If another wishes to study economic conditions,
standards of life, rates of wages, he has my gracious leave for his
pilgrimage. If another desires to amass historical and
archaeological facts, measurements of hypaethral temples, modes of
burial, folk-lore, fortification, God forbid that I should throw
cold water on the quest. But the only traveller whom I recognise as
a kindred spirit is the man who goes in search of impressions and
effects, of tone and atmosphere, of rare and curious beauty, of
uplifting association. Nothing that has ever moved the interest, or
the anxiety, or the care, or the wonder, of human beings can ever
wholly lose its charm. I have felt my skin prickle and creep at the
sight of that amazing thing in the Dublin museum, a section dug
bodily out of a claypit, and showing the rough-hewn stones of a
cist, deep in the earth, the gravel over it and around it, the
roots of the withered grass forming a crust many feet above, and,
inside the cist, the rude urn, reversed over a heap of charred
ashes; it was not the curiosity of the sight that moved me, but the
thought of the old dark life revealed, the dim and savage world,
that was yet shot through and pierced, even as now, with sorrow for
death, and care for the beloved ashes of a friend and chieftain.
Pages:
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120