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| SUMMIT OF BLARNEY CASTLE, COUNTY CORK. -The sketch shows the top of the main tower of Blarney Castle, which has been seen by almost every tourist who ever made a trip to Ireland. There rises the tower "in craggy dizziness sublime," and from the rugged battlements may be enjoyed one of the finest scenic prospects in Southern Ireland. The landscape is diversified by fields of emerald green; groves, whose pastoral shad invites the weary traveller to luxuriant repose on the soft mosses beneath the venerable trees; sparkling lakes and rushing rivers. Blarney Castle stands, in fact, in the midst of an Irish Eden, peaceful enough in our days, but often the theater of many violent deeds, when right contended vainly against the mailed hand of might. It will be seen that, in the picture, a railing surrounds the parapet, and that the apertures in the walls beneath are similarly protected. This precaution became necessary when the great rush to see, and kiss, the magical Blarney Stone began in the early part of this century, and it has continued ever since. Several slight, and a few almost fatal, accidents occurred thorugh the eagerness and curiosity of tourists. The boy in the bicycle suit, leaning over the railing, as pictured in the sketch, evidently needs a safeguard of the king to keep him from risking his precious neck. |
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