A PILGRIMAGE

DEAR MR. POPLAR,-Having in a former number of your MAGAZINE given you a sketch of Quilca, and of some great and gentle names connected, as well with that locality, as with the Irish literature of the past century, I thought it probable that you and your readers, who doubtless are part of your integral self, might "lend a pliant ear" to the pencillings by the way of a little tour, made many years ago, into the heart of the Highlands of North Donegal.

This country, rich in striking and magnificent scenery, and producing a peasantry of peculiar and primitive character, has not been altogether unnoticed by your comprehensive periodical, as an able, instructive, and highly perspicacious article on "Gweedore," which appeared in the January number, can testify. Over that district, so well described, I will not venture to let my pen travel; nor will I trench upon the peculiar region of wild and wonderful scenery, already sketched by one who has now entered into his rest-one who united rare delineatory powers with thorough perception of character; a writer most attractive and sparkling, yet tempering all he wrote with the hue and the health of genuine piety-I mean the late Rev. Cæsar Otway. I am not attempting now to follow where he led; but, as a gleaner in a large highland field, I will only essay to do what he may have left undone. "Impar congressus Achilli." And since I have gone so far out of my way as to bring Horace to illustrate a question about Donegal, I may as well make a further use of the Roman's wit and wisdom to introduce my subject, and start me upon my tour.

I need not quote his Latin, for every body knows where he says that many brave men were before Agamemnon and the wars of Troy, who lived and died unknown, because they had no one to sing their deeds or write their history. And as with mortals, so with

places. Many a majestic scene-soft, savage, or sublime though named in theFolio Family Atlas," or mathematically mensurated, and duly dotted down in the geography of the Ordnance survey, yet from not having been trodden by the traveller, or sung by the bard, or sketched by the painter, seems fated to waste its sweetness on the desert air of neglect, and be all but altogether forgotten. How has Moore immortalised the sister vales of Cachmere and Ovoca, in his Oriental and Hibernian verses; but, though all unsung, there are few more sweet, lovely valleys "in this wide world" than Glen Swilly in North Donegal, when seen at

right time and season-which is on a soft autumnal afternoon, when the sun is bright, and the corn is being cut along the holmes, and the swift Swilly runs clear as a diamond between its green banks, and the clustering rowan berries are blushing scarlet among the leaves of the mountain ash, and the poplars are trembling by the river, and the holly is glistening amidst the rocks, and the golden sallows are listening to the ripple of the water, and the song is sweet, and the whistle is shrill, and the laughter rings clear, and the voices are merry, as they come up together through the mellow air from those knots of harvesters who are binding the yellow stooks amidst the golden stubble; and the blue smoke curls up and over the wild wood on the hill, disclosing where many a tiny farmhouse lies, like a bird in its nest, ensconced amidst its leaves, and girt in by rocks and rills in its mountain solitude.

This lovely valley stands based upon the large land-locked sea lake which bears its name, and runs up, past the little thriving town of Letterkenny, for about six miles, between swelling hills, backed by darker and sterner mountains, the haunt of the eagle and hill fox. These eminences appear at one time to have been covered with wood, but now cleared-here for tillage, or there for pasture; while in other places