I have seen some of the most impressive beauties of our world, but never have I been more impressed than by the solemn grandeur of the mountain across Clewe Bay they call Croagh Patrick, as we saw it on the evening of our arrival at Mulranny. The last flush of the after-glow lingered on its dark slopes and the red planet Mars flamed above its cone, all this solemn beauty reflected in the sleeping waters. At Mulranny I spent nearly all my days making studies of sheep and landscape for the next picture I sent to the Academy--“A Cistercian Shepherd.” This gave me a period of the most exquisitely reposeful work. The building up of this picture was in itself an idyll. But the public didn’t want idylls from me at all. “Give us soldiers and horses, but pastoral idylls--no!” People had a slightly reproachful tone in their comments after seeing my poor pastoral on the Academy walls. Some one said, “How are the mighty fallen!”
We made our home in the heart of Tipperary, under the Galtee Mountains. It seemed time for us to seek a dignified repose, “the world forgetting, by the world forgot,” but we did not succeed in our intention. In 1906 my husband went on a great round of observation through Cape Colony and the (former) Boer Republics on a literary mission. I and E. went off to Italy, meanwhile; Rome as our goal. There I had the great pleasure of the companionship of my sister, and it may be imagined with what feelings we re-trod the old haunts in and about that city together.
“_April 9th, 1906_.--We had a charming stroll through the Villa d’Este gardens, where the oldest, hoariest cypresses are to be seen, and fountains and water conduits of graceful and fantastic shape, wherever one turns, all gushing with impetuous waters. The architects of these gardens revelled in their fanciful designs and sported with the responsive flood. Cascades spout in all directions from the rocks on which Tivoli is built. We had _déjeuner_ under a pergola at the inn right over one of these waterfalls, where, far below us, birds flew to and fro in the mist of the spray. Nature and art have joined in play at Tivoli. I always have had a healthy dislike of burrowing in tombs and catacombs. The sepulchral, bat-scented air of such places in Egypt--the land, of all others, of limpid air and sunshine and dryness--is not in any way attractive to me, and I greatly dislike diving into the Roman catacombs out of the sunny Appian Way. On former occasions I went through them all, so this time I kept above ground. I learnt all that the catacombs teach in my early years, and am not likely to lose that tremendous impression.