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ciently known

that women of the highest and the lowest rank are alike thrown too much into situations of danger and temptation. I might mention some additional circumstances of aggravation in this lady's case; but as they would tend to point out the real person to those acquainted with her history, I shall forbear. She has since made a noise in the world, and has maintained, I believe, a tolerably fair reputation. Soon after sunrise the next morning, a heavenly morning of June, we dropt our anchor in the famous bay of Dublin. There was a dead calm: the sea was like a lake; and, as we were some miles from the Pigeon-House, a boat was manned to put us on shore. The lovely lady, unaware that we were parties to her guilty secret, went with us, accompanied by her numerous attendants, and looking as beautiful, and hardly less innocent, than an angel. Long afterwards, Lord W. and I met her, hanging upon the arm of her husband, a manly and good-natured man, of polished manners, to whom she introduced us for she voluntarily challenged us as her fellow-voyagers, and, I suppose, had no suspicions which pointed in our direction. She even joined her husband in cordially pressing us to visit them at their magnificent chateau.

Landing about three miles from Dublin, we were not long in reaching Sackville Street, where my friend's father was anxiously awaiting his son, an only child. He received us both with a truly paternal kindness. From this time, for about the five months following, during which I resided with my noble friends in Ireland, I saw many of the scenes and most of the persons that were then particularly interesting in that country.

7

CHAPTER III.

IRELAND.

IRELAND was still smoking with the embers of rebellion; and Lord Cornwallis, who had been sent expressly to extinguish it, and was said to have fulfilled his mission with energy and success, was then the Lieutenant, and was regarded at that moment with more interest than any other public man. Accordingly I was not sorry when, two mornings after our arrival, my friend's father said to us at breakfast, 'Now, if you wish to see what I call a great man, go with me this morning, and I will take you to see Lord Cornwallis; for that man, who has given peace both to the East and to the West, I must consider in the light of a great man.' We willingly accompanied the Earl to the Phoenix Park, where the Lord Lieutenant was then residing, and were privately presented to him. I had seen an engraving (celebrated, I believe, in its day) of Lord Cornwallis receiving the young Mysore princes as hostages at Seringapatam; and I knew the outline of his public services. This gave me an additional interest in seeing him but I was disappointed to find no traces in his manner of the energy and activity I presumed him to possess; he seemed, on the contrary, slow or even heavy, but kind and benevolent in a degree which won the confidence at once. Him we saw often; for Lord Atook us with him wherever and whenever we wished;

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and me in particular, it often gratified highly to see persons of historical names, names, I mean, historically connected with the great events of Elizabeth's or Cromwell's era, attending at the Phoenix Park. But the persons whom I remember most distinctly of all whom I was then in the habit of seeing, were Lord Clare, the Chancellor, the late Lord Londonderry, (then Castlereagh,) at that time the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Speaker of the House of Commons, (since, I believe, created Lord Oriel.) With the Speaker, indeed, Lord A- had more intimate connections than with any other public man; both being devoted to the encouragement and personal superintendence of great agricultural improvements. Both were bent on patronizing and promoting, by examples diffused extensively on their own estates, the introduction of English husbandry, - English improved breeds of cattle, and, when it was possible, English capital and skill, into the rural economy of Ireland. Amongst the splendid spectacles I witnessed, as the most splendid I may mention an Installation of the Knights of St. Patrick. There were six knights installed on this occasion: one of the six was Lord A-, my friend's father. He had no doubt received his ribbon as a reward for his parliamentary votes, and especially in the matter of the Union; yet, from all his conversation upon that question, and the general conscientiousness of his private life, I am convinced that he acted all along upon patriotic motives, and his real views (whether right or wrong) of the Irish interests. One chief reason, indeed, which detained us in Dublin, was the necessity of attending this particular Installation. At one time he designed to take his son and myself for the two esquires. who attend the new made knight, according to the ritual of this ceremony; but that plan was subsequently laid

aside, on learning that the other five knights were to be attended by adults: and thus, from being partakers as actors, my friend and I became simple spectators of this splendid scene, which took place in the cathedral of St. Patrick. So easily does mere external pomp slip out of the memory, as to all its circumstantial items, leaving behind nothing beyond the general impression, that at this` moment I remember no one incident of the whole ceremonial, except that some foolish person laughed aloud as the knights went up with their offerings to the altar, apparently at Lord A-, who happened to be lame a singular instance of levity to exhibit within the walls of such a building, and at the most solemn part of the whole ceremony. Lord W. and I sat with Lord and Lady Castlereagh. They were then both young, and both wore an impressive appearance of youthful happiness; neither, fortunately for their peace of mind, able to pierce that cloud of years, not much more than twenty, which divided them from the day destined in one hour to wreck the happiness of both. We had met both, on other occasions; and their conversation, through the course of that day's pomps, was the most interesting circumstance to me, and the one I remember with most distinctness, of all that belonged to the Installation. By the way, I remember that one morning at breakfast, on occasion of some conversation arising about Irish Bulls, I made an agreement with Lord A to note down in a memorandum-book every thing throughout my stay in Ireland, which, to my feeling as an Englishman, should seem to be, or to approach to a bull. And this day, at dinner, I reported from Lady Castlereagh's conversation, what struck me as a bull. Lord A- laughed, and said, My dear X. Y. Z., I am sorry that it should so happen:

your bull is certainly a bull: * but as certainly Lady C. is your countrywoman, and not an Irishwoman at all. This was a bad beginning certainly but was Lord A quite accurate? Lady C. was a daughter of Lord Buckinghamshire; and her maiden name was Lady E. Hobart.

One other public scene there was about this time in Dublin, to the eye less captivating, but far more so in a moral sense. This was the final ratification of the Bill which united Ireland to Great Britain. I do not know that any one public act, or celebration, or solemnity, in my time, did, or could so much engage my profoundest sympathies. Wordsworth's fine sonnet on the extinction of the Venetian Republic had not then been published, else the last two lines would have expressed my feelings. After admitting that changes had taken place in Venice, which in a manner challenged and presumed this last and mortal change, the poet closes thus

'Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade
Of that which once was great has pass'd away.'

But here the previous circumstances were far different from those of Venice, nay opposite. There we saw a superannuated and paralytic State, sinking at any rate

*The idea of a Bull is even yet undefined; which is most extraordinary, considering that Miss Edgeworth has applied all her tact and illustrative power, to furnish the matter for such a definition; and Mr. Coleridge, all his philosophic subtlety, to furnish its form. But both have been too fastidious in their admission of bulls. Thus, for example, Miss Edgeworth rejects, as no true bull, the common Joe Miller story, that, upon two Irishmen reaching Barnet, and being told that it was still twelve miles to London, one of them replied, Ah! just six miles apace.' This, says Miss E., is no bull, but a sentimental remark on the maxim, that friendship divides our pains. Nothing of the kind: Miss Edgeworth cannot have understood it. The bull is a true, perfect, and almost ideal specimen of the genus.

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