Volume 1 — From All The Year Round. A DUBLIN MAY MORNING.

When I look down on this gay May morning from a window into Great Sackville street, where there is a huge column to Admiral Nelson, and a golden shop-front board dedicated to O'Connell, on the site for his statue, and which is by-and-by to be made into a French boulevard and planted with trees—I say, on this May morning it is easy to see that one of the many great days for Ireland has come round once more. For the crowds in the great thoroughfares, and the "boys" sitting on the bridges, and the flags and streamers, and the rolling carriages, and the general air of busy idleness, tell me that a great festival is toward; and placards in fiercely carbuncled letters proclaim in an angry fit of St. Anthony's fire that the Prince of Wales is to "OPEN" something: which something a still greater scorbutic operation of type tells us is THE DUBLIN EXHIBITION OF 1865.

Not without charms, and marked and special features of its own, is this Dublin city—to say nothing of the fresh and fair Irish faces and violet eyes which pass by in streams, or of the cheerful voices and the gay laughs heard at every turn; or of the giant policemen who wear moustaches and beards, and thus compete on more favorable terms with military rivals; or of the rollicking drivers, who stand up as they drive, very like the cocchieri of Rome, and who look out for "fares" in a debonnaire indifferent fashion. There is a gay, busy, foreign, particolored look about the place, which reminds one of a foreign town. The background is composed of wide spacious streets, Grecian buildings wonderfully classic in tone and shape, fitted into corners with porticoes that belong to the street, and under which the people walk—pretty breaks where the bridges come, and the masts of shipping seen in the sun half way down a long, long thoroughfare. There are no warehouses or ugly business associations; but all is shops and shopping, and color and liveliness, and carriages and walkers.

I think, as I look out on this May morning, that it is curious that a people popularly supposed to want "self-reliance" and "independence," and who are utterly ignorant of the "self-help" principle, should, after all, have done some few self-reliant things in this very matter of exhibitions. Some one tells me that many decades of years before glass palaces were thought of, and when the universal peace and brotherhood glass palaces were mysteriously supposed to bring with them were not quite believed in, this "un-self-reliant" people had their regular triennial exhibition of manufactures, on the French model. Further, that close on the footsteps of the Hyde Park Exhibition came the great one of Cork, and closer again on the footsteps of Cork the really great Dublin Exhibition of 1853, the building of which cost nearly eighty thousand pounds, and which was remarkable for the first international collection of pictures, and for the first performance of Handel on a colossal scale. Not content with this, I am told that this people, who were not self-reliant, went further, had two more successful exhibitions on a smaller scale, and have now finally girded themselves up for this yet more complete effort of 1865. Not so bad, this, for our poor wo-begone sister with the harp, especially when we consider that our well-to-do Scotch sister has not "fashed" herself with such follies, justly considering the margin of profit too uncertain or too slight to repay the trouble. {826} But this is a grim and statistical ungracious view, not all suited to this Dublin May morning.

It is known, then, on this gay Dublin May morning, that the young prince, who in this island has always been looked to with an affectionate interest, has been in the city since over-night, and out at the pretty lodge, which lies out in the "Phaynix." Hence the flags and the streamers. Hence, too, in front of the palace, the balconies fringed with scarlet, and the softened and melodious buzz of distant military music, with the staff officers flying north and south, and the regiments tramping by. But the flags grow thicker, and the balconies gayer, and the music more distinct, as I find myself at the corner of the great place, or square dedicated to St. Stephen, which is a good mile's walking all round, and near which I see the great building, with the heavy porches and pillars, round which, and over which, run delicately, the light entrance of a Moorish-looking glass temple—a silver howdah on the back of a gray elephant. Such is the rather novel design for this last comer in the long series of exhibitions.

After all the miles of glass greenhouse, and the long protracted repetitions of gorgeous decorated pillars and girders, I cannot but think what a happy combination this is of solidity and lightness; and acknowledge that in these days, when Paxton Palace succeeds Paxton Palace with some monotony, there is something original in striking out the idea of fitting the glass-house to a great solid building, with huge halls, and long, cool passages, and spacious rooms, and surrounding the whole with a garden, and greenery, and cascades.

There has been the usual crush and pressure, the tremendous toiling against time, to get all done; the straining of every nerve, the sitting up all night, the hammering and sawing, the stitching of a hundred workmen and workwomen, changing the utter disorder and the naked deal boards and the rude planks of five o'clock last evening to perfect order—to the regularity of a drawing-room and acres of scarlet cloth. And in a crowd of light May morning dresses we drift into the huge concert hall, which is to hold thousands, and to echo to brass throats, and where there are the great organ, and the orchestra which holds the musical army a thousand strong: on the floor of which have grown up beds upon beds of human lilies that flutter and flutter again, whose flowers are white parasols and gossamer shawls. This hall, as a feature, is not so remarkable, for there are many great halls; but at its far end it is open and crossed half way by a gallery: and through this opening we see far on into a Winter Garden and Crystal Palace, where are the light airy galleries, with the old familiar rimson labels, and the French trophies, and the bright objects, and the great apse like a glass cathedral, and Mr. Doyle's pale coloring, the faint lines of delicate green, chosen with rare good taste, which in itself is a novelty.

Looking out through the open end of the concert hall, and facing the organ, I see a grand marone velvet eastern canopy and dais, under which the Pasha of Egypt is to sit a few months hereafter and receive his tribes; and on this dais are the nobles and gentlemen gathering, in the fine rich theatrical suits which give a coloring to a festival, and of which we have not half enough. Judges in scarlet and ermine, privy councillors with coats that seem "clotted" with gold, the never-failing lords-lieutenant and deputy-lieutenants, knights of St. Patrick, deans, doctors in scarlet, soldiers in scarlet, a lord chancellor all black and gold, eastern dervishes (it may be, from the pillow-case look of their caps), a lord mayor of York, a lord provost of Edinburgh; in short, all shapes of particolored finery. Turning round for a second, I see that the black musical army has debouched and taken ground, and that {827} the great orchestra has spread like a large dark fan from floor to ceiling. I can see "Ulster" in a gorgeous tabard, flitting to and fro, marshalling grandees, as none so well know how to marshal them, each according to his or her degree. That marvellous tabard is so stiff and gorgeous, that when it is laid by, it surely cannot be hung up or folded or put to sleep on its back like other robes, but, I fancy, must stand up straight in a wardrobe on its end, like a steel cuirass.

We seem to riot in mayors. The eye can be feasted on mayors; they can become as the air we breathe if we so choose it. They have flowed in from every town in the three kingdoms. And it does strike one, with having such a municipal gathering brought together, that there is a sort of corporate expression, a kind of municipal smirk or perk, a kind of smiling burgess air of complacency which makes the whole of this world akin. Every one, too, seems to be invested with the collar of the Golden Fleece.

Here, also, are many known faces, who wear no scarlet nor gold nor collars. Faces like that of the famous dog and animal painter whose four-footed friends look down at him from the walls: faces like that of the Sir David who invented the most popular toy in the world: faces from the science and art: from South Kensington, which, as we all know, is science and art: faces from France, from Canada, Rome, India, and a hundred other places.

Now, I hear the hum of distant martial music, and the yet fainter but more inspiriting sound of distant cheering. Then the scarlet and ermine, the privy council clotted gold, the May morning bonnets, glitter and rustle with excitement. The hum and chatter of voices full of expectation travel on softly down the glass aisles and into the great hall. There has been a grand plunging of military troopers outside, a violent arrest of fiery horses pulled up suddenly, and the prince and a royal duke and the vice-king and all their attendants have descended. From the outside, the shouting creeps in gradually, until at last it comes to its fullest pitch; when the crimson and gold crowd parts a little, we see this prince standing modestly under the Egyptian pasha's canopy, with thirty thousand eyes upon him. At this moment a speck half way up the dark orchestra, but which is a very skilful and most musical speck, gives a signal with what seems a white pin, and the musical army advances with the fine Old Hundredth. The grand Old Hundredth travels out in rising waves through the open end of the hall into the glass cathedral, then loses itself up and down in the aisles. For two verses the voices do the battle by themselves; but, at the third, the trumpets and the grand brass and the rolling of monster drums burst out, and every syllable is emphasized with a stirring crash. It is like the deluge after a drought.

Then the sun gets up, and the gold and colored figures cross, and crowd, and flit past, as some business is being transacted under that Egyptian pasha's canopy; for there are addresses to be read and spoken, and there is much advancing and backing to be done. Now, the party under the pasha's canopy breaks up for a time, and the stiff gold and scarlet and privy council strait-waistcoats, and the corporate dressing-gowns, having formed themselves into a procession, take the prince round to look at the place.

And there is a great deal to see. There are many charming pictures, and among the choicest those of which the queen of Spain has stripped her palaces, and sent here. Is there not a hint of many a Velasquez most exquisite, and of Mr. Stirling, which are worth a journey to the Escurial to worship? Here is many a rare Reynolds which Mr. Tom Taylor might find worth making a note of, and here are walls covered with noble cartoons of the severe Munich school. These, with the photographs and water-colors, and mediaeval objects, are common to many {828} an exhibition held before; but there is one feature unique—a noble sculpture gallery, artistic, charmingly lighted, sufficient to delight Mr. Gibson, and drive the Royal Academy to despair. A sculpture-hall, on which you can look down from a balustrade in a room overhead, as if into a Pompeiian court. A sculpture-hall, in which you can look up to an arching glass roof, and, half way down again, to the balustrade just mentioned, which is dotted with small statutes. A sculpture-hall, where I can walk round and think myself in a Roman palace, to which these fine objects belong, and not in a temporary shed where some scattered objects that have been lent are shown. For here I see that the Roman studios have been emptied of their treasures; that Miss Hosmer has sent her Faun, in toned yellow marble: a marvellous—if the speech be not impolite— work for a woman. With Story's wonderful Judith, and a Baby Girl by Mogni—a pendant for the now famous Reading Girl. But it is easy to prophesy that this Baby Girl will be photographed, and stereoscoped, and binocularized in a hundred ways, and watched over by policemen specially, and visited by a steady crowd. This hall and its contents—the like of which it is no boast to say has not been yet seen in these kingdoms—is the feature of this exhibition.

Then, having seen all that is most curious and beautiful—in the fashion in which such things must be seen where there is only a quarter of an hour to see them—the stiff' gold and crimson strands, which we call the procession, came back to the pasha's dais. And then, with a crash and a smash, and a thundering of monster drums, and the rattle and rolling of little drums, and the sharp brassy bark of trumpets, the true English national Old Hundredth, in which musical and unmusical—people with ears, and people without, even people with voices, and people without—can join, then God save the Queen is sung. Sung! Rather fired off! Discharged! Salvoed!

And then the glittering mass begins to dissolve and fade away. The stage, which has been laid out under the pasha's canopy, gradually clears. At the door there is a struggle, and the scatter of new gravel, with the frantic leaping up behind carriages of many footmen, and the closing in of mounted soldiers. And then the pageant melts away, and the work of the day is done.

As I walk and wander from the light glass arcades to the darker courts, and from the courts to the open terraces, and hear the hum of Saxons' voices, and from at least every third mouth the sharp "burr" of some Saxon dialect, and when I meet burly shoulders and massive chests which are not of the country, some out-of-place speculations come into my mind, and I am tempted to make suppositions. First, I speculate—of course shrinking away from the dry bones of politics—whether there might not have been some mistake in the old and constant treatment of a people who seem cheerful and grateful for a kind word or a kinder act, and who are "willing" and even clever in their way—and think whether the "want of progress" and want of "capital" and of "self-reliance," and the want of a hundred other things which puzzle and dispirit the political physician, may not in some degree be laid to the account of old mistakes, old laws, old errors, old harsh treatment, old jealousies and restraints, the folly of which is now seen and admitted, but the fruits of which remain to this day?

Just as the fruits of a bad education linger in a grown man, and the marks of early hardship are stamped upon the face and constitution, it will take many years yet, in the life of a nation, before old faults are worked out of its constitution. And I think—still in the walks of the Winter Garden—that if my friendly Briton tell me that his experience of the lower orders of Irish is that "you can't depend upon a word they say," I cannot but recollect that half a century ago they were civilly slaves, without rights; {829} and that a century ago they were a proscribed caste, against whom one-half the laws of the land were directed. If we have found them indolent, and disinclined to perseverance and the making of money, have we not dim recollections of seeing acts of parliament passed again and again to cripple their trade? A people must grow up, as a child must grow up; and it is hard to expect that a child whose body has suffered by an unkind or an injudicious nurse, should become at once strong under better treatment. Then I speculate on the mysterious relation of Irishmen to Irish land, through which the "bit" of land is as necessary as the "bit" of bread; where a tenant holds his tiny scrap, on which he pays his thirty-shilling rent; and during the whole year is struggling desperately to work out of this great estate a few potatoes, and fewer clothes for himself and family, beside the miserable thirty-shilling margin for the landlord. I think how some estates have two, four, six, eight thousand tenants of this valuable class—and think beside, in answer to a natural objection, how this miserable system was created for political ends, to multiply voters "to support government," If the Palace and Winter Garden were twice as long and twice as broad, I should not have half time or space enough for the speculations that come crowding on me with reference to this perplexing country.

And having made these speculations, and having gone quite round the garden, I begin—in addition to my speculations—to make some rather wild suppositions. As, suppose that, for a mere experiment, there were a greater spirit of charity of speech introduced into our dealings with this country. Suppose that we gave the people time and reasonable allowance—looked on with encouragement where there was any good attempt made, and with indulgence where there was failure. Suppose that some of our journals gave over writing "slashing" articles, and some men desisted from speeches and bitter epigrams on the "mere Irish," which, being copied in every cheap print, and brought to every cabin door, do incalculable mischief, fatally widening the breach, and causing England and Englishmen to be sometimes almost hated. Suppose that there were some little restraint on the traditional stock ridicule of Irish matters. Suppose that the Englishmen who visited the country carried themselves with a little less of William the Conqueror and Strongbow air, and suppose that—

But here are the umbrellas, and the sticks, and the gate.