pour se défendre, et il en usoit même la plus part du temps offensivement; c’étoit un habile homme, mais fort mauvais coucheur. On pouvoit l’admirer, se plaire avec lui; mais il devoit être très-difficile de l’aimer. Vous le peignez comme libéral, et vous le laissez voir plus que glorieux, farouche, fastueux, hautain, despote s’il avoit pu: furieux pendant toute sa vie d’être regardé comme un peintre de genre, tandis qu’il n’auroit été que cela, si dans les dernières années de sa vie, il ne se fut avisé de faire quatre ou cinq tableaux d’histoire. Après cela, mon cher Drôle de corps, vous l’avez trop loué comme graveur. Dans ces planches il a écrit ses compositions, la fougue de ses pensées; mais sa pointe est lâche et vagabonde: et dans ce genre, il à été ni dessinateur ni coloriste. Enfin je vais peut-être vous faire sauter en l’air, quand je vous dirai que la moindre graveur de Rembrandt est préférable à la plus belle de Salvator Rosa. Du reste, cher Drôle de corps, vous avez atteint le but principal de votre ouvrage, qui est de faire connoître le siècle, que vous avez peint jusqu’à l’illusion, tellement qu’en le lisant je me croyois de la société de tous ces gens-là.

“Quand vous ferez une seconde édition, souvenez-vous, chère amie, de mieux traiter le portrait du Poussin, qui étoit aussi modeste qu’il étoit grand. A la vérité, il ne savoit ni chanter, ni jouer de farces dans la rue, mais comme peintre d’histoire, votre enragé petit maître n’est qu’un nain près de ce Colosse. Quand on vent louer ses amis, il faut bien se garder de certains rapprochements, et de réveiller des comparaisons qu’ils ne peuvent soutenir. Songez que le Poussin fut le créateur du paysage historique, et le maître de son gendre le Gouaspe; et que les seuls tableaux du Déluge, et Diogène brisant la tasse, surpassent tout ce que le Salvator Rosa a fait en paysage, pour la pensée, pour la poësie, et même pour la couleur. Quant à la composition, à la gravité, et à la philosophie de l’histoire, le Poussin est peut-être le premier de tous les peintres. Il faut donc vous dire, mon cher Drôle de corps, que dans la promenade des deux sociétés qui se rencontrent, j’étois dans celle de Poussin; et que vous m’offensez en tournant en ridicule mon patron, et ma juste admiration pour lui.

“_Fidatevi di me_, qui vous parle de sang froid comme ami, charmé que vous ayez fait un ouvrage qui vous fera à tout jamais beaucoup d’honneur, et que j’ai lu avec cet intérêt, qui rende le succès de l’amitié si doux à partager.

“Mille tendres amitiés bien sincères.”

“_Le 14 Avril._”

EXCLAMATIONS.

Cold-blooded nations deal but little in exclamations; they belong to the petulance of strong impulses, and to ardent temperaments, national and individual. The Laplanders neither invoke, exclaim, nor imprecate; the French and Italians are continually doing all three. Quakers, whose education teaches them to “set a pulse and preach their blood to reason,” scarcely ever resort to exclamations, to express their feelings. The English are not exclaimers; their forms for this purpose are few and foolish; and when they go beyond the _niaiserie_ of “dear me!” “bless me!” “my stars!” they fall into downright imprecation. The Irish, the petulant Irish, are great exclaimers. Like the Italians, they borrow their exclamations from their creed; and when under strong excitement, pronounce in piety, that which, to the Calvinistical severity of English protestant ears, would sound very like profanation!

The Italians borrow their exclamations alike from their religion and the antique faith of their great progenitors; and Per Bacco! Cospetto! “Jehovah, Jove, or Lord,” come with equal and frequent facility to their lips. They invoke, exclaim, and apostrophise, upon all occasions, trivial or important. A fishwoman in the piazza of the Pantheon, will resort to every vow and invocation of the ancient or modern faith of Rome, to dispose of her stale fish on the evening of a fast day; and will express her surprise or indignation at an undervaluing chapman, who rejects her eels, or resists her turbot, by a volley of “_Madonna Mia’s!_” “_Sacro Sacramento’s_,” and “_Madre di Dio’s!_” The French have a number of charming exclamations and apostrophes; they have also many that are quaint and simple, and extremely effective in low comedy. Molière abounds in them; and the humour and the à propos of his _ouf!_ and _ouais!_ is quite indefinable. Denon and I got into the habit of ouf-ing and ouais-ing at each other, until, with me, it became a _tic_, putting my native Irish “ahs!” and “ochs!” in abeyance; and it is as much as I can do to resist my interjectory oufs! and ouais! even on paper, and in the regular way of professed authorship!

IRISH JUDGES.

It is extremely difficult to get the Irish to be grave upon grave subjects. With a few exceptions in favour of absolute dulness and mediocrity, all our judges are _drôles de corps_, and the highest the drollest of any. What was Joe Miller to Judge Norbury, who kept the bar in a roar for nearly half a century, and rarely passed sentence of death without making some of his auditors die laughing?

“Here is a fellow, my lord,” (said an attorney, the other day, to one of our legal chiefs,) “accused of stealing turnips; under what act can he be attacked?”

“I really don’t know,” said the judge, without taking his eyes from the paper on which he was writing.

“You don’t know, my lord?”

“No, not immediately, Mr. ——.”

“What does your lordship think of the _timber_ act?”

“Probably—that is, if the turnips were _sticky_!”

AT THE HEAD OF HIS PROFESSION.

Doctor ——, now so celebrated and so wealthy, served a hard probation to success. I knew him in his obscurity, and thought him then a better and an abler man, than I think him now. I saw him struggling, through all the hopeless drudgery of his profession, up to his present eminence: haunting hospitals, and bowing to Nurse Tenders. For years, he read, wrote, and lectured, and did every thing but get on—still he laughed, and talked, and was agreeable: at last he looked solemn, wore black silk stockings and creaking shoes, walked on tip-toe, and turned methodist: his success was rapid and complete; and he is now what is called—_at the head of his profession!_—“_Le savoir faire vaut bien le savoir!_”

THE CHARITABLE BAZAARS OF DUBLIN.

It has been said by a classic authority, that force without judgment is overthrown by its own impetus; and the proposition is equally true of virtue. To do good to mankind is less facile than moralists suppose. It requires something more than a mere animal impulse; and there is much ground for doubting whether the world (at least the British world) does not suffer more from the impertinent interference of mistaken benevolence, than from the direct attacks of selfishness and malice on its order and happiness. Charity, more especially, (though, in a well ordered state, a duty whose exercise is limited within a narrow and comprehensible sphere,) becomes, under a government replete with abuses and fertile in factitious misery, a science requiring as much patient research, and as large a grasp of intellect, as any other department of politics. To be charitable on an extensive scale, is to legislate for the poor; and man, in his domestic capacity, (whatever may be thought of him as a citizen or a subject) is an animal made to think and to act for himself.

In the British empire, where every class of society is more or less dislocated, where the rewards of industry are subject to frequent revolutions, and where life is sustained by the most painful efforts, errors in the direction or energy of the charitable are doubly fatal. They are not only a waste of the scanty and insufficient resources of the multitudinous poor, a destruction of so much of the materials of happiness, but they are a direct and positive evil, deranging the economy of the lower orders, harassing them by needless and galling dictation, and destroying in their bosoms the principle of independence, without which there can be no virtue.

An high estimate of pecuniary charity in the scale of virtues is the result of incivilization, and a testimony of the barbarity of the governments where it prevails. Where the people are well governed and prosperous, the field for the exercise of this virtue is necessarily limited; but wherever great and terrible inequalities in human condition subsist, charity is a necessary supplement to the defective institutions, out of which they arise. In the christian world, where pecuniary liberality is dignified as a theological virtue, charity stands in the place of many more serviceable and important duties; and much of that energy which should be given to the improvement of the political and statistic condition of the country, is wasted in a vain attempt to bolster up bad systems, and to avert by eleemosynary efforts the miseries and vices accumulated by misrule. The high and influential classes are especially prone to fall into this error. Too moral and too religious to be satisfied with the wretchedness by which they are surrounded, yet too selfish, perverse, or indolent to attempt a thorough removal of its causes, they satisfy their consciences by attempting to relieve in detail the sufferings, which their privileges and pretensions produce in the gross; and when they have bestowed a small per centage of their overgrown fortunes upon the wretches whom their monopoly of power has impoverished and wronged, they flatter themselves that they have done all which human sympathy or divine injunction requires at their hands.

This description of charity has been well described by a popular writer, as “other-worldly-mindedness;” and no where is it more sensitive and alive than among the aristocracy of Ireland,—a country where mendicity is national, and where religious Quixotism is carried to the fever point of exaltation and excess. Unfortunately this fiery and rampant zeal is utterly deficient in knowledge; and there is more waste of money in the city of Dublin, more direct provocation of misery by ill-contrived attempts to relieve distress, more misdirected energy, than would, if properly applied, remove, ten times over, all the pauperism of a wholesomely constituted society of the same bulk.

In a country so teeming with an unemployed population as Ireland, it certainly is not an easy matter to give a proper direction to public feeling, and to avoid falling into dangerous errors; and though it is necessary to signalize the more flagrant and mischievous abuses, and to ridicule an all pervading folly, by which society suffers so deeply, yet it must be confessed that the individuals who come under the lash are not without some excuse. If their presumption and self-conceit are absurd and baneful, their intentions at least are often the purest and the best.

The sphere of charity, its productive power of good, being closely confined to the relief of those fortuitous evils to which the lower classes must ever be exposed, even in the best regulated societies, the moment it is applied to large categories of persons, as a remedy for permanent abuses, it becomes an unmanageable and equivocal agent of happiness, interfering with independent labour, disturbing its market, and rendering occupation precarious, and its reward fluctuating. The means which a nation possesses of employing its population are definite; and charity, in giving them a new direction, does not increase the sum: on the contrary, in as far as the process is forced and unnatural, it tends to diminish that sum by waste and mismanagement. Most of the charitable efforts which daily succeed each other for the employing the poor of Ireland, are but the pouring money out of one pocket, to place it in another; and if certain individuals are put to work in a new direction by the process, an equal number are inevitably thrown out of employment in some unobserved department.

This evil attaches with particular severity and mischievous effect to those associations of good and pious ladies, who either work themselves for the benefit of the poor, or find employment for them in charitable asylums, where they are enabled to under-sell and drive out of the market all competitors who are thrown upon their own resources. The money which is collected by the sale of needle and fancy work thus performed, is a direct robbery of the sempstresses, who, in garrets and in cellars, strive to exist by unwearied labour. The cheap repositories that vend articles of taste, fabricated in Magdalen asylums and receptacles for the destitute, not only severely injure the shopkeeper, who pays rent and taxes for the service of the public, but, through him, strikes despair into the bosom of a large class of helpless females, who avail themselves of accomplishments, acquired in happier circumstances, to support themselves in independence, by the only means which the perverse exclusion of women from their natural employments has left open to them. It is no justification of such establishments, that they sell only inutilities, calculated to catch a certain portion of loose cash, which otherwise would be lost to benevolence. The manufacture of inutilities, no less than that of articles of prime necessity, is the property of the working poor,—a property with which the public cannot tamper, without producing a certain evil, that is never compensated by the uncertain and delusive good expected from the process.

Among the many idle, delusive, and extravagant amusements, invented by that model of Grand Caliphs, Louis the XIVth, not the least remarkable were the shops opened in the saloons of Versailles, and kept by the king’s mistresses, or the princesses of the blood, attended by cavaliers, who, though officiating as shop-boys, were chosen according to their rank and office. In these magazines, toys, trinkets, and jewels of immense value, were distributed at counters, attended by the greatest beauties and most distinguished personages at the court; and if the cupidity of the courtiers found its account in this prodigality, coquetry lost nothing by the assumption of a character which added the _naïveté_ of the _bonne bourgeoisie_ to the graces of dignity and refinement. Madame de Maintenon dwells with emphasis on the fascinations of these illustrious shopkeepers, and the elegance which presided over their counters.

The bazaars, called charitable, which, for some successive seasons have been opened in Dublin, have in their details been modelled somewhat after the manner of these _comptoirs_ of Versailles. The market is generally held in some very public place; either at the Rotunda, (a room consecrated to all public purposes,) or in an hotel or tavern. The stalls are raised on either side; the shops are kept by ladies of the highest rank in the Irish world of fashion and charity. The work disposed of is their own; their customers are the public at large, who are admitted on paying a shilling. The profits of the sale, of course, go to charity, sometimes at home—too often foreign,—the conversion of Jews, or the gathering of the stray sheep of Otaheite or Hindostan. The articles produced to extort the benevolence of the customer, address themselves rather to his charity than to his taste. They are multifarious; and if variety could compensate for want of ingenuity and of skill, there would be nothing to wish for in the bazaars of the charitable ladies of Dublin:—worsted stockings, to fit Irish giants,—bead purses, threaded by fairy fingers,—frizettes for the head, woven of horse-hair,—and slippers of hemp for the feet, as fatiguing as the tread-mill,—hearth-rugs as rugged “as a Russian bear,”—and pillows of lavender, not much smoother,—old jelly and stale cakes, which have figured at more than one tea and tract _soirée_,—and ornaments in every form, that can be produced by paste and paper, and daubed by paint,—from a pagoda to a pincushion,—of just that description which a woman of taste consigns to her housekeeper’s room, and the housekeeper, in turn, bestows on the still room, as fit for nothing but to preserve dust, and afford lurking places for spiders.

Meantime, if criticism looks on with her “eye malign askance,” in its lounge up the long line opened between the repositories of trash, there are many whose susceptibility supplies the place at once of taste and of charity, and the bazaar is the great resort of all the _désœuvrés_ of one sex, and of all the saints of the other. Among the most distinguished of the first, are the military elegants of the garrison; among the latter, are some of the highest and prettiest of the aristocracy. Placed behind piles of pincushions, each having a moral in minikins stuck on its silken surface, or behind an outwork of paper screens, consecrated by the Lord’s prayer and the commandments, stands the fair trader, with a look, “sober, steadfast, and demure,” and an air of gentle solicitation, like that of the venders of royal effigies at the gate of the Tuileries, who cry, from morning till night, “_Voyez, Messieurs, voyez la famille royale de France, et la Princesse Caroline, tous pour deux sous._”[65]

I was one day much amused by observing a little scene of this sort. The finest eyes I ever saw, were doing the honours of a charitable counter, to the very best of their ability. “_A bonnes enseignes, bon vin._” A young and gallant hussar, whose attention had wandered from stall to stall, with undefined charity, was at last attracted by the “_voyez, messieurs_,” of the eyes alluded to. The _petit commerce_ once begun, it was difficult to say which party threw most enterprize and speculation into the transaction. Fly-traps were shut and opened, with suitable comments on flies and traps; tablets were displayed, whose inscriptions were only to be breathed upon, to become, like good impressions, ineffacable; Adam and Eve, with the tempter in the tree, worked on a footstool in tent stitch, were not without allusion and edification; and the history of “Theresa Tidy” was recommended as a _souvenir_ for absent sisters, with an air which proved that saints, as well as hussars, can be good disciplinarians. The choice was at length made. It fell upon a bunch of violets, reared by the fair hands of the vender for charitable purposes. The young hussar drew it from its vase, “all dripping with dew,” breathed its essence, looked full in the eyes of the _belle jardinière_, paid his sigh and his sovereign, and—was elbowed on by a new chapman, whose aid-de-camp’s uniform gave him superior claims on the attention of the charitable bazaarist.

As I left the door of Morrison’s tavern, where the scene passed, the young hussar stood waiting for his cab. A naked, shivering little girl, with a bunch of wallflowers (stuffed with grass “to make a show,”) in her dirty hands, came “between the wind and his nobility;” and with the usual supplicatory drawl of Irish mendicity, solicited his attention, according to its most approved formulary: “The Lord powr (pour) a blessing on your beautiful honour, Sir, and buy them iligant wallflowers for an half-penny from a fatherless orphant, that hasn’t broke her fast this day, God help her.” His “beautiful honour” heard her not, or valued not the liquid blessing of Heaven at the price the supplicant put upon it. He held his violets to his nose. His thoughts were behind the counter of the bazaar, and his foot on the step of his cab. After a moment’s hesitation, he returned to the bazaar, and the half-penny worth of wallflowers fell to my lot.

While ignorant benevolence, and mistaken charity, fancy they are serving the great cause of humanity, by promoting institutions which are, in fact, directly opposed to their laudable intentions, low cunning and self-love take advantage of the circumstance, by joining in a work which produces a temporary intimacy and equality between the little and the great. Many, who have no other means of getting on in society, find, in the charitable repositories, bazaars, and poor-shops, a means of introduction to its autocrats, (for even poor Dublin has its _bel air_) of acquaintance with the Countess of this, and the Marchioness of the other, the long desired object of all their struggles, hopes, and desires. Among a people essentially vain and ambitious, this sort of connexion draws in a vast number of subscribers, contributors, and labourers, to all schemes of mistaken benevolence, or quackish meddling; and the peculiar notions of the catholics, on the necessity of a constant practice of charity, complete the sums requisite for their mischievous success.

On the privations and sufferings inflicted on the respectable and laborious poor, by such interference with the branch of industry upon which they almost exclusively rely, it would be easy to say some eloquent things; for it is difficult to enter deeply and warmly into any subject, and not to treat of it effectually. There is no muse like being in earnest. But here is a little document, worth all that practised authorship could give on the subject, however deeply felt, or well studied. It is a letter from some poor sufferer, written in all the simplicity and integrity of conscious injury. I give it, with the too flattering letter in which it was inclosed, and which, (having received it this morning, March 29th, 1829,) directed my thoughts to the composition of this brief article. Having allied myself, from my earliest youth, to the oppressed party of my country, I have never enjoyed there but one distinction. The suffering and the unfortunate of all creeds have honoured me, by claims on my sympathy, which, alas! is frequently all I have to bestow; and I have, for many years back, been in the habit of receiving applications from the wretched, (a painful preeminence) which have included the details of almost every species of misery which flesh is heir to, from the despair of the condemned convict, who has written to me from his cell, to the indignant repinings of neglected genius, and the eloquent recital of “all the wrongs, which patient merit from the unworthy takes.”

But to the letter, and the simple statement of the distressed female, suffering from the ladies’ charitable bazaar, which I give exactly as I received it:—

“_To Lady Morgan, Kildare-street, Dublin._

“Without presuming the Irish heart of your ladyship to be at all concerned in the pernicious custom!—the enclosed alludes to, it is very humbly submitted to your kind consideration—as one looked up to—as well in national pride—as the kindness of your disposition towards every individual of your country—and as it appears the _press_ (the best medium of rectifying publick evils) will not receive it—your general opinion—of the mischief it records—may go far in serving—a class of poor individuals (_your countrywomen_) labouring under the hardship it details—and layd before your ladyship—by _one_ of the oppressed sufferers—who has the honour to be,

“Your Ladyship’s

“Most obedient humble Servant,

“A DISTRESSED FEMALE.”

“_Dublin, March 28th, 1829._”

“_To the Ladies of the late Bazaar, and those generally of Dublin._

“LADIES:

“However painful in laying before you in this public manner evils brought on a numerous class of persons—through inadvertency and want of consideration (as hunger will break through stone walls) it is necessary, in addition to many hints you have already had laid before you, to now enter into a more particular detail of the misfortune visited on many, by your establishing bazaars and other shops, to be met with in many parts of Dublin, for the sale of _ladies’ works_; nor are you to suppose in doing so, it is intended to convey any idea of your not laudably working for yourselves or families, or contributing to such charities as you may desire to be interested in; but in doing so, permit me to say, you should put your hands in _your pockets_, and by no means interfere with the bread of others, as you manifestedly have done. You will please to recollect that besides the more common and industrious classes of society, there are many respectable, well educated females, reduced, from _misfortune_, and not _fault_, to the necessity of earning their bread by the work of their hands; inferior in taste, ingenuity, and acquirements, to none of their countrywomen! now thrown on the world for want of a usual emporium for the sale of their labour; wrought probably in filial piety for the humane and dutiful purposes of assisting an aged father or mother perishing in silent misery. For your bazaars, and from the glut of work they accumulate, prevent even shopkeepers from taking any off their hands, from the impossibility of disposing of it, as well as others purchasing those articles of taste and ingenuity, these unhappy people were wont to earn subsistence by. And really, ladies, where females are concerned, I would put it to your kind consideration, if it is consonant to the generous feelings of our soil, to thus open the floodgates of vice, as a probable mode of preventing starvation, encreasing female crime, and multiplying mendicity, in the current of misery and want.

“Our unfortunate country labours under the severe oppression of considerable absenteeism; but how despairingly must it indeed be felt, if those our _residents_, blessed with rank and fortune, lend their aid to increase distress in any part of the community, for the benefit of a good name; let the object be what it may, nothing can be called charity, that uncharitably takes bread from the mouths of many.

“And although excuses may be made for ladies of high consideration not being sufficiently acquainted, either with the nature of the trading world, or desperate state of the poor, none can, for _those_ (some now holding titles) who have been indebted in a great measure for their present good fortune, to the benefit of fair trade, and support of the poor; swallowing Læthean drafts and standing behind a bazaar table, inflicting in the articles they sell, misery and want on several poor creatures, their countrywomen.

“Your last bazaar, it is understood, not only netted a considerable sum of money by what it sold, but has left a great quantity of ladies’ work yet to be disposed of; and which, notwithstanding the _piety_ and _charity_ of the worthy females concerned, is now at _their desire_, to be got rid of by a LOTTERY; as well in the teeth of the acts of the legislature, as truly encouraging a species of gambling; as destructive a vice as ever (in its avaricious propensities) seized on the human heart; and this being under the description of _little-go’s_, becomes subject to magisterial interference. All this shews the quantity of work you ladies have set up against the poor and industrious fair trader, whose hands _is his_ or _her support_, and which, evidently, you are not borne out in any interference with for any object whatsoever; or to lay the foundation of your _charities_, at the expense of the poor.

“And it is presumed, from the non-attendance of our gracious vice-queen at your bazaar, that though a stranger to our country, she has had that consideration in the benevolence of her heart, which, either through inadvertency or the fashion of the day, appears to have escaped yours. And believe the want of emporium for sale of female works, has occasioned much trouble to her grace, by many of those starving creatures who have had no other hope of trying to get their productions off their hands, has led them to seek that commiseration from the stranger, which they have failed to receive at home. So contrary is all this to the natural goodness of heart, so wound up in our national female character, that it is indeed with pain it is adverted to, and is only attributed to the immediate desire of doing good; having in the impulse of the moment, banished that more general, reflecting, and feeling consideration. Your hearts, when thus strongly appealed to, will, I am convinced, receive in the charity and benevolence, so characteristic in the fair daughters of Erin.

“Whose obedient servant I am,

“PENELOPE,

“Out of work.”

“_Dublin, 23d March._

“_Editor_,” _&c. &c. &c._

END OF VOL. I.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Having mentioned how this trifling Work came to be written, a word may be said on how it came to be published. While the fourth volume of the “O’Briens” was going through the press, Mr. Colburn was sufficiently pleased with the subscription (as it is called in the trade) to the first edition, to desire a new work from the author. I was just setting off for Ireland, the horses literally putting to—when Mr. Colburn arrived with his flattering proposition. I could not enter into any future engagement; and Mr. C., taking up a scrubby MS. volume, which the servant was about to thrust into the pocket of the carriage, asked “What was that?” I said it was “one of many volumes of odds and ends, _de omnibus rebus_;” and I read him the last entry I had made the night before, on my return from the Opera. “This is the very thing,” said the European publisher; and if the public is of the same opinion, I shall have nothing to regret in thus coming, though somewhat in _déshabillé_, before its tribunal.

[2] “With a skip and a jump.”

[3] “We love so much to talk of ourselves.”

[4] Whoever has read the History of the Campaign in Russia, by General Count Ségur, must feel the force of this observation.

[5] “That he was but the half of a great man.”

[6] “At night they sung an ode in praise of the king at Madame de Maintenon’s. It was by the Abbé Genest, the music by La Lande; and the king found it so excellent, that when it was finished he caused it to be repeated.”

[7] “I have always before my eyes the expression on the countenances of the men, as they looked on the Emperor with a torch in his hand, himself casting a light on the reiterated blows with which he opened the rocks.”

[8] Raconteur—a narrator.

[9] “Come, Mademoiselle, talk to us a little about religion; and afterwards speak on something else.”

[10] “A maker of phrases.”

[11] “Beneath his reputation.” This occurred in his interview with M. Necker, at Geneva.

[12] “Gentlemen, there was once upon a time a fermier-général—I have forgotten the rest.”

[13] “There, there—go away—what does it signify if I am amused?”

[14] “Worthy of the best poets of France.”

[15] “You are a good gentleman, but our business here is to bury the dead.”

[16] “It has struck three.”

[17] Un fâcheux.

[18] Dres means, literally, “news.”

[19] P. L——n, Esq. of M——, in the county of Kildare.

[20] The Kirwans are the only aboriginal family who were admitted into the Thirteen Tribes of Galway.—“As proud as a Kirwan,” is a Galway proverb.

[21] A person of remarkable appearance.

[22] The Duke of Wellington was then Secretary of State for Ireland.

[23] To Mr. Kirwan is attributed the story of electrifying his knocker; an excellent hint to persons whose notoriety exposes them to self-interested intruders, who have no claim upon their time and attention.

[24] “L’amour,” said the Abbé Chaulieu, “s’étoit retiré jusque dans les rides de son front.”

[25] “I read your letter before him, and in spectacles; but they become me pretty well. I have always had a grave look. If he is in love with that merit which is here called _distingué_, your wish may perhaps be accomplished. Every day I am consoled for my lost attractions by this fine phrase.”

[26] “And I am myself so excellent at forgetfulness, that I forget my own works as much as those of other persons.”

[27] “You swear, Friar? It is only for ornament. These are the colours of Ciceronian rhetoric.”

[28] Maurice Quill, the Sir John Falstaff of the Irish troops, during the Peninsular war, who assigned as a reason for entering into the 71st regiment (I believe) his desire to be near his brother, who was in the 72d. His personal circumspection was said to be merely assumed, as a medium for his humour.

[29] One evening, while thus engaged, to the utter abstraction from all surrounding circumstances, we had arrived at “Hark, I hear the toll of the bell,” when a sudden crash of all dissonant sounds produced as sudden a suspension of our own somewhat heteroclite harmonies. Tambourines, triangles, pokers, tongs, and shovels, were all pressed into the service. The ladies of the party, thus armed for discord, had encircled us; and they added a general chorus of inextinguishable laughter, _ad libitum_, to the instrumental accompaniment they volunteered to Lord C.’s vocal performances. At the head of the band was Lady Castlereagh herself.

[30] Les Veillées du Château.

[31] I do not mean to say that in the progress of things it may not become perfectly justifiable to wear a white waistcoat in the morning; or that certain developments of mind, or combinations of circumstance, may not render it imperative to do so. I go but with my age; and I appeal to Lord A——y, or to my old friend Lord A——n, whether, _de nos jours_, a man who pays a morning visit in a virgin-white Marseilles waistcoat, is admissible within the pale of civilized society.

[32] Dr. Macartney, professor of anatomy in Trinity College, Dublin, one more celebrated abroad than known at home—the common fate of super-eminent talent every where. Dr. Macartney’s classes are attended by students from all parts of Europe and America.

[33] Her late Majesty Queen Caroline.

[34] Having received the proof sheet of the above little entry, (made in mere _gaieté de cœur_ into my ledger,) at a moment when I am surrounded by an absolute congress of the United States, presented to me by my illustrious friend, General La Fayette, I take the opportunity to say, that they deny all knowledge of the journal in question, further than such a publication had lived and died within a few weeks, and was edited by a person bearing an _Irish name_, a writer for Blackwood’s Magazine.

[35] First Dissertation to the Encyclopedia.

[36] “Her father was dead; and as soon as she heard the news, she shut herself up in her chamber for six weeks, remaining constantly upon a bed covered with white linen, and resting on pillows. She wore her stomacher, her cloak, and hood, which were lined with minever, and the said cloak had a long train; and at the borders, and before the hood, for the breadth of a palm, the minever was curled outwards. The chamber was hung with black cloth in the place of tapestry, and before this chamber was another great chamber, or hall, likewise hung with black. While Madame was alone, she did not remain on the bed, or confined to one room.”

[37] “The duchess received compliments of condolence on the death of the Duke. She was on a bed, and in her hood, which is the dress of princesses of the blood, when they receive in state the compliments on the death of their husbands.”

[38] Mademoiselle Delaunay.

[39] The family of the Duke de Croy is, I believe, one of the oldest in France. The entreaty of one of the duke’s ancestors to _Noah_, of “_Sauvez les papiers des Croys_,” is well known.

[40] “The easy conversations, the circles, the delicate pleasantry, the familiar and playful letters, to which wit and intellect alone gave access—all have disappeared.”

[41] “They talk there without ceasing, but nothing remains in the heart of all they say; and Dangeau is ravished with this gossip.”

[42] Sir W. Betham is so learned in all that concerns Irish antiquities, that there could have been no difficulty whatever on his part, in guessing the contents of the Caah: such reliquaries were destined only to the one pious purpose.

[43] “Great talents require pressing.”

[44] “What would you have? There are scoundrels in all times.”

[45] Monseigneur Luize de Breme, ex-grand almoner of Italy, and son to the minister of the interior (of Sardinia), was one of those European characters whom to name, is to recal to the memory of all the most distinguished strangers who visited Milan. Eminently amiable and accomplished, he was a liberal patron of Italian literature, in all its branches; and he was at the head of the school of romanticism in Milan. He was the dear friend of Madame de Staël and her family, and of Monti, the poet, and he was intimately known to Lord Byron, Ugo Foscolo, and to most of the celebrated persons of Europe, whose opinions and writings favoured his peculiar sect in literature.

[46] The household of the great families and cardinals of Rome are called _la famiglia_, or the family. A cardinal never drives or walks out, or pays a visit, without a train of liveried servants.

[47] “A great politician, and something of a libertine,—for the rest, an amiable man, but perhaps a little dangerous.”

[48] “Because it was but a point of discipline.”

[49] A few lines written by the author, who had supposed the daughter of the Bishop of Derry to have been an Irishwoman.

[50] “She makes verses like an angel.”

[51]

Insigne mœstis præsidium reis, Et consulenti, Pollio, curiæ.

HORAT. l. 2, Ode 1.

[52] “Nam neque deesse, neque superesse reipublicæ volo.”

[53] Opposed to this frivolous picture, take the picture of a celebrated German authoress, as described by a recent traveller:—

“DESCRIPTION OF A GERMAN LITERARY LADY.—Never shall I forget the first appearance, to me, of Madame de B. She was sitting, or rather reclining, in the most unaffected posture, with her legs crossed, and her hands clasped behind her head, on a large sofa—one old, indeed, and crazy, but doubtless endeared to her by some association, perhaps with the days of her childhood; for, from its colour, and dilapidations, and fashion, it could scarcely be more modern. Behind her, and on each side, extended a floor, or rather ocean of books, rising in volumes, like wave upon wave, tossing and tumbling, and some, as it were, foaming open, and revealing their white margins. In the midst of these, like an island, stood a large old-fashioned mahogany table, covered with various articles, which I might forbear to enumerate, if it were not interesting to the sensible mind to learn even the most trifling attributes of genius. Such persons will readily forgive me that I mention a large black tea-pot, tea-cup of antique China, an ink-stand, with the owner’s cipher, apparently scratched on the metal; a pair of saucers, of divers patterns; a large phial labelled ‘laudanum;’ a tortoise-shell watch-case, a small plate of bread crusts, and a long hair comb, a tall wine-glass half filled with sugar of the brown description, a snuff-box, a pair of snuffers, a small miniature, a few twisted fragments of brown and blue paper, two slender candles, some small pieces of copper coin, and a single stocking, marked D.R.A.B.”

[54] Mons. Bautte, the celebrated bijoutier of Geneva.

[55] The chair of the good King Dagobert is, perhaps, one of the oldest and most curious articles of furniture of the Christian era. In form, it resembles the curule chair of the Romans. The legs are more ancient, and of better workmanship, than the upper part; but tradition assigns its fabrication to the holy hands of St. Eloi. It was preserved for centuries in the treasury of the Abbey of St. Denis, and was regilt in the time of the Abbot Suger. In August, 1804, it was transported to Boulogne, for the distribution of the crosses of the Legion of Honour; and a medal, struck on that occasion, represents the modern Charlemagne, seated in this relic of _le bon Roi Dagobert_. It now takes its place, with other antiquities, in _la Bibliothèque du Roi_, at Paris.

[56] See Somner’s History of Canterbury, Appendix, Scriptura, xvj.

[57]

“My home, my home, though small it be, Yet still that home is dear to me.”

[58] “The whole weight of his eighteen volumes was in his step.”

[59] The art of being tiresome consists in leaving nothing unsaid.

[60] “Je vous vois ici avec douleur dansant le triolet, et vous divertir lorsque vous devriez être en lieu, où vous vous fissiez casser la tête, ou vous remettre la couronne sur la tête.”

[61] “Je conçus de lui une fort mauvaise opinion d’être roi à son âge, et n’avoir aucune connaissance des affaires: ce n’est pas que je n’eusse par là dû reconnaître mon sang. Les Bourbons sont gens fort appliqués aux bagatelles, et peu solides. Il ne mangea point d’ortolons, il se jeta sur une pièce de bœuf, et sur une épaule de mouton, comme s’il n’y eut que cela.”

[62] See letter to the Reviewers of Italy, prefixed to the third edition of that work.

[63] Although this first letter does not more than allude to the immediate subject before me, the public, I think, will not be sorry to possess, in its integrity, so good a specimen of the grace and playfulness of Mons. Denon’s turn of mind, which, in one of his advanced age, is peculiar to the climate and temperament of France.

[64] The celebrated Comte de Ségur, the ambassador to Catherine of Russia, and one of the most distinguished authors which modern France has produced. His own memoirs, lately published, have added a brilliant gem to the bright galaxy of French autobiography.

[65] “Here, gentlemen, here is the whole royal family of France and the Princess Caroline, all for a penny.”

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