Emerging at length from the thickly wooded plain, I began the ascent of the Three Rock Mountain, and, in my slackened speed, had full time to gaze upon the bay beneath me, broken with many a promontory, backed by the broad bluff of Howth, and the more distant Lambay. No, it is _not_ finer than Naples. I did not say it was; but, seeing it as I then saw it, I thought it could not be surpassed. Indeed, I went further, and defied Naples in this fashion:-- “Though no volcano's lurid light Over thy bine sea steals along, Nor Pescator beguiles the night With cadence of his simple song; “Though none of dark Calabria's daughters With tinkling lute thy echoes wake, Mingling their voices with the waters, As 'neath the prow the ripples break; “Although no cliffs with myrtle crown'd, Reflected in thy tide, are seen, Nor olives, bending to the ground, Relieve the laurel's darker green; “Yet--yet--” Ah, there was the difficulty,--I had begun with the plaintiff, and I really had n't a word to say for the defendant; and so, voting comparisons odious, I set forward on my journey. As I rode into Enniskerry to breakfast, I had the satisfaction of overhearing some very flattering comments upon Blondel, which rather consoled me for some less laudatory remarks upon my own horsemanship. By the way, can there possibly be a more ignorant sarcasm than to say a man rides like a tailor? Why, of all trades, who so constantly sits straddle-legged as a tailor? and yet he is especial mark of this impertinence.