Templemoyle — Derry

From Newtown Limavaddy to Derry the traveller has many wild and noble prospects of Lough Foyle and the plains and mountains round it, and of scenes which may possibly in this country be still more agreeable to him — of smiling cultivation, and comfortable well built villages, such as are only too rare in Ireland. Of a great part of this district the London Companies are landlords — the best of landlord, too, according to the report I could gather; and their good stewardship shows itself especially in the neat villages of Muff and Ballielly, through both of which I passed. In Ballikelly, besides numerous simple, stout, brick-built dwellings for the peasantry, with their shining windows and trim garden plots, is a Presbyterian meeting-house, so well built substantial, and handsome, so different from the lean, pretentious, sham Gothic ecclesiastical edifices which have been erected of late years in Ireland, that it can t fail to strike the tourist who has made architecture his study or his pleasure. The gentlemen’s seats in the district are numerous and handsome, and the whole movement along the road betokened cheerfulness and prosperous activity.

As the carman had no other passengers but myself, he made no objection to carry me a couple of miles out of his way, through the village of Muff, belonging to the Grocers of London (and so handsomely and comfortably built by them as to cause all Cockneys to exclaim, “Well done our side!") and thence to a very interesting institution, which was established some fifteen years since in the neighbourhood — the Agricultural Seminary of Templemoyle. It lies on a wooded hill in a pretty wooded country, and is most curiously secluded from the world by the tortuousness of the road which approaches it.

Of course it is not my business to report upon the agricultural system practised there or to discourse on the state of the land or the crops; the best testimony on this subject is the fact, that the Institution hired, at a small rental, a tract of land, which was reclaimed and farmed, and that of this farm the landlord has now taken possession, leaving the young farmers to labour on a new tract of land, for which they pay five times as much rent as for their former holding. But though a person versed in agriculture could give a far more satisfactory, account of the place than one to whom such pursuits are quite unfamiliar, there is a great deal about the establishment which any citizen can remark on; and he must be a very difficult Cockney indeed who won’t be pleased here.

After winding in and out and up and down, and round about the eminence on which the house stands, we at last found an entrance to it, by a court-yard, neat, well-built and spacious, where are the stables and numerous offices of’ the farm. The scholars were at dinner off a comfortable meal of boiled beef, potatoes, and cabbages, when I arrived; a master was reading a book of history to them; and silence, it appears, is preserved during the dinner. Seventy scholars were here assembled, some young, and some expanded into six feet and whiskers — all, however, are made to maintain exactly the same discipline, whether whiskered or not.

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