shoulder, and with a faint blush and a little smile shook her head, and
looked up in my face, with a glance half incredulous--half tender. I
kissed the hand by whose pressure I was thus honoured, and said,
“professions, my lovely friend, are for the world, but I would at least
have you believe, that my friendship, like gold, though not sonorous, is
indestructible.”
This I said, in the irrascibility of my jealous heart, for, though too
warm for another, oh! how cold for me! Glorviria started as I spoke, I
thought changed colour! while at intervals she repeated, “strange!--nor
is this the only coincidence!”
“Coincidence!” I eagerly repeated, but she affected not to hear me,
and appeared busily engaged in selecting for herself a bouquet from the
flowers which filled one of those _vases_ I before noticed to you. “And
is that beautiful vase,” said I, “another family antiquity? it looks as
though it stole its elegant form from an Estrucan model: is this too an
effort of ancient Irish taste!”
“No,” said she, I thought confusedly, “I believe it came from Italy.”
“Has it been long in the possession of the family?” said I, with
persevering impertinence. “It was a present from a friend of my
father’s,” she replied, colouring, “to me!” The bell at that moment rang
for breakfast, away she flew, apparently pleased to be released from my
importunities.
“A friend of her father’s!” and who can this friend be, whose delicacy
of judgment so nicely adapts the gifts to the taste of her on whom they
are lavished. For, undoubtedly, the same hand that made the offering of
the vases, presented also those other portable elegancies which are so
strongly contrasted by the rude original furniture of the _Boudoir_.
The tasteful _donneur_ and author of that letter whose torn fragment
betrayed the sentiment of no common mind, are certainly one and the same
person. Yet, who visits the castle? scarcely any one; the pride and
circumstances of the _Prince_ equally forbid it. Sometimes, though
rarely, an old Milesian cousin, or poor relation will drop in, but those
of them that I have seen, are mere commonplace people. I have indeed
heard the Prince speak of a cousin in the Spanish service, and a nephew
in the Irish brigades, now in Germany. But the cousin is an old man, and
the nephew he has not seen since he was a child. Yet, after all, these
presents may have come from one of those relatives; if so, as Glorvina
has no recollection of either, how I should curse that jealous temper
which has purchased for me some moments of torturing doubts. I remember
you used often to say, that any woman could _pique_ me into love by
affecting indifference, and that the native jealousy of my disposition
would always render me the slave of any woman who knew how to play upon
my dominant passion. The fact is, when my heart erects an idol for its
secret homage, it is madness to think that another should even bow
at the shrine, much less that his offerings should be propitiously
received.
But it is the silence of Glorvina on the subject of this generous
friend, that distracts me; if, after all--oh! it is impossible--it is
sacrilege against heaven to doubt her! She practised in deception!
she, whose every look, every motion betrays a soul that is all truth,
innocence, and virtue! I have endeavoured to sound the priest on the
subject, and affected to admire the vases; repeating the same questions
with which I had teased Glorvina. But he, too, carelessly replied, “they
were given her by a friend of her father’s.”
H. M.
LETTER XXV.
TO J. D. ESQ., M. P.
Just as I had finished my last, the Prince sent for me to his room; I
found him alone, and sitting up in his bed! he only complained of the
effects of years and sickness, but it was evident that some recent cause
of uneasiness preyed on his mind. He made me sit by his bed-side, and
said, that my good-nature, upon every occasion, induced him to prefer a
request, he was induced to hope would not meet with a denial. I begged
he would change that request to a command, and rely in every instance
on my readiness to serve him. He thanked me, and told me in a few words,
that the priest was going on a very particular, but not very pleasing
business for him (the Prince) to the _north_; that the journey was long,
and would be both solitary and tedious to his good old friend, whose
health I might have observed was delicate and precarious, except I had
the goodness to cheat the weariness of the journey by giving the priest
my company. “I would not make the request,” he added, “but that I
think your compliance will be productive of pleasure and information
to yourself; in a journey of a hundred miles, many new sources of
observation to your inquiring mind will appear. Besides, you who seem to
feel so lively an interest in all which concerns this country, will
be glad to have an opportunity of viewing the Irish character in a
new aspect; or rather of beholding the Scotch character engrafted upon
ours.”
“But,” said the Prince, with his usual nationality, “that exotic branch
is not very distinguishable from the old stock.”
I need not tell you that I complied with this request with _seeming_
readiness, but with real reluctance.
In the evening, as we circled round the fire in the great hall, I
proposed to _Father John_ to accompany him on his journey the following
day.
The poor man was overjoyed at the offer while Glorvina betrayed neither
surprise nor regret at my intention, but looked first at her father, and
then at me, with kindness and gratitude.
Were my heart more at ease, were my confidence in the affections of
Glorvina something stronger, I should greatly relish this little tour,
but as it is, when I found every thing arranged for my departure,
without the concurrence of my own wishes, I could not check my
pettishness, and for want of some other mode of venting it, I
endeavoured to ridicule a work on the subject of _ancient Irish_ history
which the priest was reading aloud, while Glorvina worked, and I was
trifling with my pencil.
“What,” said I, after having interrupted him in many different
passages, which I thought savoured of natural hyperbole, “what can
be more forced than the very supposition of your partial author, that
_Albion_, the most ancient name of Britain, was given it as though it
were another or _second Ireland_, because Banba was one of the ancient
names of your country?”
“It may appear to you a forced etymology,” said the priest, “yet it has
the sanction of _Camden_, who first risked the supposition. But it is
the fate of our unhappy country to receive as little credit in the
present day, for its former celebrity, as for its great antiquity, *
although the former is attested by _Bede_, and many other early British
writers, and the latter is authenticated by the testimony of the most
ancient Greek authors. For _Jervis_ is mentioned in the _Argonautica_ of
_Orpheus_, long before the name of England is anywhere to be found in
Grecian literature. And surely it had scarcely been first mentioned, had
it not been first known.”
* It has been the fashion to throw odium on the modern
Irish, by undermining the basis of their ancient history,
and vilifying their ancient national character. If a
historian professes to have acquired his information from
the records of the country whose history he writes, his
accounts are generally admitted as authentic, as the
commentaries of Garcilasso de Vega are considered as the
chief pillars of Peruvian history, though avowed by their
author to have been compiled from the old national ballads
of the country; yet the old writers of Ireland, (the Psalter
of Cashel in particular) though they refer to these ancient
re cords of their country, authenticated by existing manners
and existing habits, are plunged into the oblivion of
contemptuous neglect, or read only to be discredited.
“Then you really suppose,” said I, smiling incredulously, “we are
indebted to you for the name of our country?”
“I know,” said the priest, returning my smile, “the fallacies in general
of all etymologists, but the only part of your island anciently called
by any name that bore the least affinity to _Albion_, was _Scotland_,
then called _Albin_, a word of _Irish_ etymology, _Albin_ signifying
mountainous, from Alb, a mountain.”
“But, my dear friend,” I replied, “admitting the great antiquity of your
country, allowing it to be early inhabited by a lettered and civilized
people, and that it was the _Nido paterno_ of western literature when
the rest of Europe was involved in darkness; how is it that so few
monuments of your ancient learning and genius remain? Where are your
manuscripts, your records, your annals, stamped with the seal of
antiquity to be found?”
“Manuscripts, annals, and records are not the treasures of a colonized
or conquered country,” said the priest; “it is always the policy of the
conqueror, or the invader, to destroy those mementi of ancient national
splendour which keep alive the spirit of the conquered or the invaded;
* the dispersion at various periods ** of many of the most illustrious
Irish families into foreign countries, has assisted the depredations of
time and policy, in the plunder of her literary treasures; many of them
are now mouldering in public and private libraries on the Continent,
whither their possessors conveyed them from the destruction which civil
war carries with it, and many of them (even so far back as Elizabeth’s
day) were conveyed to Denmark. The Danish monarch applied to the English
court for some learned men to translate them, and one _Donald O’Daly_, a
person eminently qualified for the task, was actually engaged to perform
it, until the illiberality of the English court prevented the intention
on the poor plea of its prejudicing the English interest.”
* Sir George Carevy, in the reign of Elizabeth, was accused
of bribing the family historian of the McCarthies to convey
to him some curious MSS. “But what,” says the author of the
Analect, “Carevy did in one province [Munster] Henry Sidney,
and his predecessors did all over the kingdom, being charged
to collect all the manuscripts they could, that they might
effectually destroy every vestige of antiquity and letters
throughout the Kingdom.” And St. Patrick, in his apostolic
zeal, committed to the flames several hundred druidical
volumes.
** Fourteen thousand Irish took advantage of the articles of
Limerick, and bade adieu to their native country forever.
“I know myself that many of our finest and most valuable MSS. are in
libraries in France, and have heard, that not a few of them enrich the
Vatican at Rome.” *
* In a conversation which passed in Cork between the
author’s father and the celebrated Dr. O’Leary, the latter
said he had once intended to have written a history of
Ireland. And added, “but, in truth, I found, after various
researches, that I could not give such a history as I would
wish should come from my pen, without visiting the
Continent, more particularly Rome, where alone the best
documents for the history of Ireland are to be had. But it
is now too late in the day for me to think of such a journey
or such exertions as the task would require.”
“Mr. O’Halloran informs me [says Mr. Walker, in his Memoirs of the
Irish Bards, p. 141], that he lately got in a collection
from Rome, several poems of the most eminent Bards of last
centuries.”
“But,” said I, “are not many of those MSS. supposed to be monkish
impositions?”
“Yes,” replied the priest, “by those who _never saw them_, and if
_they did_, were too ignorant of the Irish language to judge of their
authenticity by the internal evidences they contain.”
“And if they were the works of monks,” said the priest, “Ireland was
always allowed to possess at that era the most devout and learned
ecclesiastics in Europe, from which circumstance it received its title
of _Island of Saints_. By them, indeed, many histories of the ancient
Irish were composed in the early ages of Christianity, but it was
certainly from Pagan records and traditions they received their
information; besides, I do not think any arguments can be advanced more
favourable to the histories, than that the fiction of those histories
simply consists in ascribing natural phenomena to supernatural agency.”
“But,” returned I, “granting that your island was the _Athens_ of a
certain age, how is the barbarity of the present day to be reconciled
with the civilization of the enlightened past?”
“When you talk of our _barbarity_,” said the priest, “you do not speak
as you _feel_, but as you _hear_.” I blushed at this mild reproof,
and said, “what I _now_ feel for this country, it would not be easy to
express, but l have always been taught to look upon the _inferior_ Irish
as beings forming an humbler link than humanity in the chain of nature.”
“Yes,” said the priest, “in your country it is usual to attach to that
class of society in ours a ferocious disposition amounting to barbarity;
but this, with other calumnies, of national indolence, and obstinate
ignorance, of want of principle, and want of faith, is unfounded and
illiberal; * ‘cruelty,’ says Lord Sheffield, ‘is not in the nature of
these people more than of other men, for they have many customs
among them which disprove of unnatural indolence, that they are
constitutionally of an active nature, and capable of the greatest
exertions; and of as good dispositions as any nation in the same
state of improvement; their generosity, hospitality, and bravery are
proverbial; intelligence and zeal in whatever they undertake will
never be wanting:--? _It has been the fashion to judge of them by their
outcasts_.’”
* When nature is wounded through all her dearest ties, she
must turn on the hand that stabs, and endeavour to wrest the
poignard from the grasp that aims at the life-pulse of her
heart. And this she will do in obedience to that immutable
law, which blends the instinct of self-preservation with
every atom of human existence. And for this, in less
felicitous times, when oppression and sedition succeeded
alternately to each other, was the name of Irishman, blended
with the horrible epithet of cruel But when the sword of the
oppressor was sheathed, the spirit of the oppressed reposed,
and the opprobrium it had drawn down on him was no longer
remembered, until the unhappy events of a late anarchial
period [1798] revived the faded characters in which that
opprobrium had been traced. The events alluded to were the
atrocities which chiefly occurred in the county of Wexford,
and its adjoining and confederate district. Wexford is an
English colony, planted by Henry the Second, where scarcely
any feature of the original Irish character, or any trace of
the Irish language is to be found. While in the barony of
Forth, not only the customs, manners, habits, and costume,
of the ancient British settlers still prevail, but the
ancient Celtic language, has been preserved with infinitely
less corruption than in any part of Britain, where it has
been interwoven with the Saxon, Danish, and French
languages. In fact, here may be found a remnant of an
ancient. British colony, more pure and unmixed than in any
other part of the world. And here were committed those
barbarities, which have recently attached the epithet of
cruel to the name of Irishman!
“It is strange (said the Prince,) that the earliest British writers
should be as diffuse in the praise, as the moderns are in calumniating
our unhappy country. Once we were everywhere, and by all, justly famed
for our patriotism, ardour of affection, love of letters, skill in arms
and arts, and refinement of manners; but no sooner did there arise a
connexion between us and a sister country, than the reputed virtues
and well-earned glory of the Irish sunk at once into oblivion: as if
(continued this enthusiastic _Milesian_, rising from his seat with
all his native vehemence,)--as if the moral world was subject to those
convulsions which shake the _natural_ to its centre, burying by a single
shock the monumental splendours of countless ages. Thus it should seem,
that when the bosom of national freedom was rent asunder, the national
virtues which derived their nutriment from its source sunk into the
abyss; while on the barren surface which covers the wreck of Irish
greatness, the hand of prejudice and illiberality has sown the seeds of
calumny and defamation, to choke up those healthful plants, indigenous
to the soil, which still raise their oft-crushed heads, struggling for
existence, and which, like the palm-tree, rise, in proportion to those
efforts made to suppress them.”
To repeat the words of the Prince is to deprive them of half their
effect: his great eloquence lies in his air, his gestures, and the
forcible expression of his dark-rolling eye. He sat down exhausted with
the impetuous vehemence with which he had spoken.
“If we were to believe Dr. Warner, however,” (said the priest) “the modern
Irish are a degenerated race, comparatively speaking, for he asserts,
that even in the days of Elizabeth, ‘the old natives had degenerated,
and that the _wars of several centuries_ had reduced them to a state
far inferior to that in which they were found in the days of Henry
the Second.’ But still, like the modern Greeks, we perceive among
them strong traces of a free, a great, a polished, and an enlightened
people.”
Wearied by a conversation in which my heart now took little interest,
I made the _palinod_ of my _prejudices_, and concluded by saying, “I
perceive that on this ground I am always destined to be vanquished, yet
always to win by the loss, and gain by the defeat; and therefore I ought
not in common policy to cease to _oppose_, until nothing further can be
obtained by opposition.”
The Prince, who was getting a little testy at my “_heresy_ and
_schism_,” seemed quite appeased by this avowal; and the priest, who was
gratified by a compliment I had previously paid to his talents, shook me
heartily by the hand, and said, I was the most generous opponent he had
ever met with. Then taking up his book, was suffered to proceed in
its perusal uninterupted. During the whole of the evening, Glorvina
maintained an uninterrupted silence; she appeared lost in thought, and
unmindful of our conversation, while her eyes, sometimes turned on me,
but oftener on her father, seemed humid with a tear, as she contemplated
his lately much altered appearance.
Yet when the debility of the man was for a moment lost in the energy of
the patriot, I perceived the mind of the daughter kindling at the sacred
fire which illumined the father’s; and through the tear of natural
affection sparkled the bright beam of national enthusiasm.
I suspect that the embassy of the good priest is not of the most
pleasant nature. To-night as he left me at the door of my room, he said
that we had a long journey before us; for that the house of the nobleman
to whom we are going lay in a remote part of the province of Ulster;
that he was a Scotchman, and only occasionally visited this country
(where he had an immense property) to receive his rents. “The Prince
(said he) holds a large but unprofitable farm from this Highland chief,
the lease of which he is anxious to throw up: that surly looking fellow
who dined with us the other day, is a steward; and if the master is
as inexorable as the servant, we shall undertake this journey to very
little purpose.”
Adieu.--I endeavour to write and think on every subject but that nearest
my heart, yet _there_ Glorvina and her mysterious friend still awaken
the throb of jealous doubt and anxious solicitude. I shall drop this
for you in the postoffice of the first post-town I pass through; and
probably endeavour to forget myself, and my anxiety to return hither, at
your expense, by writing to you in the course of my journey.
H. M
LETTER XXVI.
TO J. D. ESQ., M. P.
Can you recollect who was that rational, moderate youth, who exclaimed
in the frenzy of passion, “O gods! annihilate both _time_ and _space_,
and make two lovers happy.”
For my part, I should indeed wish the hours annihilated till I again
behold Glorvina; but for the space which divides us, it was requisite
I should be fifty miles from her, to be no more entirely with her; to
appreciate the full value of her society; and to learn the nature of
those wants my heart must ever feel when separated from her. The priest
and I arose this morning with the sun. Our lovely hostess was ready
at the breakfast-table to receive us. I was so selfish as to observe
without regret the air of langour that invested her whole form, and
the heaviness that weighed down her eyelids, as though the influence of
sleep had not renovated the lustre of those downcast eyes they veiled.
Ah! if I dared believe that these wakeful hours were given to me. But I
fear at that moment her heart was more occupied by her father than her
lover: for I have observed, in a thousand instances, the interest she
takes in his affairs; and indeed the priest hinted to me, that her
good sense has frequently retrieved those circumstances the imprudent
speculations of her father have as constantly deranged.
During breakfast she spoke but little, and once I caught her eyes
turned full on me, with a glance in which tenderness, regret, and even
something of despondency were mingled. Glorvina despond! So young, so
lovely, so virtuous, and so highly gifted! Oh! at that moment had I been
master of worlds! but, dependent myself on another’s will, I could only
sympathize in the sufferings while I adored the sufferer.
When we arose to depart, Glorvina said, “If you will lead your horses I
will walk to the drawbridge with you.”
Delighted at the proposal, we ordered our horses to follow us; and with
an arm of Glorvina drawn through either of ours, we left the castle.
“This (said I, pressing the hand which rested on mine,) is commencing a
journey under favourable auspices.”
“God grant it may be so,” said Glorvina, fervently.
“Amen!” said the priest.
“Amen!” I repeated; and looking at Glorvina, read all the daughter in
her eyes.
“We shall sleep to-night, (said the priest, endeavouring to dissipate
the gloom which hung over us by indifferent chit-chat;) we shall sleep
to-night at the hospitable mansion of a true-born _Milesian_, to whom I
have the honour to be distantly allied; and where you will find the old
_Brehon_ law, which forbids that a sept should be disappointed of the
expected feast, was no fabrication of national partiality.”
“What then, (said I,) we shall not enjoy ourselves in all the
comfortable unrestrained freedom of _an inn_.”
“We poor Irish, (said the priest,) find the unrestrained freedom of
an inn not only in the house of a friend, but of every acquaintance,
however distant; and indeed if you are at all known, you may travel from
one end of a province to another, without entering a house of public
entertainment; * the host always considering himself the debtor of the
guest, as though the institution of the _Beataghs **_ were still in
being. And besides a cordial welcome from my hospitable kinsman, I
promise you an introduction to his three handsome daughters. So fortify
your heart, for I warn you it will run some risk before you return.”
* “Not only have I been received with the greatest kindness,
but I have been provided with everything which could promote
the execution of my plan. In taking the circuit of Ireland,
I have been employed eight or nine months; during which time
I have been everywhere received with a hospitality which is
nothing surprising in Ireland: that in such a length of time
I have been but six times at an inn, will give a better idea
of this hospitality than could be done by the most laboured
praise.”--M. de Latocknay.
** In the excellent system of the ancient Milesian
government, the people were divided into classes; the
Literati holding the next rank to royalty itself, and the
Beataghs the fourth; so that, as in China, the state was so
well regulated, that every one knew his place, from the
prince to the peasant. “These Beataghs (says Mr. O’Halloran)
were keepers of open houses for strangers, or poor
distressed natives; and as honourable stipends were settled
on the Literati, so were particular tracts of land on the
Beataghs, to support, with proper munificence, their
station; and there are lands and villages in many places to
this day, which declare by their names their original
appointment.”