As for the barrack of the Royal Irish Artillery, the great gate leading
into the parade ground, by the river side, and all that, I believe the
earth, or rather that grim giant factory, which is now the grand feature
and centre of Chapelizod, throbbing all over with steam, and whizzing
with wheels, and vomiting pitchy smoke, has swallowed them up.
A line of houses fronting this--old familiar faces--still look blank and
regretfully forth, through their glassy eyes, upon the changed scene.
How different the company they kept some ninety or a hundred years ago!
Where is the mill, too, standing fast by the bridge, the manorial
appendage of the town, which I loved in my boyhood for its gaunt and
crazy aspect and dim interior, whence the clapper kept time mysteriously
to the drone of the mill-sluice? I think it is gone. Surely _that_
confounded thing can't be my venerable old friend in masquerade!
But I can't expect you, my reader--polite and patient as you manifestly
are--to potter about with me, all the summer day, through this
melancholy and mangled old town, with a canopy of factory soot between
your head and the pleasant sky.
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