THE PAST ETERNITY.

He stood upon a craggy shore,
Not of the earthly deep,
Where waves in elemental roar
Know not the rest of sleep;
He stood beside a wider wave
Than ever was the seaman's grave,
The motionless and leaden sea
Of the long past eternity.

He saw no vessel moving there,
No bark upon the tide,
That heavy lay in thick black air,
Hiding its bound'ry wide,
And dark'ning from the silent shore
The dead, dead waters evermore-
He saw but one sad object there,
The grave of hope as of despair.

No wreck lay on its silent strand,
It there no fragment threw ;
O'er all that perish'd from the land
Its sluggish wave it drew;
Whelm'd them unfathomably deep
Mid an illimitable sleep;

And nothing e'er emerged again,
Or left a ripple on that main.

He stood upon the shuddering shore,
Void, calm, dim, desolate,

Till deeper shades the wave came o'er,
And shadows small and great,
Like the Morgana oft times cast-
Formless and few in gloom they past,—
Upward reflected from below

In the sea's depth, they come and go.

They were but shapes of dimness, weak
As outline of a dream,

Yet were they all his eye could take
Unwhelm'd in that black stream,

of former worlds, and thoughts, and man,
That were and ne'er should be again-
The all of what full soon will be
Our semblance to posterity.

The gazer saw-his heart was sad ;
He view'd that ocean with despair;
He murmur'd not, but, mournful, clad
In resignation linger'd there
One little hour, until the tide
Rose o'er him, and he tranquil died,
And with the nameless in that sea,
Forgotten sank and pass'd away!

OLD DUBLIN.

BY LADY MORGAN.

Full of state and ancientry.-SHAKSPEARE.

THE ford of the hurdles! The town of the ford of the hurdles ! The brow of the hazel-wood!!! The place of the black channel! ! ! ! * It would be difficult to trace, in the barbarous simplicity of such descriptive epithets, any sketch or rudiment of the modern and beautiful capital "of the most unhappy country in the world." Such, however, were the primitive, and not unpoetical names of the Irish metropolis,names which go near to overturn "the golden palace of Tara," to level the marble wonders of Emania, and scarcely to leave a stick or stone together of that" superb edifice" Rath-Eochaiath—the royal seat of the supreme kings of Connaught. Annals and annalists have, however, asserted, (what in Ireland it is deemed anti-patriotism to doubt,) that the Milesians, immediately on their settling in the country, having cleared away the woods, and placed agriculture upon a footing to which the new light of modern times is but "a darkness visible," erected "sumptuous edifices ;" which is the less to be wondered at, when it is known that they had, en passant, built the city of Braganza, and studied the principles of architecture under the first pyramid builders or Wyatvilles of Egypt.

It is, however, on historic record, that Henry the Second (as a galanterie de sa part) erected a royal palace in Dublin, "with uncommon elegance, in the Irish fashion (ad modum patriæ illius), of smoothed wattles, in which, with the kings and princes of Ireland, he solemnized the festival of his first Christmas in Ireland." It is probable that wattle architecture was long the Irish Doric order, and that the heroes of the

* Drumchallcorl, Ath-Cliath, Ballyathcliath, and Dubh-lin, or Deblana. †The "Regia Sedes Ultimorum."-See O'Halloran.

"The palaces of our ancient kings were highly celebrated for their magnificence and the taste of their decorations."-O'Halloran's Antiquities of Ireland.

Mr. O'Halloran gives a list of the names of the state-apartments of the Irish royal palaces, which may stand a comparison with those of the Louvre or Versailles. "Besides the palace of Tara, of which the Moidcuarta was but a state form, there were others erected for the reception of the different provincial kings (Salle des Rois): Grianan-na-Ninghean was the palace where the provincial queens were entertained. Realla ne Thileadth was the place appointed for the judges, poets, antiquaries, and other literati, &c. &c. Caircer ne N Guiall was the state prison, where were lodged the hostages which the Emperor (O'Connor) took from such of the princes whose fidelity he doubted." This Carcere duro of the Irish Emperor smells a little of the regime of the Austrian Emperor; however, Mr. O'Halloran assures us, that many of the principal Irish Carbonari of those times claimed and obtained an old hereditary privilege, "Not to wear any kind of shakles but such as were of gold-hence Or-gi, or the Golden Hostage."—Antiquities of Ireland. Cambrensis, Chap.

Patrick Finglass Loquire, chief baron of the Irish Exchequer in the reign of Henry the Eighth, to show his loyalty, and to encourage the King to conquer Ireland all over again, (for it appears that the "Irish nacion," and particularly the "Irish lordes and gentilmen," were then so rebellious, that all the londe was of Irish sale") points out various facilities of doing so; and incidentally bears testimony to the low state of architecture in Ireland at the time of the English invasion. Englishmen have grete advantage to get this londe now, which they had not at the conquest; for at that tyme there was not in all Ireland, out of city's, five castles ne piles, and now there be five hundred castles or piles." These castles or piles were all "English built," and here mentioned as so many fortresses devoted to the great cause of Irish destruction.

Fionne Erin, the Ossians, the Fingals, and their successors, the O's and the Macs, occupied pretty much such dwellings as are inhabited by their genuine descendants, the Irish peasantry, of the present day. Be it, however, some solace to national vanity, to learn, that the rude small grey stone towers, of tenure and defence, raised by the English invaders, were scarcely a degree less barbarous than the fabrics of twigs and hurdles built by the invaded: and this too, when the Medici, the Strozzi, and Frangipani, the free and anti-feudal citizens of Italy, were erecting their marble and domestic palaces, which are, at this day, the admiration and the wonder of the enlightened world.

The town of the hurdles, on its Dubh-lin or black ford, with its huts of twigs, and humble and unaspiring architecture, attracted the special protection of Heaven, at a very early period of its existence; "for," says Father Jocelyn in his life of the patron and chief of all Irish saints, "St. Patrick, departing from the borders of Meath, and directing his steps towards Leinster, passing the river Finglass, came to a certain hill, almost a mile distance from Ath-cleath, the place of the ford,' now called Dublin, and casting his eyes about the place and the land circumjacent, he broke forth into this prophecy: This small village (Dublin) shall hereafter become an eminent city: it shall increase in riches, and in dignities, until at length it shall be lifted up into the throne of the kingdom."

It appears, therefore, that the present glory and splendour of Dublin is of divine origin, referable to none of the laws and circumstances which govern the ordinary progress of cities and societies, but in direct opposition to them all; and as it flourishes in its present beauty and extension, it is an effect without cause: a standing miracle!*

Increased in dignities! lifted up into the throne of the kingdom!

*On the taking of Dublin, however, by Earl Strongbow and his traitorous ally Dermod M'Murragh, king of Leinster, it is said by the curious historiographer t of the Irish King, "The soldiers got good spoile, for the citizens were rich." All these citizens were put to the sword by the advice of the king of Leinster, whose motive for undertaking the siege was the mortal hatred he bore them; "For his father being on a tyme at Dublin, and sitting at the door of an ancient man of the city (an humble and patriarchal position for a king) they (the citizens not only murthered him, but in contempt burried him with a dog.' It cannot too often be impressed upon the modern Irish, that the misfortunes of their ancestors were almost invariably the fault of their disunions; and that Ireland's worst foes, from the English conquest effected by one Irishman, to that, her second conquest-the Union-effected by another, have always been found among her own sons.

+" "Maurice Regan his History of the Invasion," was translated by a contemporary, "his famyliar acquaintance," into French metre. Of the French spoken at that time by the Fits-geralds, the De Montemoriscos, De Cogans, De Courceys, and De Laceys, the following program of O'Regan's history is a curious speci

men :

"Parsoen demande latinoner
L'moi couta de fin historie
Dunt far ici la memorie
Morice Regan'iret celui
Buche à buche parla alui

Mi cest gest endeta

L'estoria de lui me Mostra

Jeil Morice oret Latinner

Al Rei re murcheo

Sic cerrai del Bachuller, del Rei Dermodvous soit couten."

one part of the Saint's prophecy alone remains unfulfilled—“ increase, of riches!!"

But as Rome was not built in a day, neither was Dublin; and though in the tenth century it was pompously designated "the most noble city" by King Edgar, which, saith he, "with all the kingdoms, and the islands of the ocean, I have by the most propitious grace of God the thunderer, subdued under my power;" (for the kings of the tenth, like the kings of the nineteenth century, held "le même jargon par le même propos,") still this "most noble city" was deemed of so little consequence by the English invaders, that Henry the Second gave it to his good subjects of Bristol, as a sort of "Etrenne," or new year's gift.

The first symptom of the accomplishment of St. Patrick's prophecy exhibited itself in the erection, by the English government, of a strong fortress, called "the Castel of Dublin," erected, says the patent, "for the defence of the English entered in Ireland,”- -a purpose to which it has been most religiously applied ever since.

If the first lay building of lime and stone erected in Ireland obtained the name of the "wonderful castle," the admiration of the simple inhabitants of Dublin may be easily imagined, when, in the midst of their dens of wicker and hurdles, they beheld the gradual elevation of a castle "with stone walls, gate-towers, portcullis, and courtines, a donjon for a state prison, and a waste parcel of land lying round about it;" in a word, just such a quartier-general of despotism, just such a depôt of suspicious power, as may be seen, in the present day, in almost all the frontier towns of continental Europe, but more particularly in Austrian Italy, where the relics of feudality are carefully preserved, under the special care of the imperial "custode" of that "royal antiquarian society"-the Holy Alliance.

Still, however, with the exception of its fortress castle, and of its ecclesiastical edifices, which for the times were sumptuous and numerous, the Irish metropolis, down to the latter end of the sixteenth century, continued a city of mud and hurdles, unable to furnish forth a commodious or secure residence for the English chief governor, and other English officials, who with their suite of retainers, their guards and councils, were lodged and quartered in the stately halls of the abbeys and monasteries of the capital; which thus imaged the ancient power and wealth of the church of Ireland, as the huts of wicker and hovels of sedge figured the subjection and dependence of the people.

It was in oratories and refectories that the collective wisdom of the nation then assembled, that armed senators took their seats, in the face of cowled monks and hooded friars (of whom it was impossible to clear the gallery when abbots sat on the woolsack, and the crosier was the mace.) It was along "long sounding aisles and intermingled graves" that some made their speeches, and others made their souls; while the indissoluble union of church and state was typified by mitred peers pairing off with mailed commoners; and some patriot proser, a Geraldine or a De Courcey, got on his legs to tell them "right plainly and sharply of their unfitting demeaning," and threatened if they did not mend their manners "that they would become Irish every of them,”without the least regard to the house, or fear of being called to order.

*By Roderick O'Connor, 1161.

Churches and cloisters were then the scenes of all the ceremonies and pageantry, which in modern times are exhibited in palaces and courts.* It was in Christ Church that Lord Deputy Kildare did homage, and took the oath of office to Sir Richard Edgecumb,† the king's minister, and went in state from thence to St. Thomas's Abbey, (O'Neil carrying the sword before him) in which abbey he entertained the nobility and king's commission.

The state of the neighbourhood of the capital in the latter end of the 16th century, is curiously depicted by an item in the laws, viz. "That the Deputy be eight days in every summer cutting PASSES of the woods next adjoining the king's subgets, which shall be thought most needful." A "newe ditche" was then an improvement, which brought some MacAdam of the age emolument and promotion; and the boldly cut "passes" of Powerscourt, Strenanloragh, Branwallehangry, and others in the vicinage of the pale, were then deemed as important, and now sound as classical in the ears of the true Irish antiquary, as that of Thermopyla. "Och ye've sould the pass," is an ancient Irish figure of speech applied to some real or supposed traitor to "th' ould cause."

"The seyd Sir Richard landed at Malahide, and there a gentlewoman called Talbot, receaved hym, and made him right good cheer; and the same day at afternoon, the Bushopp of Meath, John Streete, and others, came to Malahide aforesaid, well accompanied, and fetched the seyd Sir Richard to Dublyn, and at his coming thither the mayor and substance of the citty receaved hym at the Black fryars gate, at which Black fryars the seyd Sir Richard was lodged.”—Sir Richard Edgecomb's voyage to Ireland, 1788. The Black fryars was a Dominican abbey, near the old bridge, where King's Inn, now stands.

"The seyd Sir Richard, at the desire of the seyd Erle, went to the monastery of St. Thomas the martyr, where the lords and councill were assembled, and ther in a great chambir, callid the King's chambir, the seyd Sir Richard took hommage, first of the seyd Erle, and after that of othir lordes, whose names be written herafter in the boke; and this done, the seyd Erle went into a chambir, wher the seyd Sir Richard's chaplain was at masse, and in the masse time, the seyd Erle was shriven and assoiled from the excommunication that he stood in by the virtue of the Pope's Bull, and befor the Agnus of the seyd masse, the host divided into thre partes, the priest turned him from the altai, holding the seyd thre partes of the host upon the pattege, and ther in the presense of many persons, the seyd Erle, holding his right hand over the holy host, made his holy oath of ligeance unto our soverain Lord Kyng Henry 7th in souch form as was afor devised; and in like wise the Bushopps and Lordes, as appeareth hereafter, made like oaths; and that done, and the masse endid, the seyd Erle, with the seyd Sir Richard, Bushopps and Lordes, went into the church of the seyd monastry, and in the choir thereof the Archbushop of Dublin began Te Deum, and the choir with the organs sung it up, solempnly, and that tyme all the bells in the church rang. This done the Erle and most part of the seyd lordes went with the seyd Sir Richard into his lodging and dined with hym, and had right good cheer; and the seyd Sir Richard at their making of the seyd Erle's homage put a collar of the King's livery about the seyd Erle's neck, whych he wore throughout the seyd citty of Dublyn, both outward and homeward."

It is worthy to observe, that the descendants of the gentlemen who had large estates in the county of Dublin at this period, and who came into Dublin to do homages to the "King's deputy" in the fifteenth century, are in the actual possession of those estates at the present day; for instance, "Item-Peter Talbot Knight, Lord of Malahide, at the monastery of our Lady St. Mary, Dévelin (Dublin), made both his hommage and fealty'

"The same day, William St. Lawrence of Houth, fecit fidelitatem: Item, Barnabas Barnwell."

"Item, Sir J. Plunket, Lord of Dunsany, and Christopher Bellew, of Bellewstown," &c. &c. &c.

The room where "Sir Richard" received his "good den" from the hospitable Lady of Malahide, stands at this day in high preservation. Its lofty and impregnable walls, its fine rafted roof of black Irish oak, still enshrine the same spirit of hospitality that distinguished their noble masters in the 14th century,