GOLDSMITH'S DESERTED VILLAGE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 30, 3 February 1877, Page 2

GOLDSMITH'S DESERTED VILLAGE.

The site of the " Deserted Village" is on the road from Athlone to Ballymahon, about six miles from the former town; and as crops of new " Auburns" are springing up round in all directions, it is necessary to mention the poet's name in order to be set on the proper track to " Gooldsmith's Auburns," aa the Westmeath peasantry call it. The country north of Athlone is undulating, the view being shut out by ranges of low hills, many of them mere sand-hills; and along the Ballymahon road the ordinary paral el fences are missed in many places, so that tho vagrant donkey has here now and then an opportunity to taste the stolen sweets of sundry pastures without let or hindrance. The slopes on either hand are starred over with the brightest of whitewashed cottages, and everywhere about the hawthorn and the sloe-tree form a multitude of pretty alleys, all redolent in the May-time with the breathings of those flowers that love t© hide in the brambly dell in fellowship with the btoad-leaved sorrel-tasted shamrock. The cottage gardens, with here and there a litchen-diseased apple-tree, and currant and gooseberry bushes growing in many an out-of-the-way place, are sufficiently indicative of quiet happy scenes of other days whose momentos are departing one by one. Pursuing the road from Athlone northward for about three miles, in a recess at the left formed by the hills that skirt the banks of Lough Ree, we come npon Ballykeeran ; and surely if I were to turn eremite, and to build me a cell at an agreeable distance from the din and glitter and ring of this working-day world, I would choose for a site some silent nook of that woody hollow. Truly it is a very silent place; tho "mournful peasant" seems to have led thence lus humble band —how impelled it is needless to say ; and mach of ihe fcurrounding country blooms, not, however, "a garden and a grave," bnt a grazing farm and a panorama of modern villas. A mile further ou is Glas_on, certainly one of the prettiest of Irish Tillages. It has a very modest-looking little church, and hardly a house is to be seen there whose walls are unadorned with creepers and trained rose-bubhee. After

Such a place has usually a distinguished air: its environs have, according to Hall, a fostering influence on the muse. Beautiful scenery in a manner educates tho poet. His special faculties are, iudeed, often known to thrive wonderfully when the slough of adversity lies on his horizon on the ouejuind and the mountain of magnificence on the other. Even the wayfarer ! forgets the weariness of his feet while • pausing to luxuriate amidst the riches of Nature tastefully disposed ; aud should he happen to recall the notorious couplet of Lont John Manners, while mentally repeating the last line of it, he is soothed into no little community of feeling with the noble writer by the home-felt present delight of shade or vista. Glasson owes much of ita interest to its proximity to Waterstown, the demesne of Temple Harris. Waterstown House is very finely situated on an elevated position, commanding a most charming prospect in the happy combinations c± wood, and lake, and hill which surround it. It is reached by a long avenue, winding for great part of the way between palisades of beeches and lofty piues perfectly helical in growth. Fronting the house is an extensive parterre, exhibiting the most impressive elegance in the arrangements of its beds as weli as in the variety of the flowers. Among the paintings at Waterstown House is a portrait of Sir William Temple, so noted as a diplomatist and a man of letters, and as the patron of Deau Swift. Indeed, so far as we can discover, the Temple blood has long been duly appreciative of the fairness of the earth ; aud Sir William tells us of his residence, Moor Park, in Surrey, that it was the 6weetest place he had seen in his life at home or abioad. About a mile north of Glasson, the prospect is closed by the woods of Auburn House, the residence of a Mr. Adamson. It is agreeably situated on a sheltered slope, but it has an air of certainly not very graceful neglect about it which, though promising the diversity of a fine group oi ruins here in a few years, is sadly ominous, as indicating that " southward the course of ' the canker' hath its way." And now at last we are on tlie Pisgah whence we first obtain a view of that sacred region, the song of whose decay has floated over all the globe, and is breathed by thousands who have never set foot upon our shores. The road leads still north. To the east, stretching parallel to it, is the "neighboring hill," near the summit of which, conspicious in the distance, is the " decent church" known as the rectory of Kilkenny West. A decent chapel of more modern date tops another neighboring hill in the parish of Bunowen, perhaps the only architectural improvement of recent yeai s that the place can show. At the west side of the road, a little way on, are the house and farm of Lissoy, where great part of Goldsmith's early days was spent. The wido entrance avenue is bordered by youthful suceessois of the grand old elms that once overarched it with their boughs ; and at the farther end, with its front towards the road, is the ruined parsonage, of which, as it appears at present, a very correct illustration will be found in Chamber's " Cyclopsedia of English Literature." At the rear a few trees of tho old orchard may yet be seen ; and, thanks to the farmer yclept "James Grew," who lives near it, the whole surroundings ofthe remains of the " modest mansion" are in keeping with the other associations of Auburn, and in accordance with the poet's line. The house consisted of twG stories, having each five windows, and according to Prior the basement is about sixty-eight feet by twenty-four. From the situation of the fireplaces, I am disposed to say that the breadth of the kitchen or its substitute was no more than twelve feet. The hearths are none of the Irish hospitable style ; there is nothing wide, generous, and inviting about the-n ; and from thinking over their appearance, such as they must once have been, there need be little hesitation in declaring that a broken soldier would find the ingle of one of our peasant farmers a much more cheery haven on a winter's evening. About half a dozen aged trees to the right are all that now remain of the " copse of other days ; not even Darwin himself could trace any blossomed thing in the place to a garden flower, though he should suppose an evolution period of thousands of perennial cycles. As to the " noisy mansion" by the blossomed furze-fence, this has experienced the fate of all hedge-schools, and the commodious national school of Tobberclair at hand by all accounts well supplies its place. With our modern watchword," mehr Licht," perhaps the " donatio • mortis causa" of Goethe, we are too often disposed to "think our fathers fools as wise we grow," and in all cases to associate with the term " hedge-school" something inconceivably base and barbarous, forgetting its source and the tale its etymology tells of those sad penal times When, crouching 'neath the sheltering hedge, Or stretched on mountain fern, The teacher and his pupil met — Feloniously to learn. Deeper thought must, however, awaken in the Irish breast grateful memory towards men who transmitted the vestal fire of the Bcholar,no matterhowoften in a smouldering state, from she to son. True it is, that prototypes of the Firdramore seminary were but too numerous ; yet must it, on the other hand, be admitted that, among the primary teachers of a bygone age, narrowness of surface was compensated for in most instances by a profoundity not often to be met with in days like these. At all events, tradition testifies that the Lessoy pedagogue, Thomas Byrne by name, wa3 none of your Ichabod Cranes or Van Bummels, but was indeed a light in his rustic circle ; and whatever chagrin the impenetrable stupidity of "Poor Noll" when a schoolboy might have given the good old man, the kind-natured poet in more favoured moments made up for it all. At a little distance from the entrance to Lissoy, and at the came side of the road, is the very pool alluded to by Goldsmith, and the noisy geese were now as evergabbling over it and on its margin aa I passed. It is bordered by a few stunted hawthornbushes, having upon them a Btrange impress of eld. Over against it is a ruinous cottage, tho residence of a " wretched matron" whose tale of her own happier years assuredly merits a sympathetic listener : She only left, of all the harmless train, The sad historian of the pensive plain. Tlie fields near her cottage were, up to a recent period, covered with a deep embowering wood ; but all this has been cut away, and now only the discoloured stumps remain, aB if to heighten the apparent desolation of the scene. Ascending an incline, which certainly deserves not the name of "hill," wo come to the cross of the " Three Jolly Pigeon?," where the ruins of the alehouse may be seen; also the sycamore on which tlie signboard of that little inn used to be so mvi tingly hung in yearß that are over. Here, too, at the opposite aide of the road, grows

where those artless loves were told by rustic lovers of long ago, yet bids lair to bloom in fancy's, garden ior ever. To the right, a little way off tho road leading north-west, are tho hoary rootless wails of tlio once *' busy mill." Most of the wheel has been taken away, doubtless by visitors, each scrap being iv some sort as a faded paim-brati-h from one of "the Delphian vales, the Palestines, tho Meccas of the miud." The old nether millstone aloue ia likely to endure for a while beneath the ! ceaseless agencies of change aud decay. To enter the ruined mill one muststt-p over the " never-tailing brook," which, uiough indeed choked with sedges, siill repeats its own solitary murmur, as if it would whisper to tho wanderer, Men may come and men may go, j But I go ou for ever. I It was evening, and the place was overcast with a marked loneliness ; not even the corn-crake (for no nightingale visits Ireland—Spenser's nightingale is the sallypecker) interrupted the stillness. Hooked on Auuuru for ihe last time ; truo, its bowers were not merely in rum but obliterated, and the long grass waved oa the mouldering wall, and on th. cheerless hearthstone and on the chimney-tops whitened by the rains of many a day. Just i as I was about to turn on my houie- | ward route, a sudden gush of sunlight streamed over all the prospect, far and away over moor and meadow and hill. There was for a moment round about such a brightness as the memory of old time sheds on an aged mau's countenance; such a soft effulgence as needed but the lowing kine and the graceful milking-maideu s song responded to by the guileless swain, anu the loud laugh (yes ! ye stilted Meteyards and thou crabued Carlyle) and the murmur of joyous voices near betokening a current of life flowing ireely along, to rival in its influence on the mi_d and heart. The light that never was on sea or laud, Tho conseciation of the poet's dream. J. O'B.BNE CROKK.