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| COLLEEN BAWN CAVES, KILLARNEY. -These caves, which the dramatic genius of Boucicault, in his play of the "Collen Bawn," adapted from Gerald Griffin's masterly novel, "The Collegians," has made celebrated, bear all the marks and tokens of having been formed by the action of the water at a period when the element was much higher, and more turbulent, in the delightful Killarney region, than it is in our day. While the dramatist, for scenic effect, places the chief incidents of the "Collen Bawn" in and around the caves and lakes, Griffin, in the "The Collegians," made them quite secondary. In one of his descriptions of the locality he says, speaking of the honeymoon love of Hardness Cregan and Eily O'Connor, the "Colleen Bawn": "To a mind that is perfectly at freedom, Killarney forms in itself a congeries of Elysian raptures; but to a fond bride and bridegroom!-the heaven to which its mountains rear their naked heads in awful reverence, can alone furnish a superior happiness." The dark and gruesome aspect of the caves presented in the sketch offers a romantic variety to the brighter and bolder scenes that surround them. It is one of the great charms of Killarney that there is so much of contrast in its natural beauties. Lake and river, mountain gorge, towering peak, beetling cliff, pastoral softness, sylvan enchantment all combine to make the place the chosen home of Beauty, as the poet has so well expressed it. |
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