King's Bench, Exchequer, and Common Pleas,
and known commonly as the Four Courts.

I have not the art of guide-book writing,
or I would mention the exact dimensions of
this noble structure, with full information in
addition as to its friezes, entablatures,
Corinthian columns, statues, &c. As it is, I am
content to enter the great circular hall, with
twelve windows, crowned by a dome. This
during term time is open to all—serving,
indeed, the purpose of Westminster Hall in
London or the Salle des Pas Perdus in Paris;
and here for a contemplative man is food for
thought sufficient to last him for a month.

Suitors, witnesses, and idlers mingle with
vendors of watch-guards, dog-collars, combs,
oranges, hundred-bladed knives, memorandum
books, almanacks, and sponges; together with
barristers, barristers' clerks, attorneys hard-
faced and sleek-faced, all are mixed up in
heterogeneous confusion. How many hundred
million footsteps have been lost here, I wonder,
since this hall was first paced? How much of
the dust has been the dust of that death that
Yesterdays have lighted fools to? Can the
pavement of Hades show such a mosaic of good
intentions as must be tesselated here? Surely,
there must have been sighs breathed and
curses muttered enough in this hall to bring
down the ponderous dome; tears enough
shed to evaporate to the lantern, and
run down the sides. Fortunes made and
fortunes lost; hopes deferred, and hearts
sickened; fierce hatreds, undying loves, blasted
happiness, lust, dice, wine, horses, every
human virtue, every human passion, every
human wish and aspiration must have their
silent chronicles lurking somewhere, now
written in dust, and now in damp, and now
in dirt—now notched in stone, now worn in
staircases, now frayed from paint-denuded
doors beneath the dome of the Four Courts
of Dublin.

And still the pace goes on and the steps are
lost. Affirmations, replications, and rejoinders,
quillets and quibbles and quibbolets, affidavits
false as dicers' oaths, faggot briefs, law calf,
white faces, quivering lips, groans of
impatience, curses of despair, shouts of triumph,
malice, deceit, law-latin, law-logic, and law-
justice; and so the pace goes on, and the
cases on the paper are proceeded with. Who
shall say when to end? Is not litigation
older than King Solomon and all his wisdom?

How many lord chancellors that were to be
have paced this hall briefless and in rusty
gowns? How many chancellors that are to
be pace it now in similar case? Here, in the
good old times, how many an amicable
arrangement has been made for a deadly duel
next morning in the " fifteen acres?" How
many ghosts must haunt this hall of barristers
shot by barristers, plaintiffs shot by defendants?
What blood as well as dust in the
Four Courts. But that pace is ended, and
hair-trigger footsteps are lost no more.

We pass Richmond and Essex bridges—the
last named after an Earl of Essex who was
lord-lieutenant here in sixteen hundred and
seventy-six—and which is said to have been
erected on the exact model of Westminster
bridge. It is of course smaller, but considerably
handsomer, than that infirm old
structure which has been patched and
cobbled so often, that, like Elwes the miser's
worsted hose, scarcely any of the original
fabric remains.

Opposite to Essex Bridge, on Essex Quay,
is the principal Presbyterian church in
Dublin; and, in the immediate neighbourhood,
once stood one of the finest abbeys
possessed by Dublin in the mediaeval times.
There is scarcely a vestige of it remaining
now save a crypt in a sawyer's yard.

Yet more quays, and more bridges. There
is the metal bridge, constructed in eighteen
hundred and sixteen, and is one hundred
and forty feet long, I am told, consisting of
one bold elliptical arch. Another quay—still
lined on one side by busy, bustling shops—
and we approach the termination of our
ramble. We stand upon Carlisle Bridge, the
most crowded thoroughfare in Dublin, leading
from Westmoreland Street, the Bank, the
College, &c., to Sackville Street, the Post
Office, and Nelson Column.

Here, traveller, pause and gaze on the
stately Custom-House, the ships—too few,
alas!—and the great port of Dublin. All lie
eastward; and eastward, too, stretch more
quays, lined chiefly with shipping and bonding
warehouses, and shops for the sale of ships'
stores. Southward runs the stream of life
and motion:—jaunting cars and carriages;
inside and outside cars; officers on horseback ,
parties of excursionists coming from the
Exhibition; laughing children and comely
peasants. Westward are the quays and
bridges we have passed, and in the far-off
distance rise, with purpling shadows against
the summer sky, the crumbling towers of St.
Audeon's and the cathedral of Christ Church.
The setting sun has bathed tower and spire,
mast and cupola, water and quay, in one flood
of golden light; and the river dances, and
the diamond-flashing windows seem to laugh,
and from the crowds on the quays and streets
comes up a cheerful murmur.

From my window at home, in the twilight,
I can still see the length of the quays, the
houses, the bridges, and the people.
Presently the twinkling lamps are lighted; and
these, with the gas-lit shops, and the deep
red glow from the chemists, mirror
themselves in the water, which grows darker and
deeper every minute. As I think of the fair
sights I have seen, some thoughts begin to
deepen with the deepening twilight. Amidst
all the splendour of granite architecture and
fluted columns I am constrained to remember
many evidences of prosperity decayed and
glories departed. That the Custom-House is
wofully too large for any purposes of trade,
and that the authorities have been compelled