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                        THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL.

      NUMBER 7.        SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 1840.         VOLUME I.

[Illustration: REMAINS AT MONASTERBOICE. COUNTY LOUTH.]

To the observing and imaginative traveller, our island must present a
great number of peculiarities of aspect which will not fail to excite his
notice, and impress themselves indelibly upon his mind. The scantiness of
wood--for its natural timber has nearly all disappeared--and the abundance
of water, are two of the characteristics that will most strike him; and,
next to these, the great extent of prospect usually afforded to the eye in
consequence of the undulating character of its surface. Sparkling streams
are visible everywhere, and shining lakes and noble rivers come into view
in rapid succession; while ranges of blue mountains are rarely wanting to
bound the distant horizon. The colours with which Nature has painted the
surface of our island are equally peculiar. There is no variety of green,
whether of depth or vivid brightness, which is not to be found covering
it; they are hues which can be seen nowhere else in equal force; and even
our bogs, which are so numerous, with all their mutations of colour, now
purple, and anon red, or brown, or black, by their vigorous contrasts give
additional beauty and life to the landscape, and assist in imparting to it
a sort of national individuality. Our very clouds have to a great degree a
distinctive character--the result of the humidity of our climate; they
have a grandeur of form and size, and a force of light and shadow, that
are but rarely seen in other countries; they are _Irish clouds_--at one
moment bright and sunny, and in the next flinging their dark shadows over
the landscape, and involving it in gloomy grandeur. It is in this striking
force of contrast in almost every thing that we look at, that the
peculiarity of our scenery chiefly consists; and it appears to have
stamped the general character of our people with those contrasting lights
and shades so well exhibited in our exquisite and strongly-marked national
music, in which all varieties of sentiment are so deeply yet harmoniously
blended as to produce on the mind effects perhaps in some degree
saddening, but withal most delightfully sweet and soothing. A country
marked with such peculiarities is not the legitimate abode of the refined
sensualist of modern times, or the man of artificial pleasure and
heartless pursuits, and all such naturally remain away from it, or visit
it with reluctance; but it is the proper habitation of the poet, the
painter, and, above all, the philanthropist; for nowhere else can the
latter find so extensive a field for the exercise of the godlike feelings
of benevolence and patriotism.

Yet the natural features of scenery and climate which we have pointed out,
interesting as all must admit them to be, are not the only ones that
confer upon our country the peculiar and impressive character which it
possesses. The relics of past epochs of various classes; the monuments of
its Pagan times, as revealed to us in its religious, military, and
sepulchral remains; the ruins of its primitive Christian ages, as
exemplified in its simple and generally unadorned churches, and slender
round towers; the more splendid monastic edifices of later date, and the
gloomy castles of still more recent times--these are everywhere present to
bestow historic interest on the landscape, and bring the successive
conditions and changes of society in bygone ages forcibly before the
mind; so that an additional interest, of a deep and poetical nature, is
thus imparted to views in themselves impressive from their wild and
picturesque appearance. So perfect, indeed, is this harmony of the natural
and artificial characteristics of Irish scenery, so comprehensively do
both tell the history of our country, to which Nature has been most
bountiful, and in which, alas! man has not been happy, that if we were
desirous of giving a stranger a true idea of Ireland, and one that would
impress itself on his mind, we should conduct him to one of our green open
landscapes, where the dark and ruined castle, seated on some rocky height,
or the round tower, with its little parent church, in some sequestered
valley, would be the only features to arrest his attention; and of such a
scene we should say emphatically, This is Ireland! And such a scene is
that which is presented by the ruins represented in our prefixed
illustration.

Passing along the great northern road from Drogheda to Dundalk, and about
four miles from the former, the traveller will find himself in an open
pastoral country, finely undulating, thinly dotted with the cottages of
the peasants, and but little adorned by art. On one side, to his left, he
will see a little group of ruins, with a lofty but shattered round tower,
giving index of their age and character. These are the ruins of the long
since celebrated religious establishment of Monasterboice, one of the most
interesting groups of their kind in Ireland. They consist of two small
churches, a round tower, and three most gorgeously sculptured stone
crosses, standing in the midst of a crowd of tombs and head-stones of
various ages. Both the churches are of great antiquity, though, as their
architectural features clearly show, of widely separated ages--the larger
one exhibiting the peculiarities of the ecclesiastical structures of the
twelfth century, and the smaller those of a much earlier date. Both are
also simple oblongs, consisting of a nave and choir; and the round tower
appears to be of coeval architecture with the earlier church.

The tower, which is of excellent construction, is built of the slatey
limestone of the surrounding hills, and is divided into five stories by
belts of stone slightly projecting. The upper story has four oblong
apertures, and the lower ones are each lighted by an aperture having an
angular top. The doorway, which faces the south-east, has a semicircular
arch, and is constructed of chiselled freestone: it is of the usual height
of five feet six inches, by one foot ten inches in breadth, and is six
feet from the present surface of the ground. The circumference of the
tower is fifty-one feet, and its height is one hundred and ten; but its
original height was greater, as a considerable portion of its top has been
destroyed by lightning.

In these churches and this tower Monasterboice has nothing which may not
be found in many other early religious foundations in Ireland; but in the
magnificence of its sculptured stone crosses it may be said to stand
alone. They are the finest of their class in the country; but, as we shall
make them the subjects of distinct notices, with illustrations, in our
