Yet the natural features of scenery and climate which we have pointed out, interesting as all must admit them to be, are not the only ones that confer upon our country the peculiar and impressive character which it possesses. The relics of past epochs of various classes; the monuments of its Pagan times, as revealed to us in its religious, military, and sepulchral remains; the ruins of its primitive Christian ages, as exemplified in its simple and generally unadorned churches, and slender round towers; the more splendid monastic edifices of later date, and the gloomy castles of still more recent times--these are everywhere present to bestow historic interest on the landscape, and bring the successive conditions and changes of society in bygone ages forcibly before the mind; so that an additional interest, of a deep and poetical nature, is thus imparted to views in themselves impressive from their wild and picturesque appearance. So perfect, indeed, is this harmony of the natural and artificial characteristics of Irish scenery, so comprehensively do both tell the history of our country, to which Nature has been most bountiful, and in which, alas! man has not been happy, that if we were desirous of giving a stranger a true idea of Ireland, and one that would impress itself on his mind, we should conduct him to one of our green open landscapes, where the dark and ruined castle, seated on some rocky height, or the round tower, with its little parent church, in some sequestered valley, would be the only features to arrest his attention; and of such a scene we should say emphatically, This is Ireland! And such a scene is that which is presented by the ruins represented in our prefixed illustration. Passing along the great northern road from Drogheda to Dundalk, and about four miles from the former, the traveller will find himself in an open pastoral country, finely undulating, thinly dotted with the cottages of the peasants, and but little adorned by art. On one side, to his left, he will see a little group of ruins, with a lofty but shattered round tower, giving index of their age and character. These are the ruins of the long since celebrated religious establishment of Monasterboice, one of the most interesting groups of their kind in Ireland. They consist of two small churches, a round tower, and three most gorgeously sculptured stone crosses, standing in the midst of a crowd of tombs and head-stones of various ages. Both the churches are of great antiquity, though, as their architectural features clearly show, of widely separated ages--the larger one exhibiting the peculiarities of the ecclesiastical structures of the twelfth century, and the smaller those of a much earlier date. Both are also simple oblongs, consisting of a nave and choir; and the round tower appears to be of coeval architecture with the earlier church.