MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS.

A WALK THROUGH THE "PHOENIX
PARK," DUBLIN.

DUBLIN was described long since as the "saybathinest, tay-drinkinest, car-drivinest, place in Christendom, flogged the world for divarsion.” The description may be trustworthy, but to a stranger, a Sunday spent within its precincts is apt to prove rather triste, and when, on my return from the west, thanks to the slowness and unpunctuality of the railway, I found myself constrained to spend that day within them, I felt considerable anxiety on the subject either of amusement or employment: the Protestant portion of Ireland is indeed quite on a par with England in respect of the sad, if not bitter, observance of the day of rest.

Breakfast and church were over by twelve o'clock, for they keep early hours in Dublin, and

it was with a feeling of gratitude, akin to that which Lord Tom Noddy felt towards Tiger Tim when

"He said, as the door behind him swung,

An't please you, my lord, there's a man to be hung!"

that I accepted the hint of my friend Pat, the "Boots" of the Hibernian Hotel:

"Shure, yer 'onner should see the Phaynix Park!"

I had often heard of the beauty and extent of the park, and determined at once to visit it; accordingly, I took my seat on one of those tramwaycars which are found both a convenience and a luxury in Dublin, and are patronized by every class, although in our more crowded thoroughfares they seem to be looked upon with an unfavourable eye.

My course lay along the banks of the Liffey-a turbid stream, swelled by the recent rains, and hardly contained within its stone-supported banks. Flecks of white foam, like snowballs, dot the surface, a few boats struggle against the surging water, nets hang in festoons from the walls, and foaming torrents roll in from flooded sewers, hundreds of gulls flit, like swallows, above and about, ever dipping down, making a feint, but never, or but

rarely, settling on its surface, ever, like Dickens's Nadgett, apparently expecting to meet with something, or somebody, which or who never comes. Gulls somehow seem out of place in the midst of a busy and great city, but everything in Ireland is out of place, or appears so to our unaccustomed eye.

Leaving the car, I enter the park, and before I have got well past the ugly monument, which, a friendly potboy tells me, was erected to commemorate Wellington and his victories, I am strikingly impressed with its magnitude and superiority in every respect to our own comparatively small and stupidly subdivided enclosures, Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. The extent of the Phoenix I do not know, but it must be very considerable, and is, with good taste, left as far as possible in a state of nature; iron railings are rare, iron hurdles unknown.

Turning to the left, I find myself in a thicket of ancient thorn-trees, standing singly, many covered with a luxuriant growth of ivy, and opening here and there to beautiful views of the Wicklow mountains and the rapid river looking bright in the distance. Some thrushes and blackbirds are hard at work with the berries, a colony of longtailed tits flits before me, and a redbreast dribbles out its cheery wintry note from the branch above;

a magpie's nest on a lofty tree, and another in an ancient thorn, speak ever more openly of the country, and I could fancy myself in some wild part of the New Forest; only a magpie's nest would there be a real novelty. A bright rapid stream, probably swelled like the Liffey into abnormal dimensions, tumbles along beside my path, and the scenery gets wilder and more beautiful every moment. Presently I come in view of the Viceregal Lodge, a spacious white edifice, ugly, but comfortable-looking enough.

Close at hand lay two fine bucks, and I marvel at their apparent good-fellowship, knowing the habits of the animal in October. While mentally attributing their strange quietude to the fact that they are Irish, and of course different from any other bucks, they both rise together, and I then see that the two have been combatants, fighting until, like the warriors of old, they have lain down to rest, mutually exhausted. The victor, a black buck, with superb horns, is, as frequently happens, in sad case; besides the punishment received from his adversary, he has been gored in the side, probably by some jealous youngster, "a felon knight" who has caught him at a disadvantage when engaged with his adversary; he is, besides,