If the cottage be an almost ideal representation of rustic elegance and simplicity, its situation is still more remarkable for beauty; for while Art has developed all the resources of the ground, Nature, in her own boundless profusion, has assembled here almost every ingredient of the picturesque, and as if to impart a sense of life and motion to the stilly calm, a tumbling sheet of water gushes down between the rocks, and in bounding leaps descends towards the Shannon, of which it is a tributary.
A narrow path, defended by a little railing of rustic-work, separates the end of the cottage from the deep gorge of the waterfall; but through the open window the eye can peer down into the boiling abyss of spray and foam beneath, and catch a glimpse of the bridge which, formed of a fallen ash-tree, spans the torrent.
Traversed in every direction by paths, some galleried along the face, others cut in the substance of the rock, you can pass hours in rambling among these wild and leafy solitudes, now lost in shade, now emerging again, to see the great river gliding along, the white sails dotting its calm surface.
Well did Mr. Kennyfeck observe to Roland Cashel that it was the most beautiful feature of his whole demesne, and that its possession by another not only cut him off from the Shannon in its handsomest part, but actually deprived the place of all pretension to extent and grandeur. The spreading woods of Tubbermore were, as it seemed, the background to the cottage scene, and possessed no character to show that they were the property of the greater proprietor.
The house itself was not likely to vindicate the claim the locality denied. It was built with a total disregard to aspect or architecture. It was a large four-storied edifice, to which, by way of taking off from the unpicturesque height, two wings had been planned: one of these only was finished; the other, half built, had been suffered to fall into ruin. At the back, a high brick wall enclosed a space intended for a garden, but never put into cultivation, and now a mere nursery of tall docks and thistles, whose gigantic size almost overtopped the wall. All the dirt and slovenliness of a cottier habitant--for the house was occupied by what is misnamed "a caretaker"--were seen on every hand. One of the great rooms held the family; its fellow, on the opposite side of the hall, contained a cow and two pigs; cabbage-stalks and half-rotting potato-tops steamed their pestilential vapors beneath the windows; while half-naked children added the discord, the only thing wanting to complete the sum of miserable, squalid discomfort, so sadly general among the peasantry.