The situation of Cashel is not only beautiful but superb. There is no other place of its kind in Ireland situated like it. Its situation is as peculiar as that of Glendaloch or Clonmacnois. It is, perhaps, the most imposing pile of ecclesiastical ruins in Europe. Mont St Michael in France can hardly compare with Cashel in commanding beauty of situation. One overlooks the chilly sea, but the other overlooks as warm, as fair, and as fertile a country as there is in the world. [Illustration: BUILDINGS ON THE ROCK OF CASHEL.] Cashel has inspired many poets; but, unfortunately, none of the great English masters of song has made it a theme; and it is strange that our own Moore, who has celebrated Glendaloch, the Vale of Avoca, and other famous places, never composed a lyric on Cashel. No other place in Ireland could have given him a grander theme to write poems of the kind in which he delighted, and in the composition of which he was such an acknowledged master. It is indeed strange that so few of those who may be called our minor poets have written about Cashel, and so seldom taken it as their theme. There exists, however, a short poem on Cashel of the class usually known as sonnets, and it is probable that neither Moore, nor any of the other great masters of song, could have written anything superior to it. It is by the late Sir Aubry de Vere. It first appeared in the _Dublin Penny Journal_ some sixty years ago; but it has so long been partially forgotten that it can hardly be out of place to reproduce it here: "Royal and saintly Cashel! I could gaze Upon the wreck of thy departed powers, Not in the dewy light of matin hours, Nor the meridian pomp of summer's blaze; But at the close of dim autumnal days When the sun's parting glance thro' slanting showers Sheds o'er thy rock-throned pediments and towers Such awful gleams as brighten on Decay's Prophetic cheek;--at such a time methinks There breathes from thy lone courts and voiceless aisles A melancholy moral, such as sinks On the worn traveller's heart amid the piles Of vast Persepolis on her mountain stand, Or Thebes half buried in the desert's sand."