One can never truly feel the plaintive sweetness of Lady Dufferin's song until with his own eyes he beholds the melancholy beauty of the "Sweet Bay of Dublin." We enter its gates in the opalescent light of a perfect morning. The purple mists hanging over the headlands are glowing with the first rays of the sun and the pale emerald waters flash into burnished gold as the low beams strike along their surface. The voyage has been an easy one; our tickets were purchased, our cabin reserved, and provision made for the transport of the motor, all in a few minutes at the office of the Royal Automobile Club in London, and the genial touring-secretary, Mr. Maroney, has supplied us with necessary maps and information. We have not long to wait at the pier; a swinging crane picks up the car from the boat and carefully deposits it on the pavement. A railway employee is at hand with a supply of petrol and we are soon ready for the road. The night voyage has been a comfortable one; we were able to go aboard at nine o'clock and take possession of our cabin, quite as large and well-appointed as those of the best ocean-going steamers, and breakfast was served on the ship. Altogether, nothing is easier than a trip to Ireland with a motor car if one only goes about it rightly. An unknown land lies before us. Much has been written of Ireland--books of travel, history, and fiction--and poets have sung her beauties and sorrows; we have read much of the Island, but nothing that has given us more than a hint of what we are about to see. To know Ireland, one must take a pilgrim's staff, as it were; he must study her ruins and ancient monuments, see her cities and her towns, her half-deserted villages, her wretched hovels and her lonely places, and above all, must meet and know her people; then, after all, he can only say to others, "If you wish to know the reality, go and do likewise." Dublin is a handsomely built modern city of three hundred thousand inhabitants and has an air of general prosperity. It has much of interest, but it does not rightly belong in this chronicle. The low hum of our motor calls us to the open road, the green fields, and the unfrequented villages. We are soon away on the Carlow road with Cork as our objective. The road out of Dublin is distressingly rough as compared with English highways, though it improves before we reach Naas. Our first impressions are distinctly melancholy; a "deserted village"--a row of stone cottages, roofless, windowless, and with crumbling or fallen walls--speaks of Ireland's sorrows more plainly than any words. And such sad reminders are not uncommon; wholly or partly ruined villages greet us every little while on the way.