e of Glengariff, with its wooded park, its winding
river, its deep solitudes fragrant with wild-rose and honeysuckle, is
familiar to my reader. He has lingered there with me, strolling through
leafy glades, over smooth turf, catching glimpses of blue sea through
the dark foliage, and feeling all the intense ecstasy of a spot that
seemed especially created for peaceful enjoyment. What a charm was in
those tangled pathways, overhung with jessamine and arbutus, or now
flanked by moss-clad rock, through whose fissures small crystal rivulets
trickled slowly down into little basins beneath. How loaded the air
with delicious perfume; what a voluptuous sense of estrangement from
all passing care crept over one as he stole noiselessly along over the
smooth sward, and drank in the mellow blackbird's note, blended with the
distant murmur of the rippling river! And where is it all now? The park
is now traversed in every direction with wide, unfinished roads; great
open spaces appear at intervals, covered with building materials;
yawning sand-quarries swarming with men; great brick-fields smoking
in all the reeking oppression of that filthy manufacture; lime-kilns
spreading their hateful breath on every side; vast cliffs of slate and
granite-rock, making the air resound with their discordant crash, with
all the vulgar tumult of a busy herd. If you turn seaward, the same
ungraceful change is there: ugly and misshapen wharfs have replaced the
picturesque huts of the fishermen; casks and hogsheads and bales and
hampers litter the little beach where once the festooned net was wont to
hang, and groups of half-drunken sailors riot and dispute where once the
merry laugh of sportive childhood was all that woke the echoes. If the
lover of the picturesque could weep tears of bitter sorrow over these
changes, to the man of speculation and progress they were but signs of
a glorious prosperity. The Grand Glengariff Villa Allotment and Marine
Residence Company was a splendid scheme, whose shares were eagerly
sought after at a high premium. Mr. Dunn must assuredly have lent all
his energies to the enterprise, for descriptions of the spot were to be
found throughout every corner of the three kingdoms. Colored lithographs
and stereoscopes depicted its most seductive scenes through the pages
of popular "weeklies," and a dropping fire of interesting paragraphs
continued to keep up the project before the public through the columns
of the daily press. An