One of the loveliest railway or automobile rides in Ireland is from Dublin northward to the ancient town of Drogheda (pronounced Drawdah). The railroad runs parallel with the highway along the shore of St. George’s Channel. Both touch several popular seaside resorts, fishing settlements, and busy manufacturing towns, which alternate with beautiful pastures filled with sleek cattle and unshorn sheep, and here and there ivy-clad towers and little groups of chimney pots rise above the foliage. The pastures and meadows, when we saw them, blazing with yellow buttercups, looked like the Field of the Cloth of Gold. They are divided into small plots by hedges of hawthorn twelve and fifteen feet high, which in the early summer are as white as banks of snow, and so fragrant that the perfume floated into the car windows.

Between the meadows and the pastures along the coast are plots of cultivated ground, gardens of potatoes, cabbages, and other vegetables and glorious groves. It isn’t a bit like the Ireland one expects to see after reading newspaper accounts of the terrible conditions that the politicians complain of. It is not a country of downtrodden peasants and a wretched tenantry crushed under the heels of oppressive landlords. Right is not upon the scaffold in that section of Ireland, nor is wrong upon the throne. On the contrary, every evidence of prosperity and contentment and happiness abounds. The neatly whitewashed, straw-thatched cottages are surrounded with gay gardens filled with old-fashioned flowers, such as you see in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Large stables and storehouses are attached to almost every cottage, which indicates that the farmer has something to put in them. The traveler cannot see the mansions of the rich, because they are hidden in glorious parks and protected by high walls. Occasionally in the distance, however, he can catch glimpses of the towers of ancient castles, each having a romance or a tragedy, and sometimes several of both, contained in their history.

At Malehide forty or fifty golf players alighted from the train, with kits of clubs over their shoulders, for there are two links near that village—one for an exclusive club of rich Dubliners, and the other for any one who is able to pay half a crown for the privilege of chasing a little gutta-percha ball over the grass. Malehide is a lovely place, situated on the seashore at the mouth of a little stream called Meadow Water, with hotels of all grades and prices, fashionable and unfashionable, and some of them are open for health seekers the year around.

The chief attraction to tourists is the ancient castle of the Talbot family, who have owned and occupied it continuously for seven hundred years, an unusual record for Ireland or for anywhere else. The original castle, built about 1180, in the reign of Henry II., is still standing, although modern restorations and additions have changed it much. The exterior has suffered more than the interior. The dining-hall, a very large apartment, is considered one of the finest rooms in Ireland. The wainscoting and the ceiling are of oak, richly carved, and mellowed by exposure for more than six centuries. The chimney-piece, an exquisite example of fourteenth century carving, represents the Conception. From 1653 to 1660 the castle was inhabited by Miles Corbet, the regicide, and the very day he took possession of the place, according to tradition, the figure of the Blessed Virgin was mysteriously detached from the rest of the carving and disappeared until the night after the unholy tenant fled from the place, when it was miraculously restored.

There is a fine collection of paintings in the castle, including portraits by Van Dyck and other famous artists, three panels of scripture subjects by Albert DÜrer, which formerly belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots, and were purchased by Charles II. for $2,000. The library is a treasure-house of old tomes and manuscripts, and upon the wall, in a heavy oaken frame, hangs the original patent by which the estate was granted to the Talbot family by King Edward IV.

Within the roofless walls of an ancient abbey near by is the altar-tomb of Maud Plunkett, whose husband, Sir Richard Talbot, according to the epitaph, “fell in a fray immediately after the wedding breakfast, thus making her maid, wife, and widow in a single day.”

The village of Swords, three miles distant, has another ancient castle, where the bodies of Brian Boru and his son Morrough rested the first night after the battle of Clontarf while they were being carried to their final tomb at Armagh.

All the little towns along the coast of the Irish Channel are associated with St. Patrick and St. Columba, who spent more or less time there, founding monasteries and building churches. One of the monasteries, called “the Golden Prebend” because it was so rich, was held by William of Wykeham in 1366 and was the seat of a cardinal for a century or two.

A mile and a half from the main line, beyond Swords, is the village of Portraine, where Dean Swift’s “Stella” lived for several years, and where a branch of the insane asylum he founded in Dublin has since been erected. It stands upon lands given by Sigtryg of the Silken Beard, the Danish king of Dublin, for the endowment of a Christian church. The house was occupied for many years by the nuns of St. Augustine, where “the womankind of the most part of the whole Englisher of this land are brought up in virtue, learning and in the English tongue and behaviour.”

The little town of Rush, famous for its early potatoes and its tulip bulbs, is called “Holland in Ireland.” It has an old church, with beautiful pointed arches, which dates back to the sixteenth century, and contains a richly decorated monument to Sir Christopher Barnwell and his beloved wife, who died in 1607.Skerries is a fishing-town, where St. Patrick lived for several years, and a quaint little chapel, like many others in Ireland, is attributed to him, although it could not possibly have been built for several centuries after his time. But in the history of these ancient sanctuaries a few hundred years do not count.

While ruins are picturesque and ivy-clad castles that date back beyond the Middle Ages have a fascination for tourists from a new world like ours, it was a relief when the chauffeur brought us up to the entrance of an old-fashioned factory in the compact little town of Balbriggan, which has given its name to a certain kind of knitted goods that are worn the world over. It is a quaint mass of high houses, built of stone and brick on both sides of narrow but neatly kept streets, which seems unnecessary when miles of green fields and glowing gardens encircle them and give them every chance to spread out. But you will find the same tendency to snuggle up as closely as possible in all the manufacturing communities of Europe.

The men folks at Balbriggan fish and farm the soil, and the women work in the mills, but the law, which is strictly enforced there, prohibits child labor and compels the children to attend school for at least one hundred and twenty-eight days in the year until they pass their fourteenth birthday. The superintendents of the mills tell the same story that I heard in the cotton factories of South Carolina and Georgia, that they prefer adult operatives; that the children are careless and inefficient and seldom earn their wages, but they are compelled to employ them or lose the services of the parents. There are two factories in Balbriggan for the manufacture of knitted hosiery and underclothing by machinery invented here more than one hundred and fifty years ago and since imitated everywhere. Both factories still remain under the control of the families which founded them, but the shares are distributed among a larger number of people by inheritance from generation to generation.

Scattered along the coast at intervals of two or three miles, and generally at the summits of hills overlooking the sea, are “martello towers,” fifty, sixty, and sometimes ninety feet high, and from forty to a hundred feet in diameter. They were erected early in the nineteenth century as defensive watch-towers, when the country was in dread of an invasion by Napoleon. The name was taken from similar towers in Corsica and Sardinia, where they were erected for protection against pirates in the time of Charles V. These towers are said to have originally had bells which were struck by hammers to alarm the people in case of danger; hence they were called “martello” towers, that being the Italian word for “hammer.”

It makes a Protestant ashamed when he reads the history of Drogheda and sees the ruins that Cromwell left there. Thousands of men and women and children were butchered in the name of the Lord by Cromwell’s soldiers when he took that quaint old town by storm in September, 1649. It was a ferocious massacre, and Cromwell admitted the facts while proclaiming himself the agent of the Almighty to punish a rebellious people. This is what he wrote with his own hand:

“The governor, Sir Arthur Aston, and divers considerable officers being there, our men, getting up to them, were ordered by me to put them all to the sword, and, indeed, being in the heat of action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town; and I think that night they put to death about two thousand persons. Divers officers and soldiers being fled over the bridge into the other part of the town, where about a hundred of them possessed St. Peter’s Church steeple, some the West Gate, and others a strong round tower next to the gate called St. Sundays. These being summoned to yield for mercy refused. Whereupon I ordered the steeple of St. Peter’s Church to be fired. The next day the other two towers were summoned. When they submitted their officers were knocked on the head and every tenth man of the soldiers was killed. The rest shipped for the Barbadoes. The soldiers in the other tower were all spared as to their lives only and shipped likewise for the Barbadoes.“I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches who have imbued their hands in so much innocent blood; and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future.”

Two of the towers have remained these two hundred and fifty years just as grim old Oliver left them, and there is much else of interest to the antiquarian in the town, although today it is given up to linen factories, flour mills, tanneries, and soap works, and has a large provision trade with England. It is the center of a prosperous agricultural community, and everybody seems to be doing well.

The greatest attraction is the ruins of Monasterboice, an extensive monastery, founded by St. Patrick, like every other ecclesiastical institution in this country, and three magnificent crosses which arise among them, about six miles from town. We tried to get a carriage instead of a jaunting car for the drive, because the latter allows you to see only one side of the roadway, but Mrs. Murphy, who has a livery stable and a tongue that is hung in the middle, could furnish us nothing else. It is a delightful drive. On the outward journey we saw what there is to see on one hand, and coming back we saw everything on the other.

The ruins of Monasterboice cover a large area, for five hundred monks and several thousand students were there eight or nine hundred years ago. It was one of the largest educational institutions in the world, as well as a religious retreat. It dates back to the fifth century, and was probably founded by St. Patrick,—certainly by one of his disciples,—although there is no tangible evidence to prove that fact. A “round tower” still in good condition, dates from the ninth century. It is one hundred and ten feet high and fifty-one feet in diameter at the base. It was intended for observation, for signaling to the country around, for the storage of valuables and military supplies, and for defensive purposes. Strangely enough, it sits in a hollow, in the lowest part of an amphitheater, surrounded by hills, but the Irish monks as well as the Irish warriors of ancient times always built beside streams of running water and not upon the heights, like the Goths, the Huns, the Teutons, and the Romans.

There are similar “round towers” at Cashel, Glendalough, Kildare, Antrim, and other places in the interior of Ireland which have long been subject of an irreconcilable dispute among archÆologists. While no one knows definitely who built them, or what they were for, the most credited theory is that I have given above.

Dr. Petrie, who is a high authority, believes that they were built between the years 890 and 1238, when the Danes were in the habit of invading Ireland and plundering the ecclesiastical establishments. One of the most perfect of these towers, at Antrim, is ninety-two feet in height and forty-nine feet in circumference at the bottom; the summit terminates in a cone twelve feet high, which, with the tower itself, is of undressed stone, the walls being two feet nine inches in thickness. The door is on the north side at a height of seven feet nine inches from the ground. The tower was apparently divided into four stories by timber floors, which, of course, vanished long ago. Each of the three lower stories is lighted by a square window, and the upper story by four square perforations opening to the cardinal points. It stands in the grounds of a mansion. The turf between the two shows the dim outline of buildings, supposed to be those of a monastery founded by Aodh, a disciple of St. Patrick, the earliest notice of which occurs in the year 495. It was destroyed during the Danish incursions.

The walls of the chapel at Monasterboice are standing firm and strong, but without a roof, and the grounds surrounding them and the ruins of the monastery are still used for the burial of the families of the parish. It is a free cemetery and belongs to the government and not to the Catholic Church. Anybody—Protestant, Quaker, or Jew—can lay his tired bones down under the hospitable trees by application to the secretary of the board of public works. The oldest grave is that of Bishop O’Rourke, who was buried there in 982; the latest, marked by a clumsy wooden cross, was made in 1907.What people go there to see are three splendid Celtic crosses, the finest specimens of the kind in Ireland, and that means the universe. They are believed to have been erected in the fifth century in honor of St. Patrick, St. Columba, and St. Bridget. This, however, is questionable. One of them bears the inscription, “A prayer for Murriduch, by whom was made this cross.” From the Irish Annals it may be learned that two men of that name have lived in this neighborhood, both of wealth and distinction, and they died, one in the year 844 and the other in 924. It is entirely probable that either of them may have erected the splendid monoliths. The largest is twenty-seven feet high, and all of them are covered with carvings of religious subjects. The crosses of Monasterboice have been photographed and reproduced many times, and models have been shipped to all parts of the world. Perfect replicas may be found in the museum at Dublin.

Four miles further on are the ruins of Mellifont Abbey, which was founded in the twelfth century, and has had an important part in the political as well as the ecclesiastical history of Ireland.

There are several drawbacks to motoring in Ireland, the chief of which is that the country is so short on good hotels and so long on showers. The next is the inability to see through or over walls of stone and hedges that rise twice as high as one’s head. Nevertheless, wherever there is much to see and little time to see it in, one has to put up with some annoyances, and an automobile is no longer a luxury or a mere convenience, but an actual necessity.

The Irish climate is like the Irish character. A witty native once said of his fellow countrymen, “They smile aisy and they cry aisy,” and that describes the habits of the heavens also. Clouds assemble and do business in quicker time than in any other place I have ever been, but, although it will “rain cats and dogs” for fifteen or twenty minutes, the sun will be shining almost instantly afterward, as if nothing had happened.

Unfortunately the hotel proposition is not so easily disposed of. Most of the inns of the country districts and in the small cities are absolutely intolerable. It isn’t so much because of a lack of luxuries and modern conveniences that the traveler finds in England, Scotland, and on the Continent at similar places, as it is the excess of dirt and bad smells. In the average country hotel in Ireland everything is in disorder and out of repair. The bells don’t work; the furniture is crippled and decrepit; the mattresses are lumpy and half the springs are broken or out of joint; the bedrooms are seldom swept, the table cloths are seldom washed; sheets and pillow-cases, are seldom changed, and if a guest should call for a clean towel the landlord would be likely to ask what is the matter with the one he gave him a few days ago. The only alternative to stopping at a dirty hotel is to ride on until you come to a clean one, and that may be as far as the ends of the earth. The more practical, and indeed the only, way is to accept the situation good naturedly and get the best you can out of it. Any person who takes an interest in this subject can find further and accurate information in that charming book, “Penelope’s Irish Experiences,” by Kate Douglas Wiggin. It is asserted by those who know that there are only five good hotels in Ireland. We found nine, but did not keep count of the other kind. They are too numerous to mention.

The road from Drogheda to Tara, the ancient capital of Ireland, follows the valley of the famous Boyne River, and passes through the famous battlefield where William of Orange, with thirty thousand men, in 1690, overcame James II. with twenty-three thousand, and deprived the latter of his dominion and his crown and gave the Protestants control of Ireland for the next two hundred and fifty years. A stately monument has been erected upon the field, and various small markers have been placed about to show where important incidents took place.

The Valley of the Boyne is extremely beautiful. The banks are densely wooded for miles, and the river flows through many fine estates owned and occupied by rich people from London, Dublin, and other cities. The climate is agreeable and healthful for nine or ten months in the year. Only February, March, and April are unpleasant, because of the winds. The scenery is peaceful and attractive, the foliage of the groves and forests is rich beyond comparison, and it is difficult to conceive of more desirable surroundings for a summer home for men of wealth and leisure. To the antiquarian and the archÆologist there is an unlimited field for exploration that has only been touched thus far.

Only a few miles from Drogheda, and on the direct road to Tara, is a collection of tumuli which are unsurpassed in Europe or any other part of the world. They mark the location of Brugh-Na-Boinne, the royal cemetery of ancient Ireland, the burying-ground of the kings of Tara for centuries before the history of the country began. Although they do not show the same architectural skill or artistic taste or mechanical mysteries, and do not compare in magnitude with the pyramids and other tombs of the kings of Egypt, they nevertheless have an entrancing interest to those who love archÆology and prehistoric lore. The tumuli are scattered over a large area, and, according to the theories of scientists who have explored them, contained the bodies of successive royal families of Ireland until the invasion of the Danes, when they were desecrated, looted, and nearly destroyed, just as the tombs of the kings of Egypt were stripped of their treasures by the Assyrians and other invaders.

The most remarkable tumulus, at New Grange, has been described at length by several eminent antiquarians. It stands on elevated ground, and covers about three acres, the main part being two hundred and eighty feet in diameter and about one hundred and twenty feet high. It is now covered with dense vegetation. It is a vast cairn of loose stones, estimated at one hundred thousand tons, those at the base being very large—from six to eight feet long and four or five feet thick. They are arranged in a circle without masonry; simply laid in order and smaller stones placed inside and on top of them until an artificial cavern was created, which was reached by a passage sixty-two feet long, formed of enormous upright stones from five to eight feet high and roofed with flagstones of great size. This passage leads to a low dome-roofed chamber, nearly circular, whose ceiling is supported by eleven upright pillars. The ceiling is nineteen and a half feet from the ground. There are three other chambers, measuring eighteen by twenty-one feet in size, which at one time were doubtless filled with the bodies of the royal families. The archÆologists compare them to the beehive tombs of MycenÆ, known as “The Treasury of Atreus,” and find many resemblances. The surfaces of some of the stones are rudely carved with cryptographs and ornamental designs.

There are several other tumuli in the neighborhood of different dates and dimensions and of absorbing interest to science; and all of them we know, from that accurate and comprehensive chronicle, “The Annals of the Four Masters,” were plundered by the Danes in the year 801. Those vandals left nothing but bones and cinerary urns; they took away or destroyed everything else. The tumuli are now in the custody of the board of works, which is taking care of them, and is having careful scientific excavations and other examinations made by competent authorities.

There are several other cemeteries in the neighborhood that are not so old, and they also are supposed to contain the dust of kings; but few of the graves have been identified. One of them, marked with two tombstones set with their tops together like the gable of a house, has been declared to be of greater antiquity than any other Christian tomb in Ireland, and is supposed to contain the remains of St. Eric, the first bishop consecrated by St. Patrick. He died toward the end of the fifth century. It is said that his custom was to stand immersed in the Boyne River up to his two armpits from morn till evening, having his psalter lying before him on the strand where he could read its pages, and continually engaging in prayer.

In another grave lie the bones of Cormac, the greatest of the kings of Tara, who was a Christian, having been converted by St. Patrick. His death was brought about by the Druid priests, who cast a spell over him and caused a bone of salmon to stick in his throat. He commanded his people not to bury him at Brugh-Na-Boinne among his royal ancestors, because it was a cemetery of idolators, but to place his body humbly in consecrated ground, with his face to the east. These injunctions were clear and positive, but the king’s servants required a miracle to induce them to obey. Three separate times they started from the palace at Tara for the royal burying-ground at Brugh-Na-Boinne, when the river miraculously rose to such a height that they could not cross. After so many warnings their stupid brains finally saw the light and they laid his majesty’s ashes in consecrated ground, as he had commanded.

The little antiquated village of Kells, with pleasant surroundings and glorious foliage, sleeps unconscious of its fame. It is of the greatest interest to Christian archÆologists, because it was the home of St. Columba (or Columbkill), second only to St. Patrick in influence and in the work of evangelizing Ireland. He was born in Donegal in 521, of royal blood, being the great-great-grandson of King Niall of the Nine Hostages, founder of the O’Neill family. Having heard the truth of the gospel, he gave up his princely heritage for the service of his Master and became a monk. He traveled for sixteen years, preaching from place to place, founding churches and monasteries all over the country, which are still venerated by the people, and are among the most interesting ruins in Ireland. At Kells he built a famous monastery in the year 550, and the cost was paid by Dermot, son of Fearghus, king of Tara, at that time.

St. Columba made his headquarters there for many years and then crossed the channel to the little Island of Iona, on the west coast of Scotland, which had been granted him by his relative, the king of that country. He founded a monastery there, from which he and his disciples traversed all Scotland and the Hebrides, preaching the gospel, baptizing the people, building churches and monasteries, until half the Scotch were converted to Christianity. The rest of Great Britain was converted from paganism by the missionaries he educated and sent out. After a life of extraordinary activity and usefulness he died at Iona in the year 597 at the age of seventy-six years and was mourned by every one on the shores of the four seas. His funeral lasted three days and three nights, and he was buried within the walls of the monastery of Iona, whence his remains were afterward removed to Downpatrick and buried in the same grave as those of St. Patrick and St. Bridget.

A portion of the house of St. Columba still remains at Kells, half concealed by a cloak of wonderful ivy. There is a tower one hundred feet tall, and in the neighboring churchyard are several crosses of the Celtic fashion, similar to, but not so large or so fine as those at Monasterboice. They are, however, sacred in the eyes of all Irishmen and date back to the tenth century.

The “Annals of the Four Masters” record many exciting incidents and important events that have occurred in the history of the town of Kells. It has been invaded and looted by Irish clansmen, Norwegian hordes, and Danish Vikings. It has been devastated many times by fire, sword, and pestilence. Sigtryg of the Silken Beard burned it to the ground in 1019, and Edward Bruce in 1315, but it has arisen serene and smiling as often as it has been destroyed, and prosperity has been restored again. It was in the great monastery founded by St. Columba that the famous illuminated “Book of the Gospels,” preserved in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, was made by the monks in the eighth century. Mr. Westwood, a very high authority, pronounces it “the most elaborately executed monument of early Christian art in existence.” Kells was also noted for its metal work in the Middle Ages. At present it is merely an agricultural market and the seat of the Marquess of Headfort, who has a large estate and a beautiful chateau surrounded by a wooded demesne and a hunting preserve. There are several other delightful residences in the neighborhood, and if there were a decent hotel within walking or driving distance, Kells might have many visitors, but those who go there are compelled to hurry away to find some place to stay overnight.Navan, a neat little manufacturing town with a woolen mill and other industries, has a reasonably good hotel, but you have to come back about ten miles from Kells. There is another neat little town called Trim, where it is possible to stay overnight and even to pass a day or two. The country around Trim is lovely. The landscapes in every direction would fascinate an artist, and the ruins of “King John’s Castle,” built on the banks of the Boyne by Hugh de Lacy, are among the most extensive and beautiful in the world. The walls, four hundred and eighty-six yards long, with ten circular towers at nearly equal distances, are still well preserved and there is a lofty keep, seventy feet high, with beautiful turrets and flanked on either side with rectangular towers. There is nothing to surpass it in Ireland for picturesqueness, and its associations give it additional interest, for King John, Edward II., Richard, Earl of Ulster, and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and other famous characters, have lived there. Henry of Lancaster, afterward Henry IV. of England, was imprisoned there; the parliament of Ireland met within its walls, year after year, and it was once the mint of the kingdom. In later days it was occupied by the Duke of Wellington, who received his early education in the diocesan school within the grounds.

His name, you know, was Arthur Wellesley. He was a son of Lord Mornington, of an old Irish family. His mother was a daughter of the Earl of Dungannon of Tyrone, and she lived to see four of her sons elevated to the peerage of Great Britain, not because of wealth or political influence, but because of their ability and usefulness. Richard, the eldest, was that celebrated statesman, the Marquis of Wellesley; the second, William, was also eminent in politics and civil affairs as Lord Mayborough; the third, Henry, Lord Crowley, spent his life in the diplomatic service and made an enviable name, while Arthur, hero of Waterloo and of the Spanish campaign, the man who broke the back of Napoleon the Great, was the fourth and most famous of them all.

Arthur Wellesley was born May 1, 1769, in Merrion Street, Dublin, in a house now occupied by the commissioners that are carrying out the land act, and he died Sept. 18, 1852. It may be said that no other Irish subject of a British king ever received greater honors or better deserved them.

Dungan Castle, the home of the Wellesleys, is near Trim, about twenty miles from Dublin, and the nearest railway station is Summer Hill. Laracor, a secluded little village where Dean Swift was once curate and where Stella lived with Mrs. Dingley, is only a mile or two distant.