after a variety of other perilous and wild adventures in Ireland, was surrounded by a superior force in Connaught. His knights were inclined to avail themselves of their horses, and save themselves by flight; but their leader, dismounting, drew his sword, and kissing the cross of it, thrust it into his horse's side: his example was followed by all the knights except two, who were sent to a neighbouring hill, to be spectators of the approaching combat. The Normans were cut off, not a man escaping besides the two who afterwards testified the circumstances of the heroic transaction. Some time after, the original family name of Tristram was changed to St. Lawrence, for the following reason:-One of them commanded an army near Clontarf, against the common invaders, the Danes. The battle was fought on St. Lawrence's day, and he made a vow to the Saint, common in those times, that if he were victorious he would assume his name, and entail it upon his posterity. The Danes were defeated, and his vow was religiously preserved.* Another romantic circumstance is related of this family. The celebrated Grana Uille, or Grace O'Malley, was noted for her piratical depredations in the reign of Elizabeth. Returning on a certain time from England, where she had paid a visit to the queen, she landed at Howth, and proceeded to the castle. It was the hour of dinner, and the gates were shut. Shocked at an exclusion so repugnant to her notions of Irish hospitality, she immediately proceeded to the shore, where the young lord was at nurse, and seizing the child, embarked with him, and sailed to Connaught, where her own castle stood. After some time, however, she restored the child, with the express stipulation that the gates should be always thrown open when the fa

*Clogher's M.S. quoted by Lodge, III. 180.

Province of Leinster.

Luba Feb. 1, 1820 by Longman & Paternoster Row.

mily went to dinner, a practice which is observed at this day."*

The castle is a long battlemented structure, flanked by square towers at each extremity, and approached by a large flight of steps, which are modern. À spacious hall extends along the whole front of the building, ornamented within by the weapons and armour of ancient days, and, among the rest, is the identical two-handed sword with which Sir Armoricus Tristram, the first English proprietor already mentioned, defeated the Danes. In a chamber, to which a flight of steps leads from the hall, is a painting said to represent the abreption of the young Lord Howth. A female is mounted on a white horse, receiving a child from a peasant; above, the sky seems to open, and a figure is represented looking down on the group below. The picture however, appears to allude to some other subject, though the tradition of the castle refers it to this. In this room is a bed in which William III. slept, and which is preserved exactly as it then was, in remembrance of that circumstance. In the saloon are some good portraits; among others, a full-length of Dean Swift in his robes, with the "Draper's Letters" in his hand; the figure of Wood is crouching beside him, and his halfpence are scattered about: the hangings of this apartment remain as they were first placed upwards of a century ago, and their appearance is such as to corroborate this rather curious fact. Over a door-way to a range of offices, connected with the west end of the castle, is a curious inscription, containing the initials of Christopher, the twentieth Lord of Howth, usually called the Blind Lord, and of Elenor Plunket, whom he married; their arms are impaled on a shield in the centre, with the motto of the Howth family, and the date, 1564. The original castle of Howth, now a ruin, is situated on another part of the domain.

* Whitelaw and Walsh, II. 1256.

In a meadow adjacent to the castle, to the southeast, may be seen a large Cromlech, or Druidical Altar,* consisting of a ponderous mass of unhewn rock, 14 feet long, 12 broad, and 6 thick, resting in an inclined position upon vast shapeless masses of the same material. The position of the upper stone was originally more horizontal than at present, one of the supporters having broken with its weight, and thus occasioned it to rest with one edge upon the ground; but the superincumbent mass, in all these curious relics of antiquity, many of which exist in Ireland, is more or less inclined,† and the stones of which they are composed are universally unmarked with the impression of any implement. Though generally attributed to the Druids, Sir James Ware is disposed to refer their origin to a yet more remote period than that at which they flourished, deducing them from the practice of the patriarchs, who were commanded to employ no tools in the construction of their simple altars, How such immense fragments should have been disposed in an artificial form, at an age when we are taught to believe that the powers derived from mechanics were unknown, must ever remain a subject for astonishment: the conjecture is at the least ingenious in regard to this monument, as it rests in a hollow, that the perpendicular stones were sunk in pits under the principal mass as it lay on the ground, and that the earth being afterwards dug away, it was left supported on these rude pillars.

The town of Howth is inhabited by a singularly hardy and healthy race of men, generally above the common height, who, until very lately, were noted smugglers,

* Called by the natives of Howth, Fin's Quoit, in allusion to the supposed derivation of its position-the force of Fin M'Comhl (or Fingal) 's arm, when engaged on that spot with a Dane.

+ A circumstance in which the word cromlech, literally meaning a crooked or bending stone, originated.