DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51521#0045
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had many advantages over Merrion Square. In Merrion
Square the gardens were well kept and flowers did not
lack in the parterres, but Stephen’s Green, which I re-
membered as a wild savage field with grass in patches
and stunted hawthorns, had been remodelled, and with
excellent taste, by Lord Ardilaun, who sat on a high
pedestal brooding probably on the money that would be
needed to make the Green worthy of the houses that sur-
rounded it. He deserved his statue. The parterres and
swards cost him a few barrels of Guinness but the brim-
ming lake and the bridge and the cascade leaping from rock
to rock must have cost many thousands.
The bridge hastened my steps, for I looked forward to
watching the different movements of the water-fowl
paddling in and out of the sedges or rising in flight to
cross the city and fly no one knows whither. Lord Ardi-
laun had a taste for building, and he knew it. I heard
him once speak of himself, ironically of course, as the
Irish Cheops. His castle at Cong is an anachronism—no
one can build a castle in the nineteenth century—but do
thou think only with gratitude of Lord Ardilaun. He de-
served thanks for what he did for Dublin and he got
none, and the morality that I deduced that morning from
his Green was, “Do the best for yourself and you will be
loved, do good to others and they will detest you.”
But there was more to see in the Green than the bridge
and the cascade. Blackbirds ran across the swards, thrushes
had many advantages over Merrion Square. In Merrion
Square the gardens were well kept and flowers did not
lack in the parterres, but Stephen’s Green, which I re-
membered as a wild savage field with grass in patches
and stunted hawthorns, had been remodelled, and with
excellent taste, by Lord Ardilaun, who sat on a high
pedestal brooding probably on the money that would be
needed to make the Green worthy of the houses that sur-
rounded it. He deserved his statue. The parterres and
swards cost him a few barrels of Guinness but the brim-
ming lake and the bridge and the cascade leaping from rock
to rock must have cost many thousands.
The bridge hastened my steps, for I looked forward to
watching the different movements of the water-fowl
paddling in and out of the sedges or rising in flight to
cross the city and fly no one knows whither. Lord Ardi-
laun had a taste for building, and he knew it. I heard
him once speak of himself, ironically of course, as the
Irish Cheops. His castle at Cong is an anachronism—no
one can build a castle in the nineteenth century—but do
thou think only with gratitude of Lord Ardilaun. He de-
served thanks for what he did for Dublin and he got
none, and the morality that I deduced that morning from
his Green was, “Do the best for yourself and you will be
loved, do good to others and they will detest you.”
But there was more to see in the Green than the bridge
and the cascade. Blackbirds ran across the swards, thrushes