St. Patrick’s Cathedral. This image appears in “Dublin Illustrated,” the magazine’s article on Ireland’s capital city. Source: The Graphic (17 August 1878): 173. Click on image to enlarge it.
Commentary from The Graphic
The Cathedral owes its origin to John Comyn, Archbishop of Dublin, who, in 1190, is said to have selected this site because there was here in ancient days a well, and some say a church, which had been used by St. Patrick. The steeple and the spire, which is low, and of the sciuore extinguisher pattern, arc growths of later periods. The Cathedral has had an ' eventful history. It has been used for the Courts of Law, and over and over again for a military barrack and n prison, and it was so sacrilegiously despoiled and damaged by arrows in 1492, when the Fitzgeralds, who were for the Yorkists, quarrelled with the Ormonds, who were Lancastrians, that the Holy See, as an atonement for the outrage, commanded the Mayor of Dublin to walk every Corpus Christi day barefoot through the city.
It has been the scene of many splendid ceremonies. The Prince of Orange attended here with his army to return thanks for the victory at the Boyne, and within these walls George IV. and our own Prince of Wales have been present (the latter as recipient of the honour) at an Installation of Knights of the Order of St. Patrick. The principal monuments in the Cathe- dral are those to the memory of Swift and Stella, of the great Earl of Cork, the lawyer's clerk of Elizabeth's reign, who rose to be a peer and one of the wealthiest landowners m Munster ; of Curran, the orator, of Charles Wolfe, author of the “Burial of Sir John Moore;" of Archbishop Whately ; of Lord Mayo, Governor General of India; of Dame Si. Leger, who was married to four husbands, and yet died at the age of 37 ; of Captain Boyd, of II.M.S. Ajax, drowned at Kingstown Harbour in trying to save the lives of shipwrecked sailors ; of Carolan, the last of the Irish bards ; of Sam Lover, painter, poet, and novelist ; of Rev. James Henthom Todd, DD., the biographer of St. Patrick, and a host of other distin- guished men.
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Bibliography
“Dublin Illustrated.” The Graphic (17 August 1878): 169-81. Internet Archive online version of a copy in the University of Illinois Library. Web. 14 August 2018.
Last modified 14 August 2018