Gazetteer of Ireland @ 1845

These quotes were taken from a Gazetteer of Ireland published in 1845. I located the quotes as I search for information about the Irish Sea. Andy's Aunt Babs had the Gazetteer in the library of her home in Great Easton, Leichestershire, England.

from the entry for "Belfast Lough":
"It's scenery, on both shores, is strikingly beautiful. An illiberal or prejudiced stranger, who enters Ireland by sailing up to Belfast is confounded by the brilliance of both the natural and the artificial features, and is liable under the rebound of feeling, to imagine that all he has heard of Ireland's bogs and poverty is a jest and that he is entering one of the most charming and opulent countries in the world."

from the entry for "Dublin Bay" (I merged the two readings together)
"It exhibits so noble a combination of scenery and affords at different points such attractive varieties, such fine interchanges of the soft and august as to have won for it the fame of being a reduced copy or large miniature of the Bay of Naples; and thought destitute of features which correspond to either the natural sublimity of Vesuvius or the artificial power of the remains of Pompeii, it possesses a sufficiency of charm to justify the assertion of a celebrated (Scottish) writer of acknowledged taste that a (British) admirer of the picturesque will regard the prospect of the bay as ample recompense for the expense and trouble of a trip to Ireland."