“Any one passing over the Bridge of Leixlip, must, if his eye is worth a farthing for anything else than helping him to pick his way through the puddle, look up and down with delight while moving over this bridge. To the right, the river winning its noisy turbulent way over its rocky bed, and losing itself afar down amidst embossing woods; to the left, after plunging over the Salmon-leap, whose roar is heard though half a mile off, and forming a junction with the Rye-water, it takes a bend to the east, and washes the rich amphitheatre with which Leixlip is environed. I question much whether any castle, even Warwick itself [bravo, Terence!] stands in a grander position than Leixlip Castle, as it embattles the high and wooded grounds that form the forks of the two rivers. Of the towers, the round one of course was built by King John, the opposite square one by the Geraldines. This noble and grandly circumstanced pile has been in latter days the baronial residence of the White family, and subsequently the residence of [lord-lieutenants] generals and prelates. Here Primate Stone, more a politician than a Christian [churchman], retired from his contest with the Ponsonbys and the Boyles to play at cricket with General Cunningham; here resided Speaker Connolly before he built his splendid mansion at Castletown; here the _great_ commoner, as he was called, Tom Connolly, was born. Like many such edifices, this castle is haunted: character and keeping would be altogether lost if towers of 600 years’ standing, with rich mullioned ‘windows that exclude the light, and passages that lead to nothing,’ with tapestried chambers that have witnessed pranks of revelry and feats of war, of Norman, Cromwellian, and Williamite possession, if such a place had not its legend; and one of Ireland’s wildest geniuses, the eccentric and splendid Maturin, has decorated the subject with the colourings of his vivid fancy.” Terence adds:--“Leixlip is memorable in an historic point of view as the place where, in the war commencing 1641, General Preston halted when on his way to form a junction with the Marquis of Ormonde to oppose the Parliamentarians. Acknowledging that his army was not excommunication proof, he bowed before the fiat of the Nuncio, and lost the best opportunity that ever offered of saving his cause and his country from what has been called the ‘curse of Cromwell.’”