to concerts at the hanover square rooms in the season, and, out of it, to dingy county halls, whenever the italians sing,—you, too, must help me with an analogy, and say,—can you not recall how, amid all that severe and stately music, some plaintive ballad, quaint madrigal, or hearty glee, refreshed your weary spirit, and won the sole encore? it was so, at all events, when last i went to an operatic meeting in the halls of crystal; and alboni sang; and giuglini sang; and of inis and icos good store; and we beat time, and “wasn't it delicious?”; but no song went home to our english hearts, roused us from our lethargic and drear gentility, and made us clap our english hands, save the song of “the hardy norsemen.”
some such pleasant refreshment, and cheerful change, it is, coming away from those barren rocks of kerry, those dark, cold lakes (numerous, it is said, as days in the year), to gaze upon the sunlit bay of bantry, and the freshness and the beauty of green glengarriff! glengarriff is, indeed,
“a miniature of loveliness, all grace
summed up, and closed in little.”
a miniature bay, miniature mountains, miniature waterfall, a glen, to which, as moore writes of it, the
“ocean comes,
to 'scape the wild wind's rancour.”
yes, to the eye all was peace, but not so to the ear, for, when we went in to dinner, the noise made by a couple of waiters was something to exceed belief. one of them, it was evident, had been suddenly evoked from the stables, and had been garnished with an enormous white neckerchief, under the idea apparently that this threw a kind of glory over his costume of corduroy, and effectually hid the ostler in the accomplished domestic footman. his hair was arranged (with a curry-comb, i fancy) to imitate a cockatoo, and we were, naturally, jocose about peveril of the peak, and ricquet with the tuft, &c. to hear him and his superior coming down the boarded passage with the dinner, was like “the march of the cameron men;” and they ran against each other, from time to time, with such a clattering of plates, and dish-covers, and knives, and jugs, and crockery in general, as would have done honour to the druids on a walpurgis night.
but the irish waiter is, notwithstanding, a capital fellow, good-tempered, prompt, colloquial, large-hearted. i say “large-hearted” because he will undertake to serve any conceivable number of persons, and “colloquial,” remembering that, when a neighbour, at a table d'hôte, mildly expressed his conviction, that one waiter was insufficient to satisfy the emergencies of seventeen persons, the individual referred to immediately exclaimed from the other end of the apartment, but with all good humour and civility, “shure, thin, and every gintleman will be having his fair turn.”
well, i prefer this scant attendance, with all its good humour and elasticity, to the solemn dreariness of our english waiter, who has nothing to say but “yezzur,” and knows not how to smile. if the irishman cannot come to you, he will at all events recognise your summons, and favour you with a grin on account, whereas the englishman hath an unpleasant habit of affecting not to hear you, and of rushing off in a contrary direction.
we remained a sunday at glengarriff (there is an air of rest and peace about the place, as of a perpetual sabbath), and went up to the little edifice upon the hill, half cottage and half church. indeed, the inhabited part has the more ecclesiastical aspect, and i was surprised on entering it, uncovered, and with obeisance, to confront an old woman washing potatoes!
the clergyman, having duties elsewhere, was somewhat late for matins, and it sounded strangely to be speaking of “the beginning of this day,” an hour and a half after the meridian. but that sacred service is ever seasonable, and we were glad, after an earnest sermon, to drop our thankful alms into the offertory basin, though it was but a cheese plate of the willow pattern.
in the afternoon, we climbed the high hills which overlook glengarriff and, after losing our way, and meeting with an apparition, which alarmed us fearfully, we reached the highest point, and surveyed, with wonder and gladness, the glorious view beneath us.
