OBERT ARDAGH.

Being a second Extract from the Papers of the late Father Purcell.

'The earth hath bubbles as the water hath--
And these are of them.'

In the south of Ireland, and on the borders of the county of Limerick,
there lies a district of two or three miles in length, which is rendered
interesting by the fact that it is one of the very few spots throughout
this country, in which some vestiges of aboriginal forest still remain.
It has little or none of the lordly character of the American forest,
for the axe has felled its oldest and its grandest trees; but in the
close wood which survives, live all the wild and pleasing peculiarities
of nature: its complete irregularity, its vistas, in whose perspective
the quiet cattle are peacefully browsing; its refreshing glades, where
the grey rocks arise from amid the nodding fern; the silvery shafts of
the old birch trees; the knotted trunks of the hoary oak, the grotesque
but graceful branches which never shed their honours under the tyrant
pruning-hook; the soft green sward; the chequered light and shade; the
wild luxuriant weeds; the lichen and the moss--all, all are beautiful
alike in the green freshness of spring, or in the sadness and sere of
autumn. Their beauty is of that kind which makes the heart full with
joy--appealing to the affections with a power which belongs to nature
only. This wood runs up, from below the base, to the ridge of a long
line of irregular hills, having perhaps, in primitive times, formed but
the skirting of some mighty forest which occupied the level below.

But now, alas! whither have we drifted? whither has the tide of
civilisation borne us? It has passed over a land unprepared for
it--it has left nakedness behind it; we have lost our forests, but our
marauders remain; we have destroyed all that is picturesque, while we
have retained everything that is revolting in barbarism. Through the
midst of this woodland there runs a deep gully or glen, where
the stillness of the scene is broken in upon by the brawling of a
mountain-stream, which, however, in the winter season, swells into a
rapid and formidable torrent.

There is one point at which the glen becomes extremely deep and narrow;
the sides descend to the depth of some hundred feet, and are so steep as
to be nearly perpendicular. The wild trees which have taken root in the
crannies and chasms of the rock have so intersected and entangled, that
one can with difficulty ca