He faithfully promised to put the question so to this troublesome woman, whose tongue even death was unable to silence, and to acquaint us with her answer at our next meeting. Looking up the river from the bridge, the water forces its troubled way over and between large rocks, and is overshadowed by high and wooded banks; at the further extremity the eye catches a partial view of St. Valori, honorably distinguished as having been the residence of the late Cooper Walker, Esq., remembered for his knowledge of polite literature and critical research. Close by St. Valori, at what is called the broken bridge, (the extreme buttresses of a bridge, which had been swept away by a flood, supporting a plank and hand-rail) and on the edge of the stream, is a beautiful and fanciful cottage, once inhabited by a good and learned Clergyman, the late Rev. Doctor Whitelaw, who commenced a statistical work, finished and recently published by the Rev. Mr. Walsh, Curate of Glassnevin. From this point, a road to the left, on either side of which are other pretty cottages, leads to the principal entrance into the Dargle, a scene which those who most feel its beauties will find most difficult to describe. There were already collected at the gate a number of vehicles of all sorts, coaches, sociables, gigs, gingles, and jaunting cars; their several companies had entered, or were entering the Dargle, and the servants were busied in loading and bearing after them baskets of provisions, in quantities that expressed a perfect reliance on the efficacy of air and exercise in promoting a good appetite. CHAP. XI. Like travellers, journeying side by side, At length arrived where branching roads They linger long, each slow to part The treasure of a kindred heart, Too late and much too shortly known ; Just felt, and then, for ever flown. E'en thus, our Wicklow ramble o'er, From GREGORY GREENDRAKE loath to sever, WE intimated in our last that the present chapter would terminate the county Wicklow excursion of our intelligent and amusing angler, and bring him back to the Irish metropolis. In the above lines, we have paid to him the tribute of our conviction, that he has afforded pleasure to his readers, and that they will part from him with regret. We would not venture to say so much of ourselves, and when our readers recollect how we accounted for the aid afforded to our columns by the pen of Mr. GREENDRAKE, they will fully acquit us of egotism, and the want of modesty, vices but too common to us gentry, who deal so largely in the plural we. But lest we might appear a satirical or reproachful exception to the rest of our tribe, whom really we are not disposed to offend, even though they were not armed with stings, we do say, that our introductory verses afford a good text for the moralist. Who is there that sometime or other has not met by chance with a sort of moral counterpart; from whom he has separated with regret, whom he has never again seen, and whom neither time nor circumstances could wholly eradicate from his memory. In a stage coach-a packet boat-the play-house-the very street or high road, one may meet with a disposition so attuned to their own, that the contact may produce a moral vibration, long, very long surviving the touch that gave it birth. Thus are the 'chains that tie the hidden soul of harmony' often untwisted by the hand of chance, which, as though in mockery of the sympathy it awakens, leaves it ever after in solitary and disappointed existence. In this way we may, probably, account for a great deal of discontent, apparently strange assumption of manner, and inconsistent application of mental powers. The latent passion has been roused by the accidental touch of a kindred spirit, and has ever after been wandering beyond the sphere prescribed to it by the unfavourable circumstances of social dependency-even the paradox of a voluntary old maid (with great respect we utter the forbidden term) may be referred to, and reconciled by the same principle. Once in her life, and by chance, she may have met, no matter how or where, with him who, on some occasion, perceptible only to herself, touched the point of sympathetic harmony: from that moment he is the model of human perfection he becomes the beau ideal of conjunctive happiness, and, if there be not such another man in the world, (as it is said there are not any two things existing exactly alike) she never can be mated, and of course, lives and dies in "single blessedness." But we feel that it is forbidden to us to enter too deeply into this matter; it is a thing dangerous to play with, even on the surface; in short, it is a ticklish subject, and we proceed to one that is safer. THE DARGLE. "I have already brought you through so many of the glens of this picturesque county, that little of novel character remains for the pen of description. The Dargle, however, differs in some striking respects, from those I had previously visited. The hills forming the glen are equally and richly wooded on both sides, and the road, or paths through it, lie either on the summit, or wind along the side of the hill, thus affording more commanding and diverse views, while in most parts the hills, closing at their bases, scarcely afford a passage for the troubled torrent that works it foaming way through banks and masses of rock, and which, generally, is rather heard than seen, thus receiving from the imagination the terrors and sublimity of an abyss, whose depth, consequent of the intervening foliage, we cannot penetrate, but whose roaring waters convey to us the ideas of danger and profundity. "As the visitor proceeds, he is sometimes enveloped in shade, principally of oak, and sometimes arrives at points which present to his delighted view lines of wavy wood and undulating water; the distant mountains, ornamented demesnes, cultivated farms, and the sea merging in the distant line of the horizon. These points of view are principally the Lover's Leap, and the Burnt Rock. The first of these is a perpendicular rock of great height, battlemented at top with masonry, and at a distance has the appearance of an ancient grey tower rising from the bosom of the wood; to look down from it, one is strongly impressed with one of its resemblances to the Lucadian rock, and such as would afford, to any Irish Sapho, as ready and efficient a cure for disappointed passion. On a corresponding angle of the opposite hill, a very pretty cottage, one of the ornaments of Mr. Grattan's side of the Dargle, forms a pleasing object, and from it, again, the rock of the Lover's Leap presents a striking and picturesque appearance, when surmounted by animate objects, and the assisting display of attitude and drapery. The shout and holla of parties separated by the devious and tangled paths, the bursts of joyous laughter from the cave-enfranchised heart, and occasionally, the mellow tones of the flute and horn, rise upon the breeze, and mingle their happier and more varied sounds with the monotonous murmurs of the stream N |