Belfast to the Causeway.

The Lough of Belfast has a reputation for beauty almost as great as that of the Bay of Dublin; but though, on the day I left Belfast for Lame, the morning was fine, and the sky clear and blue above, an envious mist lay on the water, which hid all its beauties from the dozen of passengers on the Lame coach. All we could see were ghostly-looking silhouettes of ships gliding here and there through the clouds; and I am sure the coachman’s remark was quite correct, that it was a pity the day was so misty. I found myself before I was aware, entrapped into a theological controversy with two grave gentlemen outside the coach-another fog, which did not subside much before we reached Carrickfergus. The road from the Ulster capital to that little town seemed meanwhile to be extremely lively: cars and omnibuses passed thickly peopled. For some miles along the road is a string of handsome country-houses, belonging to the rich citizens of the town; and we passed by neat-looking churches and chapels, factories and rows of cottages clustered round them, like villages of old at the foot of feudal castles. Furthermore it was hard to see, for the mist which lay on the water had enveloped the mountains too, and we only had a glimpse or two of smiling comfortable fields and gardens,

Carrickfergus rejoices in a real romantic-looking castle jutting bravely into the sea, and famous as a background for picture. It is of use for little else now, luckily; nor has it been put to any real warlike purposes since the day when honest Thurot stormed, took, and evacuated it. Let any romancer who is in want of a hero peruse the second volume or it may be the third, of the “Annual Register” where the adventures of that gallant fellow are related. He was a gentleman, a genius, and, to crown all, a smuggler. He lived for some time in Ireland, and in England, in disguise, he had love-passages and romantic adventures he landed a body of his countrymen on these shores, and died in the third volume after a battle gallantly fought on both sides but in which victory rested with the British arms. What can a novelist want more? William III also landed here, and as for the rest, “M’Skimin, the accurate and laborious historian of the town informs us that the founding of the castle is lost in the depth of antiquity.” It is pleasant to give a little historic glance at a place as one passes through. The above facts may be relied on as coming from Messrs. Curry’s excellent new Guide-book; with the exception of the history of Mons. Thurot which is “private information,” drawn years ago from the scarce work previously mentioned. By the way, another excellent companion to the traveller in Ireland is the collection of the “Irish Penny Magazine,” which may be purchased for a guinea, and contains a mass of information regarding the customs and places of the country. Willis’s works is amusing as everything is, written by that lively author, and the engravings accompanying it as unfaithful as any ever made.

Meanwhile asking pardon for this double digression, which has been made while the guard-coachman is delivering his mail-bags — while the landlady stands looking on in the sun, her hands folded a little below the waist — while a company of tall burly troops from the castle has passed by, “surrounded” by a very mean, mean-faced, uneasy-looking little subaltern — while the poor epileptic idiot of the town, wallowing and grinning in the road, and snorting out supplications for a halfpenny, has tottered away in possession of the coin -meanwhile, fresh horses are brought out, and the small boy who acts behind the coach makes an unequal and disagreeable tootooing on a horn kept to warn sleepy Carmen and celebrate triumphal entries into and exits from cities. As the mist clears up, the country shows round about wild but friendly: at one place we passed a village where a crowd of well-dressed people were collected at an auction of farm-furniture, and many more figures might be seen coming over the fields and issuing from the mist. The owner of the carts and machines is going to emigrate to America. Presently we come to the demesne of Red Hall, “through which is a pretty drive of upwards of a mile in length: it contains a rocky glen, the bed of a mountain stream — which is perfectly dry, except in winter-and the woods about it are picturesque, and it is occasionally the resort of summer-parties of pleasure.” Nothing can be more just than the first part of the description, and there is very little doubt that the latter paragraph is equally faithful; — with which we come to Lame, a “most thriving town,” the same authority says, but a most dirty and narrow-streeted and ill-built one. Some of the houses reminded one of the south. A benevolent fellow-passenger said that the window was “a convenience.” And here, after a drive of 19 miles upon a comfortable coach, we were transferred with the mail-bags to a comfortable car that makes the journey to Ballycastle. There is no harm in saying that there was a very pretty smiling buxom young lass for a travelling companion; and somehow, to a lonely person, the landscape always looks prettier in such society. The” Antrim coast-road,” which we now, after a few miles, begin to follow, besides being one of the most noble and gallant works of art that is to be seen in any country, is likewise a route highly picturesque and romantic; the sea spreading wide before the spectator’s eyes upon one side of the route, the tall cliffs of limestone rising abruptly above him on the other. There are in the map of Curry’s ‘Guide-book points indicating castles and abbey ruins in the vicinity of Glenarm; and the little place looked so comfortable, as we abruptly came upon it, round a rock, that I was glad to have an excuse for staying, and felt an extreme curiosity with regard to the abbey and the castle.

The abbey only exists in the unromantic shape of a wall; the castle, however, far from being a ruin, is an antique in the most complete order-an old castle repaired so as to look like new, and increased by modern wings, towers, gables, and terraces, so extremely old that the whole forms a grand and imposing-looking baronial edifice, towering above the little town which it seems to protect, and with which it is connected by a bridge and a severe-looking armed tower and gate. In the town is a town-house, with a campanile in the Italian taste, and a school or chapel opposite in the early English; so that the inhabitants can enjoy a considerable architectural variety. A grave-looking church, with a beautiful steeple, stands amid some trees hard by a second handsome bridge and the little quay; and here, too, was perched a poor little wandering theatre (gallery 1d., pit 2d.), and proposing that night to play “Bombastes Furioso, and the Comic Bally of Glenarm in an Uproar.” I heard the thumping of the drum in the evening; but, as at Roundwood, nobody patronised the poor players. At nine o’clock there was not a single taper lighted under their awning, and my heart (perhaps it is too susceptible) bled for Fusbos.

The severe gate of the castle was opened by a kind, good-natured old porteress, instead of a rough gallowglass with a battle-axe and yellow shirt (more fitting guardian of so stern a postern), and the old dame insisted upon my making an application to see the grounds of the castle, which request was very kindly granted, and afforded a delightful half-hour’s walk. The grounds are beautiful, and excellently kept; the trees in their autumn livery of red! yellow, and brown, except some stout ones that keep to their green summer clothes, and the laurels and their like, who wear pretty much the same dress all the year round. The birds were singing with the most astonishing vehemence in the dark glistening shrubberies; but the only sound in the walks was that of the rakes pulling together the falling leaves. There was of these walks one especially, flanked towards the river by a turreted wall covered with ivy, and having on the one side a row of lime-trees that had turned quite yellow, while opposite them was a green slope, and a quaint terrace-stair, and a long range of fantastic gables, towers, and chimneys;-there was, I say, one of these walks which Mr. Cattermole would hit off with a few strokes of his gallant pencil, and which I could fancy to be frequented by some of those long-trained, tender, gentle-looking young beauties whom Mr. Stone loves to design. Here they come, talking of love in a tone that is between a sigh and a whisper, and gliding in rustling shot silks over the fallen leaves.

There seemed to be a good deal of stir in the little port, where, says the Guide-book, a couple of hundred vessels take in cargoes annually of the produce of the district. Stone and lime are the chief articles exported, of which the cliffs for miles give an unfailing supply; and, as one travels the mountains at night, the kilns may be seen lighted in in the lonely places, and flaring red in the darkness.

If the road from Larne to Glenarm is beautiful, the Coast route from the latter place to Cushendall is still more so; and, except peerless Westport, I have seen nothing in Ireland so picturesque as this noble line of Coast scenery. The new road luckily, is not yet completed, and the lover of natural beauties had better hasten to the spot in time, ere by flattening and improving the road, and leading it along the sea-shore, half the magnificent prospects are shut out, now visible from along the mountainous old road; which according to the good old fashion, gallantly takes all the hills in its course, disdaining to turn them. At three miles’ distance, near the village of Cairlough, Glenarm looks more beautiful than when you are close upon it; and, as the car travels on to the stupendous Garron Head, the traveller, looking back, has a view of the whole line of coast southward as far as Isle Magee, with its bays and white villages, and tall precipitous cliffs, green, white, and gray. Eyes left, you may look with wonder at the mountains rising above, or presently at the pretty park and grounds of Drumnasole.

Here, near the woods of Nappan, which are dressed in ten thousand colours — ash-leaves turned yellow, nut-trees red, birch-leaves brown, lime-leaves speckled over with black spots (marks of a disease which they will never get over) stands a school-house that looks like a French chateau, having probably been a villa in former days, and discharges as we pass a cluster of fair-haired children, that begin running madly down the hill, their fair hair streaming behind them. Down the hill goes the car, madly too, and you wonder and bless your stars that the horse does not fall, or crush the children that are running before, or you that are sitting behind.

Every now and then, at a trip of the horse, a disguised lady’s -maid, with a canary-bird in her lap and a vast anxiety about her best bonnet in the bandbox, begins to scream: at which the car-boy grins, and rattles down the hill only the quicker. The road, which almost always skirts the hill-side, has been torn sheer through the rock here and there an immense work of levelling, shovelling, picking, blasting, filling, is going on along the whole line. As I was looking up a vast cliff, decorated with patches of green here and there at its summit, and at its base, where the sea had beaten until now, with long, thin, waving grass, that I told a grocer, my neighbour, was like mermai............