[Illustration: A HAWTHORN GLADE, PHOENIX PARK]
Skirting the park to the south, and trending westward, is the valley of the Liffey, and no one looking at the unsightly, sometimes unsavoury, stream which divides Dublin would guess at the beautiful water which the Liffey-bred salmon reaches in a couple of miles after he has left the sea. Mr. Williams has drawn a reach of it, still in the tidal limit, at Palmerston, halfway to Leixlip--that is Salmon Leap: the Norse name tells its story of the city's founding. The picture shows the steep wood leading up to green expanses of the park on the south side; and in the gap seaward, all the vague expanse of brick and stone. Within an easy ride from the park--how often Swift rode it!--is the village of Celbridge, where his "Vanessa", Esther Vanhomrigh, settled herself to be near the man she loved so fatally. The Liffey where it borders Vanessa's Marley Abbey, and lower down, where it skirts Castletown demesne, may challenge comparison for beauty with any of Ireland's rivers. By its bank famous men grew up--Charles, George, and William Napier, sons of the beautiful Lady Sarah Lennox; nephews, therefore, of Lady Louisa Connolly, whose husband then owned Castletown, and first cousins of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, whose home was near by, at Carton, the seat of his father the Duke of Leinster. The conqueror of Sind and the historian of the Peninsular War got their schooling in Celbridge. They formed in their school a class of boy scouts against the troublous days of the "Ninety-Eight" rising; and yet their sympathies were largely with their cousin, Lord Edward, most picturesque among its leaders.
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.
And over against the castle is a yew of portentous size and age, which bears the name of Silken Thomas's tree. In 1534 the Earl of Kildare, Lord Deputy of Ireland, had been summoned to Henry VIII and detained in the Tower; his son Thomas remained in Ireland with power as Vice-Deputy. After a few months the rumour came that Kildare had been put to death--a rumour no way incredible. His son, in natural indignation, determined to owe Henry no more allegiance, and on St. Barnabas' Day rode into Dublin with one hundred and forty followers wearing silken fringes to their helmets. The council was fixed to be held in St. Mary's Abbey, and the Geraldine troop rode splashing through the ford of the Liffey to the north bank. In the council chamber sat the Chancellor, Archbishop Cromer, and Silken Thomas, with his armed followers tramping in at his heels, renounced his allegiance, and called on all who hated cruelty and tyranny to join him in war upon the English. His speech ending, he proffered his sword of state to the Archbishop, who refused to take it and reasoned pathetically with the young noble. But a hereditary bard of the Geraldines, O'Neylan, burst in with an Irish poem which recalled the glories of the Geraldines, and upbraided Silken Thomas with too long delay. The chant ended in a clamour of applause from the armed men, and Thomas Fitzgerald, flinging down the sword, marched at their head out of the presence, none daring to check him.