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Many of them have never seen bigger places than Letterfrack and Leenane, and those perhaps not fifty times in their lives. The islanders of Clew Bay are almost as difficult to assist and to improve as the highlanders of Joyce's country, Southern Mayo, and Great and Little Connemara; but for an opposite reason.
Inside, it is marble of Cork, marble of Connemara, marble of Italy, polished to the brightest. The gates which admit from one ecclesiastical division to another are wrought in flowers that blaze in gold. Before the altar, parables of our Lord are wrought in mosaic on the floor.
By the Midland and Great Western Railway you may cover the best tourist districts in quick time and with great comfort. By it you may tackle Connemara either from Galway or Westport, and the company, subsidised by Mr. Balfour, will shortly open fifty miles of line between Galway and Clifden.
Before leaving Connemara I resolved to give a detailed account of the condition of the peasants of the sea-coast at the conclusion of a phenomenally good season followed by a fair harvest, thinking that a better impression would be obtained now than in periods of distress.
There is a fine museum in Queen's College, Galway, which I did not see. Of course there are many things I did not see, although my eyes were on hard duty while there. I did see specimens of that most beautiful marble of Connemara. It is worked up into ornaments, in some cases mounted with silver. As soon as any one enquires for it they are known to be from America.
"Very sorry, sir, no mistake, sir; Miss Vandaleur is not at 'ome!" and the door closed in the face of the astonished artist. It was June in Connemara. Where else is the month of roses half as lovely? where does the sky show bluer, or the grass greener? and where is the air so clear and cool and fragrant, or the lakes half as still and azure as in that blessed country?
The other four young hounds were of a very good sort, but they had not the development, the bone, muscle, and stature of Finn and Kathleen, and there was not much hesitation in the decision which placed Finn first, Kathleen second, and a youngster called Connemara third.
The statues of Mausolus and Artemisia at the British Museum, private, half animal, half divine figures, all unlike the Grecian athletes and Egyptian kings in their near neighbourhood, that stand in the middle of the crowd's applause or sit above measuring it out unpersuadable justice, became to me, now or later, images of an unpremeditated joyous energy, that neither I nor any other man, racked by doubt and enquiry, can achieve; and that yet, if once achieved, might seem to men and women of Connemara or of Galway their very soul.
To some secretary of an Hibernian Bible Society; or to some old woman who gives cheap tracts, instead of blankets, to the starving peasantry of Connemara; or to some good Protestant Lord who bullies his Popish tenants. Reject not my letter, though it is redolent of cigars and genuine pigtail; for this is the room
What sort of superiority has Lord Connemara over you, I wonder? And she looked at Ernest again with a searching glance, to see whether he was to be moved by such a personal and emphatic way of putting the matter.
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