Inside,
It Is Marble Of Cork, Marble Of Connemara, Marble Of Italy, Polished To
The Brightest.
The gates which admit from one ecclesiastical division to
another are wrought in flowers that blaze in gold.
Before the altar,
parables of our Lord are wrought in mosaic on the floor. On the wall the
different noble families who belong here, or have money invested here,
have their shields containing their coats of arms on the wall. Into this
grand church have been wrought the religious ideas of the church people
for years, at the cost of L100,000, and there is an immense golden angel
on the point of a gable calling with two trumpets for L25,000 more to
finish it.
None but a rich city could afford the splendid buildings that are in
Cork. The evening on which I arrived in Cork was signalized not only by
the boat accident, but by a grand wedding, the wedding of a Sir George
Colthurst in the splendid cathedral church just mentioned, and there was
any amount of fashion, and high birth and young beauty gathered there.
The bride was beautiful, the bride was "tall," and not yet, they say,
out of her teens. She was dressed in white satin and silver cloth, Irish
lace and orange blossoms, and wore no jewels. None but invited eyes were
allowed to look at the grand ceremony which made the fair bride and the
lord of Blarney castle one. Some tenants of the bridegroom got up a
bonfire, had some barrels of beer given them to rejoice withal, and were
dancing to the music produced by six fiddlers, when they were surrounded
by a small army of disguised people, fired into, beaten and dispersed.
The first accounts put the number of wounded at twenty, to-day they are
reduced to five - perhaps that is the proportion of exaggeration in
newspaper accounts of outrage generally. The newly-made bride and
bridegroom went to see the wounded, leaving cordials and money at every
house.
One thing is observable in Cork, the determination to make an effort to
restore native industry from its present languishing condition. Passing
along the streets I notice clerks in the windows affixing labels on
goods with the words, "Irish Manufactures," "Cork made goods," "Blarney
tweeds," "Irish blankets," "Cork made furniture." There have been
meetings held on the subject since I came here. No city in the world
could appear to be more quiet and law-abiding than Cork to all
appearance.
As one instance of the exaggeration of reports concerning outrages, I
see the disturbance in Cork that took place at the rejoicings about Sir
George Colthurst's marriage advertised with the heading 20 men shot. The
local report says five injured, one shot, but not fatally.
Went down the river Lee to Queenstown. It did not rain except a few
drops during the whole time. The sun shone, the clouds, some of them
were billowy and white, and massed themselves on a deep, blue sky.
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