Vermont, near Limerick. Arrived here yesterday. There is nothing very remarkable or interesting for the first sixteen miles of the journey between Cork and this place, except the extreme luxuriance of the furze hedge-rows, whose bright yellow blossoms, sparkling with rain-drops in the gleams of sunshine, looked like walls of gold between the fields.

About two miles before we reached Mallow, we came to one of those romantic glens, so peculiar to Ireland, where the clear stream winds round the base of a promontory, whose rocky steep is crowned by the ruins of an old castle; one of those beautiful sunny nooks, where nature has done everything to invite the passer-by to pause in his search for pleasure, to come and be happy himself, and do good to the poor around him. This glen is more than usually adorned; for besides the ruins of a stately building, called Barrett's castle, on the height to the left, it has on the more even ground, on the right bank of the river, the picturesque remains of Morne Abbey.

This place was formerly a celebrated preceptory of Knights Hospitallers, or Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, founded in the reign of King John. The work of its destruction began so early as Edward the Sixth's time, when Smyth says, it was destroyed by a rebellious O'Brien, Earl of Thomond, soon after the death of the Duke of Clarence, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.