Dublin is finely situated at the head of Dublin Bay. It is built solidly, on comparatively level land, on both sides of the River Liffey, running from west to east. The city has a population of 242,722; including the adjoining suburb, 295,841. The river is navigable to Carlisle Bridge at the centre of the city, and from the mouth of the river up to the bridge it has good docks and wharves. Its commerce is varied and extensive. Unfortunately there was at the entrance of the harbor a sand-bar, on which, at low water, the depth varied from nine to twenty-four feet. This is now no great source of annoyance, as a portion of it has been removed, and large ships, taking advantage of the tides, may come up to the wharves. A great part of the city is regularly built, having wide and well-paved streets, and magnificent stores and public buildings. They are of splendid architecture, and of every style and kind, from the classic Greek and Roman, to the elegant Renaissance, and from the Gothic of antiquity to the most refined of our own day. The latter, however, in its best estate,--save perhaps in its new grouping and combination of the best of the old ideas, with a rejection of the questionable features--is not much in advance of its original sources. Like all large places, there is a slum where the people are poor and low; but in these respects Dublin is not the equal of Cork and some other parts of Southern Ireland. As we go north towards Belfast and Londonderry we find an advance in what constitutes a higher and better civilization. The influence of the people of the North of England, and more especially of Scotland, has modified it. It may be said that where inflexible Episcopacy, acting on Catholicism, has prevailed, different results have come. While the good but ignorant Catholic has no affinity for Presbyterianism, he has a great respect for the industrious, well-appearing, just-dealing Scotchman, and he entertains an active suspicion in regard to the more formal Episcopalian, who has ruthlessly, as he thinks, appropriated the grand old churches where rest the bones of revered saints, and where his fathers worshipped for many generations. Some especial influence certainly has modified Northern Ireland's action, nature, and life. There is a deal more implied in the phrase North of Ireland, and in its antithesis, Far-downer, than appears to the casual observer. There is no city of Ireland where wealth and poverty are more contiguous, and where aristocracy and democracy are nearer neighbors, than at Dublin.