and even in his newspaper sketches of
the coast of Connemara, that tell not only of the places but of their
visitor. "I got on a long road running through a bog," he writes in "In
West Kerry," "with a smooth mountain on one side and the sea on the
other, and Brandon in front of me, partly covered with clouds. As far
as I could see there were little groups of people on their way to the
chapel at Ballyferriter, the men in homespun and the women wearing blue
cloaks, or, more often, black shawls twisted over their heads. This
procession along the olive bogs, between the mountains and the sea, on
this gray day of autumn, seemed to wring me with the pang of emotion one
meets everywhere in Ireland, an emotion that is partly local and
patriotic, and partly a share of the desolation that is mixed everywhere
with the supreme beauty of the world."

The comment on Ireland, her ways and her place among the peoples, that
many a dramatist would have permitted himself to express through some
character chosen to play chorus to the action, Synge now and then
permits himself in the travel sketches. In "From Galway to Gorumna,"
which he wrote for the "Manchester Guardian's" investigation of the
congested districts, is one of such rare avowals, an avowal to treasure
along with those of his all too short prefaces: "It is part of the
misfortune of Ireland that nearly all the characteristics which give
color and attractiveness to Irish life [he has been speaking of 'men
dressed in homespuns of the gray natural wool, and the women in deep
madder-dyed petticoats and bodices, with brown shawls over their heads']
are bound up with a social condition that is near to penury, while in
countries like Brittany the best external features of the local
life--the rich embroidered dresses, for instance, or the carved
furniture--are connected with a decent and comfortable social
condition."

It is this penury, perhaps, and its gray background that by way of
contrast emphasize so strongly the moments of splendor that Irish
landscape knows. One such moment Synge saw as he looked southward across
the bay from the Dingle peninsula toward Killarney: "The blueness of the
sea and the hills from Carrantuohill to the Skelligs, the singular
loneliness of the hillside I was on, with a few choughs and gulls in
sight only, had a splendor that was almost a grief in the mind."

This splendor Synge found also in his own Wicklow, a lonelier country
than Aran, if loneline