Surely Twyford, a few miles south of Winchester, has quite outlived any claim to its one-time title of “Queen of Hampshire villages.” It has paid the price of its popularity; modern brick buildings crowd upon its creeper-clad cottages or have superseded them altogether. Its church has been restored to the point of newness, and its yew tree, locally reputed to be the largest in England, is easily surpassed by the one at Selborne. Still, Twyford is not without an especial interest to American visitors. Here stands the Elizabethan mansion where Benjamin Franklin penned his autobiography while a guest of the vicar of St. Asaphs. The rambling old house with a fine stretch of lawn in front of it may be plainly seen from the road.

No matter how frequently the wanderer may pause in Winchester, the attraction of the ancient capital can never be outworn. One might spend a day among the college buildings, whose rough flint walls and slate roofs, sagging but little beneath the weight of years, stand much the same as when the builder finished them six hundred years ago. Nor should St. Cross and its quaint brotherhood, one of those strange medieval charities, be forgotten. A great quadrangle of buildings and an elaborate church, all for “thirteen poor men decayed and past their strength,” seems a great means for a small achievement. Much has fallen into disuse, but the church is still in good condition and in many respects a remarkable piece of architecture. But after all, Winchester’s greatest charm is not in her college or her cathedral, but in her old-world streets and odd corners. Nor should one forget the shops in which antiques of merit in furniture, books and other articles may be found.

A broad easy road leads from Winchester through Alton to Jane Austen’s Chawton, from whence a secluded byway brings us to Selborne, a nook that every tourist knows. But Selborne, nestling beneath its hills, its thatched cottages and weather-worn buildings stretching along a wide grass-grown street, has no hint of the resort town. There are other villages in the Hampshire and Surrey hills that may match it, but none of them had a Gilbert White to give it immortality.

The street was quite deserted on the drowsy summer afternoon when we checked our car under the great tree beneath which the village worthys congregate in Selborne. A shopkeeper pointed out the Wakes, once White’s vicarage, which a modern owner has extended into a large rambling house, probably bearing little resemblance to the modest home of the curate of Selborne. Still, it incorporates his cottage, though red brick and tile have displaced the half-timber gables and thatched roof. But his church is not much altered and the giant yew, the largest we saw in England, is still standing, hale and green. Its circumference measured twenty-three feet in White’s time, and he declared that its years must be at least coeval with Christianity. Its girth at present exceeds twenty-five feet. One cannot stand beneath it without being impressed with its hoary antiquity, and the great events that crowd the procession of years which have passed over the old tree quite overwhelm one.

Indeed, it must have stood here when the Romans ruled in Britain; it was sturdy and green when the Conqueror came a thousand summers past, and it looks today as if it well might weather the storms of a third millennium. Such historic trees have almost a human personality; and, fortunately, they are carefully guarded by an enlightened public sentiment in England.

The day is a quiet one in Selborne; we have the yew tree and church all to ourselves. We wander about the churchyard and with difficulty locate the unpretentious headstone with the almost illegible initials, “G. W.”—a simple memorial, indeed—though inside the church there is an appropriate tablet to the memory of the well beloved naturalist. One can easily see how he could lead in Selborne the simple studious life reflected in his works. Verily, we need a revival of his plain common sense today when the fiction of the nature-faker bids fair to supersede the facts of natural history.

From Selborne it is but a step across the border into the downs of Sussex—“Green Sussex, fading into blue,” as the poet so aptly puts it. The low sun strikes along the rough hills as we enter Midhurst, nestling in a nook in the downs and reached by rather difficult roads. It is a quiet town with an air of thorough self-contentment; a town of weather-beaten houses with over-hanging timbered gables, sagging tile roofs and diamond-paned casements; one long wide street sweeps through it with narrow crooked lanes branching to either side—an unspoiled old-country town, as yet quite undiscovered by the globe-trotters.

And yet Midhurst is not without historic importance, having been a place of considerable size at the time of the Conquest. The site of its strong castle which once stood on the banks of the pretty little river, Rother, is now marked only by a grass-covered mound; but it was once the home of a powerful Norman family, the Bohuns, who in 1547 entertained King Edward VI. in great splendor. Nor is Midhurst wanting in associations with famous men, for Sir Charles Lyell, the great geologist, and Richard Cobden, the “Father of English Free Trade,” received their early education in the ancient grammar school which may yet be seen.

But the romance of Midhurst is in Cowdray Park, the estate which adjoins the town. What a pity it is that the mansion and the story did not seize the fancy of Walter Scott—who alone could have done it justice. We entered the park and drove through an avenue of giant chestnuts directly to the shattered palace. And what a glorious ruin it is, with its immense stone-mullioned windows, its great grouped chimneys, and sculptured mantels and bosses that cling to the wall here and there. Though roofless, the walls are almost entire, and over them the ivy flings its dark mantle and falls in heavy masses from the broken battlements. One does not care to analyze the ruin into its component parts—what did we care for hall and chapel and chamber? It is the impression that came to us as we wandered through it in the fading light that lingers with us now. What a memory it is of darkened halls, of great empty windows, through which the light falls mellow and ghostly, and of weird traditions which the old crone who keeps the key constantly droned in our ears.

When the last monkish habitant departed from the lands of Cowdray, he left his curse upon them: that the line of the Montagues should perish by fire and water. It was long in being fulfilled, but in 1793 the palace was destroyed by fire and the last Montague was drowned in a foolhardy attempt to swim across the Rhine above the Falls of Schoffhausen. He must have perished without knowing the fate of his ancestral home. With the palace were burned many works of art and antiquities of inestimable value, among the latter the roll of Battle Abbey and the coronation robes and sword of William the Conqueror. The estate descended to the sister of Lord Montague, who, dreading the curse, is said to have guarded her two sons with the greatest care, even filling the fish ponds near her home and keeping the youths jealously away from sea and river. Yet one day they escaped from the care of their attendants and were both drowned in the sea at Bognor. The broken-hearted mother sold Cowdray to the Earl of Egremont, who had no issue to inherit it. But the curse seems to cling to it still—after our visit a wealthy London contractor purchased the estate and began a thorough repair of the modern house (not the ruined palace), but while the work was in progress the mansion caught fire and was burned to the ground.

Darkness overtakes us as we sweep along the hills toward Worthing, where we arrive by lamplight. Morning reveals a quiet and somewhat secluded watering-town, patronized by people who seek to get away from the ceremony and expense of such places as Brighton and Bournemouth. Its hotels are unpretentious, comfortable and accommodating—qualities not so common to resort inns as to go without notice. But Worthing is modern; there is little to detain one on such a pilgrimage as our own. We follow the broad white road which climbs steadily northward from the sea to the distant hills and winds among them to the dreary hamlet of Washington. The name, so familiar to us, bears no reference to the distinguished family. It is of old Saxon derivation—Wasa-inga-tun (town of the sons of Wasa).

The simple old caretaker lives in a modern addition to the chapel and tills the plot of ground in connection with it. The chapel is a low brick-and-timber building whose interior is the plainest imaginable; a half dozen high-backed benches, a platform pulpit without a stand, and a few books made up its furnishings. As at Jordans, the women sat during worship in a gallery which could be cut off by a sliding partition in case of interruption by persecutors. The old law forbade the assembling of women in the Quaker meetings, but from the gallery they could participate in the services, yet could instantly be shut out of the room if the king’s officers should arrive. Outside, the chapel is surrounded by greensward and tall trees, and the old man was mowing the grass in the tiny burying-ground. Services are still held at intervals, as they have been for the past two centuries or more. Probably the spot was chosen on account of its very retirement, since when the chapel was built it was a criminal offense for the Quakers to assemble in any place of worship. The chapel is unaltered and seems quite as remote and lonely as it must have been in Penn’s time; and the spirit of that old day comes very near as one stands in the tiny room where the founder of the great American Commonwealth was wont to worship according to his conscience, coming hither from Warminghurst in his heavy ox-wagon.

We now begin an uninterrupted run to the east through Mid-Sussex over an unsurpassed road to Cuckfield, Hayward’s Heath, and Uckfield. We continue on the London and Eastbourne road to Hailsham, from whence a digression of three or four miles brings us to the ruins of Herstmonceux Castle. Though styled a castle, it was really a great castellated country mansion, never intended as a defensive fortress. It reminds one in a certain way of Cowdray, though it lacks much of the beauty and grace of the Midhurst palace, and its conversion by its owner into a picnic ground also does much to detract.

The story of its destruction is peculiar. It was deliberately dismantled and partially torn down in 1777 by its owner, who used the materials in erecting a smaller house, now called Herstmonceux Place, which would be less expensive to maintain. It is interesting to know that Wyatt, the architect who dealt so barbarously with Salisbury and Hereford Cathedrals, was the advisor of this wanton destruction. The last descendant of the original owner died in 1662, and since then the estate has changed hands many times. It is now one of the most popular tripper resorts in Sussex and during the summer months the daily visitors number hundreds.

It is not our wont to trouble ourselves much with the sober history of such places, but there is one melancholy incident of the early days of the palace which has weird interest for the wanderer who stands amidst the shattered grandeur, and which we may best relate in the words of an English historian:

“Lord Dacre, of Herstmonceux, a young nobleman of high spirit and promise, not more than twenty-four years old, was tempted by his own folly, or that of his friends, to join a party to kill deer in the park of an unpopular neighbor. The excitement of lawless adventure was probably the chief or only inducement for the expedition; but the party were seen by the foresters; a fray ensued, in which one of the latter was mortally wounded and died two days after.

“Had Lord Dacre been an ordinary offender he would have been disposed of summarily. Both he and his friends happened to be general favorites. The Privy Council hesitated long before they resolved on a prosecution and at last it is likely they were assisted by a resolution from the King.

“‘I found all the Lords at the Star Chamber,’ Sir William Paget wrote to Wriothesley, ‘assembled for a conference touching Lord Dacre’s case. They had with them present the Chief Justice with others of the King’s learned council, and albeit I was excluded, yet they spoke so loud, some of them, that I might hear them notwithstanding two doors shut between us. Among the rest that could not agree to wilful murder, the Lord Cobham, as I took him by his voice, was very vehement and stiff.’ They adjourned at last to the King’s Bench. The Lord Chancellor was appointed High Steward and the prisoner was brought up to the bar. He pleaded ‘not guilty,’ he said that he intended no harm, he was very sorry for the death of the forester, but it had been caused in an accidental struggle; and ‘surely,’ said Paget, who was president, ‘it was a pitiful sight to see a young man brought by his own folly into so miserable a state.’ The lords, therefore, as it seems they had determined among themselves, persuaded him to withdraw his plea and submit to the King’s clemency. He consented; and they repaired immediately to the Court to intercede for his pardon. Eight persons in all were implicated—Lord Dacre and seven companions. The young nobleman was the chief object of commiseration; but the King remained true to his principles of equal justice; the frequency of crimes of violence had required extraordinary measures of repression; and if a poor man was to be sent to the gallows for an act into which he might be tempted by poverty, thoughtlessness could not be admitted as an adequate excuse because the offender was a peer. Four out of the eight were pardoned. For Lord Dacre there was to the last an uncertainty. He was brought to the scaffold, when an order arrived to stay the execution, probably to give time for a last appeal to Henry. But if it was so the King was inexorable. Five hours later the sheriff was again directed to do his duty; and the full penalty was paid.”

Leaving the ruined mansion we drop down to the seashore, passing Bexhill on the way to Hastings, which is now a modern city of sixty-five thousand people, its red-brick, tile-roofed houses rising in terraces overlooking the sea. Once it was an important seaport, but here the sea has advanced and wiped out the harbor, and it is now chiefly known as a watering-place. A few miles from the town was fought the Battle of Hastings, which stamped the name so deeply on English history and marked the overthrow of the Saxon dynasty. On a precipitous hill looking far over town and sea stands the scanty ruin of its castle, whose story is much clouded, though legend declares it was built by the Conqueror.

Far greater is the attraction of the unspoiled old towns of Winchelsea and Rye, a few miles farther on the coast road. A former visit gives them a familiar look, but we stop an hour in Rye. The receding sea robbed these towns of their importance hundreds of years ago, and their daily life is now quite undisturbed by modern progress. Each occupies a commanding hill separated by a few miles of low-lying land. A local writer makes the truest appeal for Rye when he declares that it gives us today a presentment of a town of centuries earlier. “Rye,” he says, “is southern and opulent in coloring. There is here mellowness, a gracious beauty; one has the feeling that every house and garden is the pride and love of its owner, and indeed this impression is a true one, for it is the characteristic of Rye to inspire the loving admiration of its inhabitants, whether native-born or drawn thither in later life.”

Rye has a magnificent church, the largest in Sussex, which overshadows the town from the very crest of the hill. A very unusual church it is, with a low cone-pointed tower and triple roofs lying alongside each other. At the end of the nave are three immense stone-mullioned windows, very effective and imposing, though the glass is modern. Queen Elizabeth presented to the church the remarkable old tower clock which has marked time steadily for more than three hundred years. The pendulum swings low inside, describing a wide arc only a little above the preacher’s head.

Rye itself is quite as interesting as its church, a place of crooked lanes and odd buildings, among which the hospital pictured in such a realistic manner by our artist is one of the most notable. It is a splendid combination of stucco and timber, with red tiled gables and diamond-paned lattice windows. Much else there is in Rye to tempt one to linger, but the sun is setting and we are off on the fine level road to Folkestone. For the latter half of the distance we run along the very edge of the ocean—as we saw it, fifteen miles of shimmering twilight water. Those who are attracted by the gruesome will pause at the old church in Hythe to see the strange collection of human remains, thousands of skulls and bones, that are ranged on shelves or piled in heaps on the floor in the crypt. Whence these ghastly relics came, antiquarians dispute; but local tradition has it that a great battle was fought near Hythe, between the Britons and Danes, and these bones are the remains of the slain. Be that as it may, one does not care to linger—a mere glance at such a charnel house is quite sufficient.

Folkestone may well contest with Brighton, Bournemouth and Portsmouth for first honors among English watering-places. We have seen nearly all of them and we should be inclined, in some particulars, to give the honors to Folkestone; but let those who enjoy such places be the judges. Anyway, there are few statelier hotels in England than those on the east cliff and few that occupy a more magnificent site. At the Grand they are more willing to permit you to take ease than at most English hotels of its class. You are not required under penalty to be on hand for dinner at a certain hour, announced usually by a strident gong, and to make the pretense of swallowing an almost uneatable table d’hote concoction pushed along by a vigilant waiter bent on making all possible speed. This hotel and many others stand on the east cliff several hundred feet above the sea, but one may reach the shore by a lift, or if inclined to exercise, by a steep winding pathway. On moderately clear days, the white line of the French coast may be seen from the hotel.

Very like to Folkstone is Dover, but seven miles farther up the coast, and thither we proceed over a steep road closely following the sea. Dover was chief of the cinque ports of olden days and its small bay still affords shelter for shipping, including ocean-going steamers. But the first thing that catches the pilgrim’s eye when he comes into Dover is the splendidly preserved, or rather restored, castle, which stands in sullen inaccessibility on the clifflike hill overlooking the city. We make the stiff climb up to the castle gateway, only to be halted by the guard with the information that we are an hour early. We have had such experiences before and we suggest that no possible harm can be done by admitting us at once.

“I really cawn’t do it, sir,” said the guard. “Some of the guards got careless in letting people in before hours and the Colonel says he will court-martial the next one who does it.”

Of course this silences our importunity and we engage our soldier friend in conversation. Why did he enter the army?—Because a common man has no chance in England; he was going to the dogs and the army seemed the best opportunity open to him. He had enlisted three years ago and it had made a man of him, to use his own words. He rather looked it, too—a husky young fellow with a fairly good face.

The castle is strongly fortified and garrisoned by a regiment of soldiers. The interior of the court is largely occupied by barrack buildings, and of the ancient castle the keep is the most important portion left. It was built to withstand the ages, for its walls are twenty-three feet in thickness and it rises to a height of nearly one hundred feet. Within it is a well three hundred feet deep, supposed to have been sunk by the Saxon king, Harold. The primitive chapel dates from Norman times. There are also remains of the foundation of the lighthouse that occupied the commanding height, long

Dover has other antiquities, among them a church so old that its origin has been quite forgotten. Roman brick was used in its construction, probably by Saxon builders. Over against the town gleams the white chalk of Shakespeare’s Cliff, so called because of the reference in King Lear. Queen Elizabeth visited Dover and vented her wit for rhyming on its mayor, who, standing on a stool, began,

only to get for his pains,

The eastern Kentish coast, lying nearest to the continent, once had many towns of importance that have since dwindled and decayed. Among these is Sandwich, once second of the cinque ports; but the coast line receded until it is now two miles away. The town contains some of the richest bits of medieval architecture in England. The wall which once surrounded it may still be traced and one of the original gateways is intact. We drove through the narrow crooked lanes that serve as streets in Sandwich, and could scarce believe the population no more than three thousand. The low lichen-covered buildings, with leaning walls and sagging, dull-red tiles, straggle over enough space for a city of three or four times the size. There is no touch of newness anywhere; no note of inharmonious color jars with the silver grays, grayish greens and brownish reds that prevail on every hand; no black and white paint destroys the beauty of the brick and timber fronts and gables. Most of the houses have but one story and the streets run with delightful disregard of straight lines and bid defiance to points of the compass. The two churches with splendid open-beamed oak roofs are well in keeping with the spirit of the surrounding twelfth and thirteenth century structures. They stand a mute evidence of the one-time greatness and prosperity of Sandwich. One of the old houses is pointed out as the stopping-place of Queen Elizabeth when she was touring the Kentish coast.

From Sandwich we skim along smooth, level roads to Ramsgate, Broadstairs and Margate, the last of the long chain of resort towns of the southeastern coast stretching from Land’s End to the Thames River. What an array of them there is: Penzance, Torquay, Portsmouth, Bournemouth, Brighton, Eastbourne, Bexhill, Hastings, Folkestone, Dover, Ramsgate, Broadstairs, Margate, and a host of lesser lights. We have seen them nearly all and many more such places on the northern and western coasts, as well as a number of inland resorts. It is therefore a phase of England with which we have become fairly familiar, and the old towns and isolated ruins seem only the more charming and time-mellowed by contrast with the crowded and sometimes gaudy modern resorts. Margate, situated just at the mouth of the Thames on low-lying grounds, is one of the most pretentious of all.

A few miles out of Margate we turn from the main Canterbury road into a byway from which we enter the lanes through the fields and farmyards. The country is level and intersected everywhere by sluggish drains; but the wheatfields, nearly ready for the harvest, are as fine as we have seen in England. From afar we catch sight of the twin towers of the ruined church at Reculver, the object of our meanderings in the fen-land lanes. We halt in the tiny hamlet beneath the shadow of the grim sentinels on the sea-washed headland. The old caretaker hastens to meet us and is eager to relate the story of the ruin. Aside from the towers there is nothing but fragments of the walls; he points out clearly where portions of a Roman temple were incorporated into the Saxon church, and also the Saxon work that the Normans used. One hundred years ago, this remarkable church was nearly intact; but the rapid encroachment of the sea upon the brittle rock on which the structure stands convinced a short-sighted vicar that it would soon be undermined by the waves. It was therefore torn down, with the exception of the towers, and the stone used for a small church farther inland. The sea is now held in check by stone and timber riprap and though it gnaws at the very foot of the ruin, there seems little chance that it will farther advance. Besides the church there are the remains of a great Roman castrum, or fort, at Reculver: a strong wall, several feet high in places, once enclosed a space of considerable extent, though a large part has been inundated by the sea.

One will never weary of Canterbury; come as often as he may he will always feel a thrill of pleasure as the great cathedral towers break on his vision. And indeed there is nothing of the kind in all Britain finer than these same towers. We reach the town later than we planned and hasten to the cathedral, but the guide, wearied with troops of holiday visitors during the day, tells us we are too late. We find means, however, to extend our time and to enlist his willing services; and thus we come to see every detail of the magnificent church as we could hardly have done earlier in the day. It has no place in this chronicle, this

about which volumes have been written and with whose history and traditions the guide-books fairly teem. We have visited it before during a Sunday-morning service, but its vast dim aisles, its great crypts, its storied shrines and tombs, and the ivy-clad ruin of its old monastery, all make a strangely different impression when viewed in the deepening shadows of the departing day.

After sunset we wander about the old streets, where even the more modern buildings conform to the all-pervading air of antiquity. It is the close of the Saturday holiday and the main street is packed with a cheerful crowd of people of all degrees. Shop-keepers improve the opportunity to sell their wares and a lively trade is carried on at the open booths along the walks. One butcher is especially active in booming business, having a fellow in front of his place, a “barker,” we would style him in the States, who bellows in a voice like a foghorn, “Lovely meat! the same that the king and nobility heats—lovely meat.” Surely a recommendation that would shake the resolution of a confirmed vegetarian.

But we soon weary of the glare and noise of the crowded street. We wander into the crooked lanes that lead to the nooks and corners about the cathedral. We catch the towers from different viewpoints; as they stand, boldly outlined against an opalescent sky flecked with red-toned clouds, they form a fit study for the artist—and one of which the artist has often availed himself. The college court is full of shadows; how easy it would be to imagine a cowled figure stealing along in the dusk and passing from sight in the Norman entrance yonder—than which there is no choicer bit of medieval architecture in the Kingdom.

We have the whole of the following day to reach London; and what a superb day it is, the very essence of the beauty of English midsummer! We have been over the Rochester and Maidstone road before, so we take the narrow and hilly but marvelously picturesque highway that drops some fourteen miles straight southward. The country through which it passes is distinctly rural, with here and there a grove or a farmhouse. A little to one side is Petham, a quiet hamlet under gigantic trees, with a half-timbered inn seemingly out of all proportion to the possible needs of the place. The main road running from Hythe, near the coast, through Ashford to Tunbridge Wells, a distance of about fifty miles, is one of the finest in the Kingdom. It runs in broad, sweeping curves through a gently undulating country, and the grades are seldom enough to check the motor’s flight. It had lately been re-surfaced and much of the way oiled or asphalted, quite eliminating dust. We pass much charming country, wooded hills, stretches of meadowland, fields of yellowing grains, and many sleepy villages, all shimmering in the lucent air of a perfect summer day. The sky is as blue as one ever sees it in England, and a few silvery-white clouds drift lazily across it. It is what the natives call a very warm day, but it seems only balmy to us.

Bethesden, Biddenden and Lamberhurst all attract our attention. The second has a very quaint old inn on the market square, with a queer little ivy-covered tower; but Lamberhurst hardly merits the extravagant praise given it by William Cobbett in his “Rural Rides”—“one of the most beautiful villages that man ever set eyes upon.” Still, it may have altered somewhat since his time; there are few red-brick villas among the older cottages. It is, none the less, a pleasant place, rich with verdure and bright with flowers, and picturesquely situated on a gently rising hill. Coming on this road, one gets the best conception of the really magnificent situation of Tunbridge Wells, and cannot wonder that it has gained such popularity. The main part of the town lies in a depression in the undulating downs, its villas, houses and streets all set down on a liberal scale with plenty of room for trees, in whose luxuriant foliage the place is half hidden. All around stretches the wavelike succession of the hills, diversified with forest and bright with heather and gorse. Thackeray was very fond of Tunbridge Wells and his enthusiastic words in “Round About Papers” breathe much of the spirit of the place:

“I stroll over the common and survey the beautiful purple hills around, twinkling with a thousand bright villas which have sprung up over this charming ground since first I saw it. What an admirable scene of peace and plenty! What a delicious air breathes over the heath, blows the cloud-shadows across it, and murmurs through the full-clad trees! Can the world show a land fairer, richer, more cheerful?”

We pause at the excellent though rather unpretentious Grand Hotel for our late luncheon; and as a final adieu to the pleasant town, drive through its commons with their strange wind-worn stones, before setting out Londonward. We pass on into Sussex as far as Grinstead and there strike the direct London road through Epsom, where we have a glimpse of the famous racing downs. The quiet, staid-looking old town gives no hint of the furor that possesses it on Derby days. A few miles farther we enter the outskirts of London.

XVIII
FROM DUBLIN TO CORK

We are off for the Emerald Isle. There was much of interest in the three days between London and Dublin, but I will not follow our journey here; in a later chapter I will endeavor to gather some of the scattered threads. We reach Ludlow the first night, one hundred and forty-eight miles in six hours—very speedy going for us—but a day from Ludlow to Barmouth and another to Holyhead is more in keeping with our usual leisurely progress.

One can never truly feel the plaintive sweetness of Lady Dufferin’s song until with his own eyes he beholds the melancholy beauty of the “Sweet Bay of Dublin.” We enter its gates in the opalescent light of a perfect morning. The purple mists hanging over the headlands are glowing with the first rays of the sun and the pale emerald waters flash into burnished gold as the low beams strike along their surface.

The voyage has been an easy one; our tickets were purchased, our cabin reserved, and provision made for the transport of the motor, all in a few minutes at the office of the Royal Automobile Club in London, and the genial touring-secretary, Mr. Maroney, has supplied us with necessary maps and information. We have not long to wait at the pier; a swinging crane picks up the car from the boat and carefully deposits it on the pavement. A railway employee is at hand with a supply of petrol and we are soon ready for the road. The night voyage has been a comfortable one; we were able to go aboard at nine o’clock and take possession of our cabin, quite as large and well-appointed as those of the best ocean-going steamers, and breakfast was served on the ship. Altogether, nothing is easier than a trip to Ireland with a motor car if one only goes about it rightly.

An unknown land lies before us. Much has been written of Ireland—books of travel, history, and fiction—and poets have sung her beauties and sorrows; we have read much of the Island, but nothing that has given us more than a hint of what we are about to see. To know Ireland, one must take a pilgrim’s staff, as it were; he must study her ruins and ancient monuments, see her cities and her towns, her half-deserted villages, her wretched hovels and her lonely places, and above all, must meet and know her people; then, after all, he can only say to others, “If you wish to know the reality, go and do likewise.”

Dublin is a handsomely built modern city of three hundred thousand inhabitants and has an air of general prosperity. It has much of interest, but it does not rightly belong in this chronicle. The low hum of our motor calls us to the open road, the green fields, and the unfrequented villages. We are soon away on the Carlow road with Cork as our objective.

The road out of Dublin is distressingly rough as compared with English highways, though it improves before we reach Naas. Our first impressions are distinctly melancholy; a “deserted village”—a row of stone cottages, roofless, windowless, and with crumbling or fallen walls—speaks of Ireland’s sorrows more plainly than any words. And such sad reminders are not uncommon; wholly or partly ruined villages greet us every little while on the way.

Naas, the first town of any size, is dirty and unattractive, but its historic importance ill accords with its present meanness. Its traditions are not antedated by any town in the Island; it was once the capital of the Leinster kings—half-clad savages, no doubt, but kings none the less. Cromwell thought it important enough to visit, and incidentally wiped its strong castle out of existence. Rory O’More a century later burned it to the ground, destroying some eight hundred houses—it has not so many now. Adjoining the town is the ruin of Jigginstown House, an unfinished palace begun on a vast scale by the Earl of Strafford, who expected to entertain Charles I. here; but Charles failed to arrive and the Earl had other matters—among them the loss of his head—to engage his attention.

The road to the south of Naas lies in broad, straight stretches and the surface is better, but we found it almost deserted. This impressed us not a little. We ran many miles, meeting no one; there were few houses—only wide reaches of meadowland with but few trees—and altogether the country seemed quite uninhabited.

Carlow, scarce thirty miles from Naas, is rather above the average, though it has the bare appearance characteristic of the Irish town. We had been rather dreading the country-town hotels and here we had our first experience. The Club House—why so called we did not learn—is a building not unsightly inside, but on entering it is with difficulty we could find anyone to minister to our wants. Finally an untidy old man with bushy whiskers appeared and officiated as porter, chambermaid, and waiter. He was slow in performing his duties, but the luncheon was better than we had hoped for. He took our money when we left, but whether he was boots or proprietor, we never learned.

Cromwell and Rory O’More paid their compliments to Carlow in the same emphatic manner as at Naas. There remains but little of the castle excepting the huge round towers that flanked the entrance. Just out of the town is the largest of Ireland’s cromlechs, a mighty rock weighing one hundred tons, supported on massive upright granite blocks.

Kilkenny is twenty miles farther south. Its castle, the home of the Duke of Ormonde, is perhaps the most notable private residence in Ireland. It is of ancient origin, but its present state is due to modern restoration; no longer is it a fortress, but a castellated mansion of great extent. It is situated on rising ground lying directly on the river. The front facade, flanked by two great circular towers, heavily mantled with ivy, presents a highly-imposing appearance. The most notable feature of the interior is the art gallery, which is declared to be one of the most important in the Kingdom.

Clonmel, however, easily ranked first in neatness and general up-to-date appearance among the towns we passed on our run to Cork. Here we came late in the evening, for we had missed our road and gone some miles out of the way. After leaving the vicinity of Dublin, signboards were not to be seen and it was easy to go astray. Houses were not frequent and often the natives could hardly give directions to the nearest town. Before we knew it we were entering Carrick-on-Suir, which we took for Clonmel. Something aroused our suspicions and we hailed a red-faced priest driving in a cart. The good father was much befuddled and his honest efforts afforded us little enlightenment, but we finally learned to our chagrin that Clonmel was about twenty miles to the west.

Night was falling rapidly and the car leaped onward over a narrow, grass-grown byroad, passing here and there a farm cottage from which the inmates rushed in open-mouthed surprise. We soon came into the main road and reached the town just at dark. The hotel proved quite comfortable, though distinctly Irish in many particulars; but perhaps our judgment as to what constitutes comfort in an inn was somewhat modified by the day’s experiences; we were hardly so critical as we should have been across the channel.

We had come to Clonmel solely to pass the night, since it was the only place where we might count on fair accommodations. We had gone somewhat out of our way, for we must turn northward for Cashel, whose cathedral is perhaps the most remarkable ruin in the Kingdom. It is nearly twenty miles from Clonmel, and the road is surprisingly good.

We soon came in sight of the mighty rock which legend—ever busy in Ireland—declares was torn from the distant hills by the enraged devil and flung far out into the plain of Tipperary. When the fiend performed this wonderful feat, it perhaps did not occur to him that he was supplying a site for a church; but had he exercised moderate foresight he would have known that no such opportunity would be neglected by the cathedral builders. And so it chanced that more than a thousand years ago the fortified church that rears its vast granite bulk upon the rock was begun. It grew by various accretions until it stood complete in the twelfth century. It has passed through fire and siege, but the massy walls are still as solid as the granite on which they stand. The roadway winds up the side of the rock and we are able to drive to the very entrance. A group of youngsters is awaiting us, and one unspeakably dirty and ragged little fellow volunteers to “watch the car.”

The custodian greets us at the gate, a keen old fellow, well posted in the history and tradition of his native land and speaking with little trace of brogue. He learns that we are from America; his brother is over there and doing well, as he reckons it, in that Eldorado of every Irishman forced to remain at home.

“O, yes! it is a great country, and how closely the old sod is bound to it; there is no house that you will pass in all your journeys that has not someone there. It has been the one hope of my life to go to America, but it has slipped away from me. I am too old now and must die and be buried in Cashel.”

He said this with a look of sadness, which suddenly forsook his face as he noted our interest in the ruin. It was the joy of his life to tell the story of its every nook and corner.

We found a strange mixture of art and crudity; the square, unadorned lines of the walls and towers would not lead one to expect the exquisite artistic touches that are seen here and there. The great structure once served the purpose of a royal residence as well as a cathedral. The date of the stone-roofed chapel is placed at 1127; that of the perfect round tower is unknown, though doubtless much earlier. The active history of the cathedral-fortress closed with its surrender to the forces of Cromwell, which was followed by the massacre of the garrison and dismantling of the buildings.

Our guide urges us to ascend the tower—it is the day of all days to see the golden vale of Tipperary from such a viewpoint—and indeed the prospect proves an enchanting one. It is a perfect day and the emerald-green valley lies shimmering under the expanse of pale-blue sky. In the far distance on every hand are the purple outlines of the hills—they call them mountains in Ireland—and stretching away toward them the pleasant fields intersected by sinuous threads of country roads. The landscape is cut up into little patches by the stone fences and gleams with tiny whitewashed cottages. Flashing streams course through the valley and herds of cattle graze upon the luxuriant grasses. It is a scene of perfect peace, and though the lot of the people may be one of poverty, it is doubtless one of contentment. Right at the foot of the ruin-crowned rock lies the wretched little town, and on leaving the cathedral we stop in the market place. A busy scene greets our eyes; it is market day and the people of the surrounding country are thronging the streets. The market place is full of donkey carts and our car seems in strange company. Old crones with shawls thrown over their heads, barefooted and brown as Indians, are selling gooseberries and cabbages. There appears to be little else in the market and business is far from brisk. There are many husky farmers from the country and bright-looking young maidens that seem of a different race from the old market women. We see and hear much to interest us during our hour’s stop in Cashel.

To one other Tipperary shrine we must make a pilgrimage—Holy Cross Abbey, which is only a few miles away. We see its low square tower just above the trees as we approach the town which bears the same name as the abbey, and we find the caretaker living in wretchedly dirty quarters in a part of the ruin. A genuine surprise awaits the visitor to Holy Cross Abbey. Like Cashel, its outlines give no hint of the superb and even delicate touches of art one will find about the ruin. Nothing of the kind could be more perfect than the east window, in which the stone tracery and slender mullions are quite intact, and there are other windows, doors and arches of artistic design and execution. The abbey stands on the banks of the Suir, and it is just across the shallow river that one gets the finest viewpoint. It took its name from the tradition that it once possessed a portion of the true cross which had been given it by Queen Eleanor of England, one of whose six sons was buried here. And thus it chances that a brother of Richard the Lion-Hearted sleeps amid the mouldering fragments of Holy Cross. The footprints of history cross and recross one another in these ancient shrines, and how often they bring remote sections of the Kingdom to common ground!