On one side of the car line high walls shut out to the ordinary passer-by the beauties they are intended to protect, but from the top of the tram cars any one can share them for "tuppence." On the other side is the water, the Bay of Dublin, and, running parallel with the shore, is a long spit of land called the North Bull, which was formerly a terrible menace to the commerce of the coast. Nearly every winter's gale sent a ship or two to destruction, and the bodies of hundreds of poor seamen have been washed up where the children are now playing in the sand. Here and there the skeletons of dead vessels may yet be seen, but the North Bull is no longer dangerous. Modern devices protect navigation, and in the midst of the heather and the glowing yellow gorse golf links have been laid out and a clubhouse has been erected, surrounded by lilacs, laburnums, and hawthorns, now in the full glory of their bloom. It is only twenty minutes' ride by street car from the center of Dublin, and the business men can come out here to spend the long summer evenings at their sport. [Illustration: BAILEY LIGHT AT HOWTH, MOUTH OF DUBLIN BAY] A little farther on is a beautiful mansion built in 1835 upon the site and with the materials of Clontarf Castle, one of the oldest and most famous within the English Pale--which was an area sixty miles long and thirty miles wide around the city of Dublin. The castle originally belonged to the Knights Templar, and from them passed to the Knights of St. John. In 1541 it was surrendered to the crown by Sir John Rawson, prior of Kilmainham, who was created Viscount of Clontarf as compensation. The famous battle of Clontarf, the final struggle between Christianity and heathenism on the soil of Ireland, was fought here on Good Friday in the year 1014 between the Danes under Sigtryg, the Viking, and the Irish under Brian Boru. Eight thousand men were slain on one side and four thousand on the other, including every prominent chief. The Irish were victorious, and, although the Danes were not immediately driven from the island, it was the end of their domination. They came in a thousand boats all the way from Denmark, from Scotland, the Orkneys, and from the many islands of the north, and when their leaders were killed they fled to the water to regain their ships, which lay at anchor or were beached on the shore of Dublin Bay. The Irish warriors followed and continued to slay them until the sea was crimson with heathen blood.