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Ebook has 89 lines and 18283 words, and 2 pages

Translator: Charles Fried. Neumann

Transcriber's note:

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Inline Sidenotes are placed as close as possible, and marked

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HISTORY OF THE PIRATES

WHO INFESTED THE CHINA SEA,

FROM 1807 TO 1810.

BY CHARLES FRIED. NEUMANN.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR THE ORIENTAL TRANSLATION FUND, And Sold by J. MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET; PARBURY, ALLEN, & CO., LEADENHALL STREET; THACKER & CO., CALCUTTA; TREUTTEL & W?RTZ, PARIS; AND E. FLEISCHER, LEIPSIG.

LONDON Printed by J. L. Cox, Great Queen Street, Lincoln's-Inn Fields

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

Robbers or pirates are usually ignorant of the principles concerning human society. They are not aware that power is derived from the people for the general advantage, and that when it is abused to a certain extent, all means of redress resorted to are legitimate. But they feel most violently the abuse of power. The fruit of labour is too often taken out of their hands, justice sold for money, and nothing is safe from their rapacious and luxurious masters. People arise to oppose, and act according to the philosophical principles of human society, without having any clear idea about them. Robbers and pirates are, in fact, the opposition party in the despotical empires of the East; and their history is far more interesting than that of the reigning despot. The sameness which is to be observed in the history of all Asiatic governments, presents a great difficulty to any historian who wishes to write a history of any nation in Asia for the general reader.

The merchants and adventurers who came to China "to make money" found both the government and people widely different from descriptions given by the Jesuits. They found that the Chinese officers of government, commonly called Mandarins, would think themselves defiled by the least intercourse with foreigners, particularly merchants; and that the laws are often interpreted quite differently before and after receiving bribes. The Europeans were proud of their civilization and cleverness in mercantile transactions, and considered the inhabitants of all the other parts of the world as barbarians; but they found, to their astonishment and disappointment, the Chinese still more proud and cunning. We may easily presume that these deluded merchants became very irritated, and in their anger they reported to their countrymen in Europe that the Chinese were the most treacherous and abandoned people in the world, that "they were only a peculiar race of savages," and required to be chastised in one way or another; which would certainly be very easy. Commodore Anson, with a single weather-beaten sixty-gun ship, in fact, set the whole power of the Chinese Government at defiance.

The Translator of the History of the Pirates ventures to affirm, that the Chinese system of government is by far the best that ever existed in Asia; not excepting any of the different monarchies founded by the followers of Alexander, the government of the Roman Praetors and of Byzantine Dukes, or that of Christian Kings and Barons who reigned in various parts of the East during the middle ages. The principles of Chinese government are those of virtue and justice; but they are greatly corrupted by the passions and vices of men. The greater part of their laws are good and just, though the practice is often bad; but unfortunately this is generally not known to the "Son of Heaven." It is the interest of the Emperor to deal out justice to the lowest of his subjects; but, supposing it were possible that one man could manage the government of such an immense empire, who either could or would dare to denounce every vicious or unjust act of the officers employed by government? The Chinese themselves are a clever shrewd sort of people; deceit and falsehood are, perhaps, more generally found in the "flowery empire" than any where else; but take them all in all, they rank high in the scale of nations, and the generality of the people seem to be quite satisfied with their government; they may wish for a change of masters, but certainly not for an entire change of the system of government.

Traces of its earlier history are found in the Castle, Norman built, but standing where the Danish founders of the city set their stronghold by the ford above the tideway; and in Christ Church, first founded by the Danes when in the eleventh century they came over to Christianity. Skilful restoration of the cathedral has disclosed much of the early fabric--Norman work on Danish foundations. And yet that ancient Danish stronghold interests me no more than Caesar's Londinium; nor does the medieval city hold any charm for my mind--lying as it did outside the real life of Ireland, merely a fortress of a foreign power. Strongbow's tomb is there to see in Christ Church, but to my thinking a far more significant monument is to be found in the other cathedral, St. Patrick's. Dublin as we know it, the capital and centre of an English-speaking Ireland, really dates from the eighteenth century; and its first outstanding and notable figure was Jonathan Swift, the immortal Dean. The Deanery, in which were spent the most remarkable years of his splendid and sinister existence, stands outside the main entrance; near that entrance, in the south aisle, surmounted by a small bust, is the marble slab which enshrines his famous epitaph. I translate it:--

"Jonathan Swift, for thirty years Dean of this Cathedral, lies here, where fierce indignation can no longer prey upon his heart. Go, traveller, and imitate, if you can, him who did a man's part as the strenuous upholder of liberty."

"Does not the corruption and folly of men in high places eat into your heart like a canker!"

The greatest perhaps of British humorists, he died mad and miserable; and died as he expected to die. His other monument is Swift's Hospital, built for a madhouse out of the money willed by him in a bequest, which his savage pen thus characterized:--

"He left the little wealth he had To build a house for fools and mad, And showed by one satiric touch No nation wanted it so much".

In the north transept an epitaph written by Swift marks the tomb of "Mrs. Hester Johnson, better known to the world by the name of 'Stella', under which she is celebrated in the writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift, Dean of this Cathedral". The world has always wanted to know, and never will know for certain, whether she ought to have borne the name of him who celebrated her. But his bones were laid by hers, and still lie there, under a column in the nave; though the indecency of antiquarians dragged out their skulls when the cathedral was under restoration, made a show of them at parties, and preserved a memorial of this outrage in plaster casts, now deposited in the robing-room.

You can see also, in the vestry, not a cast, but the authentic skull of William's General Schomberg, who fell in glory at the head of victorious troops crossing the Boyne. You can read also Swift's epitaph on the tomb which Schomberg's relatives and heirs declined to pay for, leaving the pious task to Swift and his chapter. The Latin sentence keeps the vibrant ring of Swift's indignation. If only his ghost could write the epitaph of those who ransacked tombs and groped among mouldering relics of the immortal and unforgotten dead, to find objects for a peepshow! Yet after all it is in keeping with the story. In the dark end of Swift's life, while he paced his guarded room between keepers, servants used to admit strangers for a fee, to see that white-haired body which had once housed so great and terrible a mind.

St. Patrick's Cathedral, which Swift made famous, dates, like Christ Church, from Norman builders; but it was renovated fifty years ago at the cost of Sir Benjamin Guinness, head of the famous brewery. Christ Church, on the other hand, was rebuilt out of whisky--the restorer was Mr. Henry Roe. Broadly speaking, the century which began with the legislative Union was marked in Dublin by the growth of distilling and brewing and the decay of all other industries. Guinness's is to-day one of the sights of the city, and admission by order, easily procurable, will take the visitor over the biggest thing of its kind anywhere to be seen--and, let it be said, one of the best managed. Nowhere are workmen better treated, and no rich manufacturers have made more public-spirited use of their wealth. Dublin owes to Lord Ardilaun not only the opening but the beautification of St. Stephen's Green, once an enclosure but now a very attractive public park in the middle of the city's finest square. We may well thank Providence for this one great industry--but of how many it has had to take the place!

Dublin in its metropolitan days was a true centre of craftsmanship and art. I have spoken of the architecture, which used so finely the dove-coloured limestone of Wicklow. Gandon, who designed both the Four Courts and the Custom House, was not Irish, but Ireland gave him his opportunity and in Dublin only can he be judged. No great painter adorned that period among us; but all the subsidiary arts flourished exceedingly. Horace Walpole used to send across his books to be bound; Sheraton, Chippendale's rival, was a Dublin artist-craftsman; glass-cutting, silversmiths' work, all these things furnished men with infinite skill of hand and grace of design. Within twenty years after the Union all these things had vanished like a dream.

Except Guinness's stout, the nineteenth century has little to show that is local and characteristic and excellent. It can best afford to be judged by Foley's admirable statues of our Irish worthies. Burke and Goldsmith stand outside Trinity College, to which they belonged--though poor Goldsmith had even less cause than Swift to love the stepmother of his studies. Doubtless Goldsmith was not easily distinguished from the ruck of troublesome undergraduates, and that dignity with which the sculptor has invested his odd and appealing ugliness was not evident except to the eye of genius. Grattan holds the centre of College Green, a dominating figure near those walls which he filled with stately eloquence. O'Connell, the great tribune of a later day, stands lifted on an elaborate monument in the street, and facing the bridge, which now bear his name--at the other end of that broad promenade and thoroughfare there will stand from 1911 onwards a newer memorial to a later leader--the monument which Augustus Saint Gaudens designed to commemorate Parnell. The famous American sculptor has set his bronze figure, of heroic size, on a low pedestal; but behind it rises an obelisk of brown Galway granite, inlaid with bronze and crowned with tripod and leaping flame. Thus Dublin possesses the only work by this artist which the United Kingdom can show, save for the small medallion of Stevenson in Edinburgh. In America, where he lived and worked, his fame is established by many examples.

The group of poets who succeeded Moore--writers of the Young Ireland Movement in 1848--find their commemoration in the bust of James Clarence Mangan, recently erected in Stephen's Green--almost as unobtrusive as was in life that strange and unhappy genius.

To-day, as the world knows, we have poets neither few nor unremarkable--Mr. Yeats chief among them; and one of the intellectual landmarks of Dublin is the Abbey Theatre, standing obscurely enough, but not obscure in the world. Here have been produced the poetical dramas of Mr. Yeats himself, the still more notable prose dramas of Mr. Synge, together with much work of Lady Gregory, William Boyle, Padraic Colum, and many lesser names; and they have been produced by a company of Irish actors--first formed by Mr. W. G. Fay--who have displayed an amazing range of talent. Any visitor to Dublin who cares for a beauty and an interest wholly unlike that of the usual machine-made play ought to try and see a performance at the Abbey.

For the artistic life of Ireland--past, present, and to come--Dublin is your only ground of study. Among the things which every lover of Ireland should have seen are two--the Book of Kells in the Trinity College Library, the Cross of Cong in the Kildare Street National Museum. The craftsmanship of art was never carried to a higher point than in the marvellous illumination of that manuscript, the equally marvellous inlaying of the famous reliquary. These are only the masterpieces, each in its own kind; they are the index of a civilization which existed before the Norman crossed to Wexford. How far back native Irish civilization stretches is matter for the archaeologists; but in Kildare Street is a wonderful collection of the ornaments, weapons, and utensils, from gold fibulae to flint arrowheads, which are the documents of that research.

And at the other end of the history, belonging rather to the twentieth century than the nineteenth, is the choicest collection of modern painting which these islands can show--the Municipal Gallery in Harcourt Street, gathered together by the enterprising genius of Sir Hugh Lane. The house itself is a monument of the eighteenth century: it belonged to Lord Clonmell, judge, placeman, and duellist; and it is a fine example of the Georgian domestic architecture. The gallery is rich in pictures of the Barbizon school, and with them can be seen the work of a living Irish landscape painter who worked in his youth along with that group. If Mr. Nathaniel Hone had chosen to exhibit outside of Dublin, his name would to-day be widely known, and there are pictures of his there--pictures of the low-lying Leinster coast by Malahide and Rush--well able to hold their own beside the famous Frenchmen's masterpieces. There also can be seen an interesting gallery of portraits by a painter, bred and trained in Dublin, who, although still young, is reckoned among the greater names of British art--Mr. William Orpen. The portraits are not all examples of his best work, but they are strongly characterized studies of contemporary men and women widely known in Ireland and outside Ireland. Another artist is represented there too, but not at his best: for an adequate example of the work of Walter Osborne, whose untimely death robbed Ireland of more than she could afford to lose, it is necessary to visit the National Gallery of Ireland--on all accounts, indeed, well worth visiting. But this one picture of a tree-bordered meadow, with cattle grazing quietly in the sun-dappled shade, and beyond it the whitewashed front and blue slate roof of a long shed, renders a subject so characteristic of Ireland, so characteristic above all of Leinster, in its exquisite colour, its sense of large air, its leisurely charm, that no one can look at it without there stealing into his heart that beauty of Ireland, which is not scenic, which has no striking features, and yet which is the most intimate, the homeliest, and perhaps the loveliest of all.

He was not the first rebel in the famous Geraldine family. Carton gates open from the little town of Maynooth, where, outside the famous ecclesiastical college, stands the ruin of that strong castle which was the seat of the Geraldine power when all Ireland could not rule the Earl of Kildare and therefore it was settled that the Earl of Kildare should rule all Ireland.

Out of forty prisoners taken, twenty-four were hanged. Paris received his stated price from Skeffington, but with the money in his hand was marched straight to the gallows, and from that day the "pardon of Maynooth" became a byword.

Silken Thomas surrendered in July, lay destitute in the Tower for sixteen months, and was then hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn with his five uncles, of whom two had always been strong supporters of the English power. One male scion of the Geraldines was left, Silken Thomas's half-brother Gerald, and the hunt was hot after him. His southern kinsmen, the Geraldines of Desmond, refused him shelter, but he got it from the O'Briens of Thomond, still independent rulers, and after long months escaped to Italy, where he lived till Edward VI restored him. And from that day to this, the line has lasted in Kildare, and the Duke of Leinster holds foremost place among Irish nobles. Yet Leinster House, the great building which the National Gallery adjoins, is now only the home of the Royal Dublin Society; and though the Geraldines still own Carton, they are landlords no longer, having sold all they owned, under the Act of 1903, passed by one himself in part a Geraldine--Mr. George Wyndham, son of Lord Edward's granddaughter.

Not far from Maynooth, in the wide grounds of Clongowes Wood College, you can see a section of the actual "pale"--a broad ditch and dyke which fenced in the region under English shire law. A few miles more would bring you to the famous Curragh of Kildare. But to visit these things one must lose sight of the sea, and that is a pity, for nowhere in Ireland does the sea come more beautifully into landscape than in Leinster, and especially about Dublin itself. North of the city are broad stretches of green fields, which lead the eye out to that still wider level of blue--colour laid cleanly in mass against colour. Sometimes between the pasture land and the ocean lies a stretch of sand links, beloved of golfers, who have classic ground at Dollymount on the North Bull; at Portmarnock, with the exquisite view of Howth and Ireland's Eye drawn by Mr. Williams; and, most interesting of all, in the island links at Malahide. This strange jumble of sandhills by the mouth of the pleasant little estuary has a special interest as a bird sanctuary; the terns breed there in hundreds during June and July.

Often on a clear day of sun and driving cloud I have been tempted to prefer the northward view, from the haven or above it; for even from the sea's level you can see far away past all that long, plain and low coast to the Carlingford Hills, purple and solid in their serrated ridge; and beyond, higher, fainter, and more delicate, Slieve Donard, and all the goodly company of Mourne Mountains show themselves against the sky. Nor is the foreground less lovely: the quaint old port, and, opposite it, the purple and brown ruggedness of Ireland's Eye, which is divided by another narrow stretch of blue water from the long smooth whiteness of what we call at Portmarnock the Velvet Strand. Surely earth has not many things to show more fair. Yet when you climb the hill and first see eastward over the wide blue, then, gradually ascending, get sight of Dublin Bay's southern shore with the Wicklow Mountains behind it, and finally of Dublin itself, lying between beauty and beauty--beauty of sea, beauty of plain, beauty of mountain, beauty of azure, of purple, of green--then, I think, the southward view will seem to you richer in variety and incident. For the mountains make a great mass of round huddling shoulders, their lower slopes tree-clad; but nothing in the world is more dainty than the line of peaked summits which, stringing out from the main mass, carries the eye delighted with their chiselled shapes from peak to peak downward to the sea. And away west, past this mountain mass, Ireland stretches broad and fertile, well timbered, well watered, a country of park and champaign, fertile to luxuriance.

Beauty is all about you too; for the hill from midsummer on is purple with heath, and the purple is set off by gold of the autumn-flowering furze which grows in little round trim bushes. Lord Howth's demesne is one of the oldest and most charming places in Ireland, and it encloses within its precincts a cromlech under which, so they tell, lies Aideen, wife of Oscar, Ossian's son, chief hero of those legendary warriors, the Fianna.

A beauty of more modern date is to be seen by those wise and fortunate folk who visit Ireland in May or June: the rocky glen overgrown with choice rhododendrons and azaleas, which the Howth family have gathered and cherished. Imagine a steep cliff, a hundred feet almost sheer, but piled with tumbled boulders, and through them, up to the very top, bush after bush of these gorgeous blossoms--crimson, scarlet, mauve, buff, yellow, and exquisite diaphanous white. I never saw rhododendrons anywhere to touch these. And while we talk of flowers, another sight you can see from Dublin in May, the like of which takes visitors to Holland--the great daffodil and tulip fields at Rush, some fifteen miles north along the coast. There, growing in among the pale sandhills and grey bent, you shall see these huge patches of trumpeting colour--acres of tulips, close ranged like soldiers on parade, all of one type, uniform in their perfection. And with that you can inspect an industry employing many workmen and workwomen throughout the year in a country where work is none too plenty.

One more word about Howth. When you look from the hill towards Dublin, you look across one of the most famous of modern golf links, that long narrow spit of sand which is called the North Bull. But you also look across the scene of one of the notable battles of history. Between the North Bull and the Liffey mouth is Clontarf, where the fight raged on Good Friday in the year 1014, when Brian Boru inflicted on the Danes of Dublin and their allies from the Orkneys and from far-off Scandinavia--yes, and Irish allies too--a defeat which was felt all through the regions that the vikings haunted. It is true to say that that victory stemmed the advancing tide of barbarism. Brian won for Christianity rather than for Ireland, and he lost his life in the fight.

Just near Clontarf parish church, in the grounds of a private house is a yew tree under which, they say, men laid down the slain king, nine hundred years ago. Whether that be historically true or no we cannot say; but, I am told, experts agree that no other yew tree in these islands has an appearance of antiquity at all comparable to this giant, which, still lusty, covers fully a rood of ground. Try and see it on your way from Howth: much can be got by civil asking.

I come now to deal with what lies south of Dublin--the Wicklow Hills with all their apanages. And here one is conscious of two divisions. First of all, the obvious cleavage between the sunny seaward-facing slopes, thickly inhabited, and the mountains themselves or those glens that lie behind the first ridges. Secondly, the division, not less notable, between what is Wicklow pure and simple and what really belongs to Dublin, just as Brighton and Richmond belong to London.

This is not a mere question of distance. Dublin hardly makes itself felt beyond the immediate suburbs on the north and west: it stops with the tram lines. And towards the mountains, if you leave your tram at Rathfarnham, an hour's good walking will take you into a strangely wild ravine. Follow the military road--driven through these hills after 1798 had shown how strong they were, to be the first effectual instrument of subjugation--up towards Glencree, through Rockbrook, and so by a long steep ascent you will reach a wood where the road divides, on the shoulder of Tibradden, or the Kings' Burying Ground. To your right will be Killikee, with Lord Massey's beautiful demesne, and woods covering it almost to the top, but the bare summit crowned by a shattered ruin--the "Hell Fire Club", built by young bloods in the wild duelling and card-playing days of Dublin's gaiety. Turn your back on this and follow to the left into Glen Cullen , which, dividing Tibradden from Featherbed, sweeps round behind Two Rock and Three Rock, and so, if you keep steadily by the left, brings you back into the suburbs and villadom after a round of some sixteen miles. But you will have traversed a glen as bare and lonely, as devoid of any suggestion of a great city's nearness, as even Connemara could show.

Very beautiful it is, too, up there, on a fine day; and bilberries grow to perfection among the deep heather on the slopes of Featherbed. When I was last in it, instead of keeping to the left, we cut across southward to the right by the first road out of the valley, and from that height saw what is not often seen--the coast of Wales clearly visible. Then, dropping swiftly, we reached a road which, leading from the city through Dundrum, traverses the Scalp--a fine gorge of tumbled stone with fine woods effectively planted; and so down a famous coaching road to the pretty village of Enniskerry on the Dargle River, and down along that river to Bray--and the train.

So quick and so emphatic is the transition from one region to the other--from the region of lonely car drives to the snug neighbourhood of gas and steam. But let me define or describe the limits. If instead of going out by road you take either the train from Harcourt Street, which skirts the base of the hills, or the Westland Row line, which follows the sea all the way through Kingstown and Killiney till both lines meet in Bray, you will, of course, have suburbs about you, merging into villadom: and the suburbs continue on the sealine almost unbroken to Killiney. Then comes a gap, and at Bray you have a considerable town, from which villadom--a very pleasant and cultivated villadom--extends towards the hills. Beyond Bray, the line rounds the face of Bray Head in a series of little tunnels, with intervening glimpses of sea dashing below, in the best Riviera manner; and then you come to Greystones, another even more suburban settlement. I set Greystones--some fifteen miles south of Dublin--as the suburban limit: beyond that you have honest country--Wicklow proper. Only, let it be clearly understood that this is no disparagement. The most beautiful things in Wicklow are outside what I call Wicklow proper, and inside Dublin's "sphere of influence". These I now proceed to describe.

First of all, there runs up from Bray the famous Dargle, a steep wooded glen with the river dividing two demesnes--Lord Monk's and Lord Powerscourt's. For miles you can drive or walk through a scene of constantly varying beauty, with glimpses of mountain behind the wooded slopes, until at last you come to the Powerscourt Waterfall with its plunge of a hundred feet out of an upper ravine. Climb round, get above the waterfall, and at last, on the slopes of Douse Mountain, you reach wild nature--and you forget Dublin. Till then the spirit of Dublin is with you--the spirit of a prosperous Dublin, inhabited by rich men who liked to adorn the countryside with some of the graces of the town, to set elaborate plantations of foreign shrubs against a backing of rock and heather. Very pretty it is, and nowhere done more prettily.

Or again, if you go from Bray to Greystones by road, you may take the short road through Windgates and traverse the dip in the ridge between the Head and the Lesser Sugarloaf--a charming drive--with the Head and the sea on your left, the peaked shape of Sugarloaf on your right, bracken and heather clad, and over part of its height enclosed in a deerpark full of sturdy Japanese deer. You may do better still: you may take the long road and go inland, leaving Little Sugarloaf on your left, towering up purple and splendid above you, pineclad on this side to half its height; then, curving round, come into the defile by Kilmacanoge, which divides it from the Greater Sugarloaf. Here now is the parting of the regions. From Kilmacanoge a road runs up the Rocky Valley, sweeping round Great Sugarloaf, and it instantly brings you into wildness: in half an hour's going you will be round the mountain and out on the bleak levels of Calary Bog, with the soft gradual side of Douse tempting you to run up to the top--an easy victory. Yield to that temptation, and, unless your way is picked knowingly, you will be floundering in heather shoulder high, ashamed to turn back and almost too tired to go on. Still, to go on is worth it. Once on the top of Douse you are in the heart of real Wicklow--and you see, far below you, the road winding which leads out through Sallygap, west of Kippure Mountain to Kildare and the plains.

But supposing that at Kilmacanoge you do what forty thousand other people will have done that year before you, and hold straight on between the Sugar-loaves, the road, curving gradually eastward and seaward, brings you into the Glen of the Downs, another noble defile, wooded to the very crest with scrubby timber, so close as to be almost impassable--lovely as the loveliest in its way. Yet somehow the little gazebo of an octagonal summerhouse set high up on the north side in Bellevue grounds stamps the scene. It is nature, but nature decked and laid out and caressed and petted by man. A little farther and the road brings you into Delgany, at the foot of the sloping Bellevue grounds, a village prettier even than Enniskerry. And in truth Bellevue was a splendid type of what I have in mind: place and grounds created in the eighteenth century by a cultivated Dublin merchant of Huguenot stock; a house where Grattan was a frequent guest; which till the other day showed in gathered perfection all the domestic art of that great period, with its Sheraton and Chippendale sideboards, its marvellous plaster cornices and ceilings, its inlaid marble mantelpieces, and, for a final glory, its bedstead painted by Angelica Kaufmann. The grounds were planned to match--in the same delicate graceful taste, a little mannered, but always admirable. It had a lovely nature to work upon, and that same taste has made the seaward fringe of these nearest Wicklow Hills into the very garden of Ireland. That is the beauty nearest to the capital. And if the feeling of trimness wearies you, all you have to do is leave the road and strike out where you will across the heather. To their great honour, the liberality of all landowners in this playground of Dublin leaves the casual passer-by free to wander almost as unrestrained as he might be in Achill or on Slieve League.

For the country which lies beyond Dublin's immediate playground there is this to be said. Even the railway going to it is delightful. I know of no prettier line than the Dublin, Wicklow, and Wexford, and if its trains are something sluggish, why, you have the more time to admire the view. Beyond Greystones you pass through a long marsh, full of wild fowl, and then come to Wicklow, a pleasant little town sheltered by its low head. There is an old Norman keep here, Black Castle, but much more remarkable is the work of modern builders. Wicklow Head is adorned with three lighthouses--one carrying a light. The first tower was built by a wise and thoughtful Government, and the lamp duly fixed with ceremony. But when it came to be lit, seamen reported that while from certain quarters it was admirably visible, the Head itself blocked it from half the horizon. Nothing daunted, Government ordered another tower to be built on a spot indicated in their offices, and built it was. This illumined the previously excluded section of sea, but was shut out from the area lighted by the first tower. Finally, as a counsel of despair, they sent down someone to look at the ground, and the third tower, which now carries the light, was duly erected. The other two remain as monuments of the persistence with which the English Government has sought to do things right in Ireland.

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