You see things in shop windows ticketed Scotch and English, but,
until this new movement began, nothing marked Irish. Yet Limerick laces
might tempt any fine lady, as well as Antrim linens and Down damasks.
There is also Blarney tweed of great cheapness and excellence, Balina
blankets, and the excellent Claddagh flannel.
If there were enterprise as well, and a desire to patronize home
industries, I think the chimneys of factories now silent and idle might
smoke again. I particularly noticed in every corner of Ireland where I
have been that where I saw the tall chimneys of factories in operation I
did not see barefoot women with barefoot asses selling ass loads of turf
for threepence.
I left Dublin--really, I may say, an almost unseen Dublin--behind me and
turned my face Belfastwards.
Drogheda is the last place of which I have taken any notes. I was a day
or two there. In fact I was more than a few days, but was confined to my
room by a severe neuralgia most of the time. There is a fine railway
bridge here, lofty enough for schooners to sail under. The land on both
sides of the river is like a garden, and is devoted to pleasure grounds
in the usual proportion.
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