Yet the folk of this outer pale are "kindly Irish of the Irish"--none kindlier; and I have often thought the character of Ireland could not be better expressed than in a chance phrase I heard in the talk of a girl from that low-lying region. "My father used always to tell me: 'Put plenty of potatoes in the pot, Maria. You couldn't tell who would be stepping in to us across the bog'."
Leaving out of sight, because I must, the famous city of Kildare with its Cathedral (half-church, half-fortress); the broad lakes of West Meath, endeared by hope to patient anglers; the city of Kilkenny, where something of Ireland's prosperity remains unbroken, where the Butlers' Castle stands undestroyed, where are churches that were never ruined (almost a prodigy in Ireland); saying nothing of Lissoy, where Goldsmith lived in the village that his pen immortalized; briefly, dismissing about two-thirds of Leinster with a wave of the hand, let me come back to Dublin and its environment.
Of Dublin itself, what shall be said? A much-travelled Belgian priest told me recently that only in Naples had he seen such widespread marks of destitution, and in Naples they have little to suffer from cold. A young Irish nationalist, London-bred, describing the emotion with which he made his first visit to the country he had worked so hard for, said that his week in Dublin left one leading impression on his mind--the saddest people he had ever seen; nowhere had he heard so little laughter. He had lived near poverty all his life in London and yet had not seen so many pinched and drawn faces. All this is true, especially on the north bank of the Liffey. And yet an artist who came with me once to the city spent his days in rapture over the beauty of the public buildings. That also is true. The King's Inns, the Four Courts, and the Custom House on the north side of the river; in College Green, the front of Trinity College and the old Parliament House, (still--in 1911--the Bank of Ireland), are all splendid examples of the severe Georgian style of architecture, which found even happier expression in many noble and nobly ornamented dwelling houses. All this building was done in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when Dublin had its day, when it was in reality the capital of Ireland.