whom it is dedicated, is still maintained with unabated devotion and
conviviality throughout the kingdom, from the castle to the cabin. For a
week before it arrives, the beggars wish you “many happy Patrick’s days;”
Patrick’s crosses are sold in every street; every field in the vicinity
of the metropolis is crowded with searchers after “green shamrocks;”
and the dealers in this national emblem (most appropriate to a people
accustomed to be trodden on) carry on a bustling and a thriving trade,
till the whole population comes forth like “Birnham wood to Dunsinane’s
high hill.” From the lowest mendicant to the lord lieutenant,[92] all
are supplied with shamrocks. Not only “bishops, priests, and deacons,”
of the church, as by law established, decorate their consecrated persons
with the venerable emblem of a catholic saint; but the law itself, and
its great conservators, “prank it in green,” like the “merry men” of
Sherwood forest. From the protestant keeper of the king’s conscience to
the papistical attorney, who has no conscience to keep, all are adorned,
though not distinguished by the shamrock.
As soon as the domestic day begins, and breakfast is announced, the head
servant in every house makes his appearance with a salver of shamrocks,
each tied up into a _bouquet_, presenting one to each of the family,
and usually receiving a _buona mano_, “to drown his shamrock in St.
Patrick’s pot.” The fumes of whiskey punch, the proper libation to the
patron saint, arise from every kitchen and servants’ hall, throughout the
country; and the court ball given at the Castle of Dublin, in that noble
temple dedicated at once to the saint, and to Terpsichore, St. Patrick’s
hall, surpasses in numbers and in splendour even the like celebration of
the king’s birthday. Feathers wave, lappets flutter, diamonds sparkle;
and the red bench still presents the descendants of the Geraldines, the
De Burgos, and the Brien Borrus, with six hundred years’ nobility at
their backs, upholding the patron saint of their ancient dynasties, in
the very face of the protestant church, and of the constitution of 1688.
When all are seated, (and what an amphitheatre of beauty presents itself
to the eye of the lucky stranger, who chances to visit the Irish court on
a Patrick’s day,) and when the vice-regal procession has passed up the
centre of the hall, and the representatives of majesty have taken their
seats on the throne, once consecrated by the august person of majesty
itself; then the national air is struck up with an enlivening influence,
to which even Lord F——’s protestant heart might beat responsively.
Chamberlains and masters of the ceremony, officiating as high priests
on this most catholic festival, arrange the “office” to be celebrated,
in honour of the merriest saint in the calendar; to whose glory, and
to whose tune, the beautiful youths of his own Ireland dance, with
a devotional ardour, far beyond the saltatory piety of the zealous
jumpers of Wales, or of the dancing dervishes of Constantinople. None
of the cold forms and still-life movements of the quadrille, invented
by philosophers, “atheists and politicians,” neutralize its fervour.
Fifty couples, danced down in dislocating springs and hops, attest the
fanaticism of the devotees; and every joyous face and glittering eye,
seems to say, with the disciples of a certain Italian saint, “plead for
us, we dance with you.”
St. Patrick’s day is the saturnalia of all the elderly gentlemen, who
have not “forgot themselves to stone.” Many veterans _de la vieille
roche_, go through a course of champooing for the occasion, and anoint
their joints, like the athletes of old, to attest their adherence to the
creed of their fathers, and preach the doctrine of Paddy O’Rafferty, and
of the Cameronian rant, in opposition to the heresy and schism of _Di
tanti palpiti_, _dos-à-dos_, and “_cavalier seul_.” This, too, is the
hegira of ladies of a certain age, who, taking flight from the fatal
pre-eminence to which Time had consigned them, bring the _weight_ of
their personal consequence to the support of an oppressed faith; and
yielding to the flattering proposition of some young aid-de-camp on
service, (and very hard service too,) drag the “feathered mercury” after
them, down the middle, and up again, to the interesting intonations
of “go to the devil and shake yourself,” or, “Patrick’s day in the
morning.”[93]
At last arrives the _media noche_ of the well worshipped saint, who for
once sees the religious acrimony and christian animosity of the country
he vainly protects, laid at the feet of national gaiety and sociality.
Supper is announced; and the feast of the _cocagne_ in France, or Naples,
was but a luncheon, to this truly catholic entertainment. Hands that
never met before, meet now on the necks of flasks and decanters. Fingers
habitually raised in mutual scorn, are now busy in the same pie; while
protestant nods at papist, in a tolerant hob-nob from “humble port to
imperial tokay.” Sir Harcourt takes wine with the author of “Florence
Macarthy,” and Counsellor O’Connell is helped to the wing of a pheasant
by a protestant archbishop, with a mental reservation against all other
“wings,” in all other places.
Again, the dance is resumed; hearts, lost or mislaid, before supper, are
detected on the person of the thief, after it. Partners, led out for a
waltz, remain partners for life; and St. Patrick becomes the Hymen of
the year, insuring the perpetuity of his rites, by the recollections
which every recurrence of his joyous festival is sure to bring with it.
Oh! that all the saints (St. Athanasius, the great protestant saint,
included,) were thus worshipped! That all saints “militant here” in
Ireland, maintained this spirit of social kindness, this interchange of
social courtesy. To those who, like myself, have made the sacrifice, (the
greatest that a true Irishman, and still more, a true Irishwoman can
make,) that of living in the country, where patriotism has long been not
only proscription, but martyrdom, what a change would such an order of
things produce! what a perpetual recurrence of bitter sensations would
it spare! what natural talent (now kept down by party spirit,) would
explode, to illuminate the murky atmosphere of political disunion like
the bursting of a sky-rocket on the midnight gloom of a winter’s night!
Who, that loves Ireland, that loves humanity, would not drop a bead, or
light a taper, to propitiate the saint, who would work this best and
greatest of miracles? Be it hoped, that this Patrick’s day, 1829, will be
the harbinger of an whole year of national festivals; and that he, who
has represented the good saint on earth, by an act, which every Irish
saint in the calendar will bless, will accept of this humble offering
from one, who has proved herself no
“Swiss to fight for any God or king;”
and who, true to her old vocation, flung no tributary laurel under the
chariot wheels of the conqueror at Waterloo, yet now gratefully lays her
shamrock at the feet of the emancipator of Ireland.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES
[1] The prevalence of these barbarous notions of the Deity, almost
justifies the cynical observations of a French writer—“Ce fut donc
toujours dans l’attelier de la tristesse que l’homme malheureux a façonné
le fantôme dont il a fait son Dieu.”
[2] When this short interval of happiness closed before the tyranny of
the succeeding Cæsars, the increase of the slave population, and the
inroads of the northern barbarians, the human mind again relapsed into
a gloomy superstition. The influx of Asiatics and Egyptians into Rome,
conspiring with a strong sense of present misery, revived the taste
for portents and prophecies: the fantastical religions of the east
were imported, with its other products; and thus the Western World was
prepared to receive those manifold corruptions of Christianity, which,
under the name of church, have so long held mankind in slavery.
[3] “What would you have me do? When she goes to the cellar, she always
stays there.”
[4] Dans le tems où l’on rougissait souvent, où l’on vouloit dissimuler
son embarras et sa timidité, on portait de grands éventails. Aujourd’hui
l’on ne rougit pas, &c. &c. &c.—MAD. DE GENLIS.
[5] Charles the Second died in the arms of the Church and the Duchess of
Portsmouth.—See DALRYMPLE.
[6] “Era la carrozza tutta d’argento con statue, figurine intaglio et
imprese misteriose, d’invenzione del Cavalier Bernini, con la fodera e le
coperte di velluti di color celeste, tirata da sei corsieri leardi; coi
finimenti dello stesso drappo; come pure del medesimo erano adornati i
cocchieri, la lettica, e la sedia, e le coperte dei muli e della Chinea,
il tutto tempestuti di brocche massiccie d’argento e ornato da diversi
lavori superbi dello stesso metallo.”—_Platina Vite de’ Pont_.
[7] A book of engravings of the art of hair-dressing for the ladies
of France, after my own designs, with an abridged treatise on the
conservation of the natural hair.
[8] “Five and forty years ago, the women would have thought it indecent
to have their hair dressed by men.”
[9] “Yes, he is the most excellent person in the world. He was the
chancellor of my duchy; for my brother did not give me a kingdom.”
[10] Disputes on religion are, after all, but disputes upon men’s ideas
concerning supernatural objects; and to ridicule what is incongruous in
thought, is by no means to ridicule the divine Author of all things—that
is impossible.
[11] First dissertation to the Supplement of the Encyclopædia.
[12]
“Sic tibi rescribo, de tuo palfrido,
Crede quod habes et habes.”
[13] Lettres écrites de la Montagne.
[14] “Foreign ambassadors formerly made a pompous and solemn entry into
Paris. This usage subsisted until the middle of the last age: we know not
why it was abolished.”
[15] “Some day, or other, I will make a formal apology for bad books.
They are invaluable to a sound thinker.”
[16] “There is as much invention in making money by a bad book as there
is folly in buying it. Not to hazard sometimes great nonsense is to be
ignorant of public taste.”
[17] “Of bad wine is made good vinegar.”
[18]
“And since the vulgar pay for books, ’tis just
To take some pains to write down to their gust.”
[19] “We should be thankful to those who dare to broach paradoxes. If
the received opinion be the truth, they occasion us the advantage of
believing on reason, what before we credited by habit: if it be false,
they deliver us from an error.”
[20] “It is strange that they will print folks without their leave.”
[21] There is one of these cancelli, or altarpieces, at the castle of
Malahide, which escaped the religious rapacity of Myles Corbett, to whom
Malahide was given by Oliver Cromwell; the Talbots being then driven into
Connaught, the limbo of catholic gentility in Ireland.
[22] “E lavoravano con molto profitto, alle cose delle arti; non
lasciando ne in palazzo, ne in altra parte di Roma, cosa alcuna notabile,
che non disegnassero: e perche, quando il Papa era in palazzo, non
potevano così stare a disegnare, subito che sua Santità cavalcava, come
spesso faceva, entravano, per mezzo d’amici, in dette stanze a disegnare,
e vi stavano dalla mattina alla sera, senza mangiare alto che un poco di
pane.”
[23] That there are many bright personal exceptions, makes nothing
against the truth of the general conclusion. Genius and virtue are
superior to contingent circumstance; and the Russels, the Hollands, and
the Darnleys, are not to be placed in the common muster-roll of the class
to which they belong. The vice, however, is in the system, and not in
the individuals, and we daily feel its influence even on the liberal and
enlightened; who, when called upon to decide between privilege and the
people, are too apt to have their judgments warped by the peculiarity of
their position.
[24] “No persecution, and plenty of indifference or forgetfulness, would
be the death of all sects.”
[25] The deceased friend here alluded to, partook largely of the wit
and intellect of a family, to whose members, male and female, it is the
fashion in Ireland to apply “_l’esprit de Mortimar_,” as a distinction.
It is saying nothing, to say of Mr. B——, that he was one of the few
surviving conservators of the peculiar wit, humour, and national
information which once distinguished “_the order of gentlemen_” in
Ireland! I not only lost in him “_mon meilleur causeur_,” as Madame de
Villette said on losing her friend Champfort, but one to whose judgment
on all that was characteristically Irish, I could always refer with
confidence, and by whose approbation I was always flattered and assured.
[26] “Alas! why cannot I still expect him, even though he should not
come.”
[27] “As for the rouge and the president, I shall not give them the
honors of a rupture.”
[28] It is not without much pain that I revive the memory of
circumstances, which ought to lie buried in the tomb of the eminent lady
to whom they relate. There is nothing so certain, as that morality varies
with times and places; and that to censure conduct without reference to
the age and nation of the individual, is substantial injustice. Helen
Maria Williams came into life at a moment when the malignant influence of
bad institutions on happiness, and the prevailing hypocrisy of the times,
had rendered every moral principle problematical, and, like her highly
gifted cotemporary, the author of the Rights of Woman, she fell into the
common error of supposing, that whatever is opposed to wrong must be
right. But, though the individual should not be hastily condemned, the
interests of the younger part of my own sex require that the error should
be signalized. Female purity is indispensable to social happiness. It is
one of nature’s own laws; and is never violated with impunity.
[29] “That young lady who has been so long young.”
[30] “You flatter me; but no matter, always flatter.”
[31] He calls ambition “_la queue de Bonaparte_.”
[32] Saturnalia, I. 16.
[33] “The genius of man is too great for his little habitation; we must,
then, conclude that he is destined to a more elevated existence.”
[34] “Give the past to oblivion, the present to indifference; and, to
live exempt from all care, leave the future to Providence.”
[35] “What, then, is the use of emancipation?”
[36] “There is no devil, sufficiently a devil, to make head against a
wicked woman.”
[37] “Fools are not to be seduced; they must be overpowered.”
[38] A friend of mine kept a pet toad in his cellar, and for nine years
it never stirred off the tile which it had chosen for its habitation.
[39] “And all this for a flower and a walk—for a fatigue the less.”
[40] When Louis XIV. sent an army to dragoon the Britons into submission,
on their resistance to his oppressive taxation, they fell on their knees,
and cried aloud, “Mea culpa, mea culpa!” “C’étoit,” says Madame de
Sévigné, “le seul mot de François qu’ils savoient.”
[41] The Traité des Landes, made between these two pretenders to the
Duchy, was characteristic of the men and times.—“Rien de plus simple que
les conditions. Le Duché étoit partagé en deux. Chacun devoit porter
le titre de Duc, et avoir sa capitale; Rennes pour l’un, Nantes pour
l’autre. On se sépara avec promesses de se rejoindre, dans un lieu
indiqué, pour convenir des arrangemens que le partage exigeoit, et
recevoir la ratification de la Duchesse, Jeanne la Boiteuse, épouse de
Charles de Blois. C’est d’elle, qu’il tenoit le duché de Brétagne. Quand
elle eut lu le traité que son mari lui envoya, elle dit à celui qui
l’apportoit, ‘Il fait trop bon marché de ce qui n’est pas à lui;’ et dans
sa lettre de réponse, elle lui mandoit, ‘Vous ferez ce qu’il vous plaira;
je ne suis qu’une femme, et ne puis mieux: mais plutôt je perdrais la
vie, ou deux si je les avais, avant de consentir à chose si réprochable,
à la honte des miens.’ Sa lettre étoit mouillée de larmes; l’époux en fut
ému; et encore plus, lorsque en quittant sa femme, qu’il étoit allé voir,
elle lui dit, ‘Conservez-moi votre cœur, mais aussi conservez-moi mon
Duché; et quelque chose qu’arrive, faites que la souveraineté me reste
toute entière.’ Il le promit, baisa sa dame, et partit.”—ANQUETIL.
[42] “This mushroom Baron is most likely one of the Black band”—the
purchasers and dilapidators of the forfeited châteaux.
[43] “Send me your prospects, and I will send you my trees.”
[44] “We have white-washed all the old premises, and given them three
coats, inside and out.”
[45] “Mademoiselle du Plessis est tout justement comme vous l’avez
laissée. Elle a une nouvelle amie à Vitri, dont elle se pare, parce-que
c’est un bel esprit, qui a lu tous les romans, et qui a reçu deux lettres
de la Princesse de Tarente. J’ai fait dire méchamment par Vaillant, que
je ne témoignerais rien; mais que mon cœur étoit saisi. Tout ce qu’elle
dit là-dessus, est digne de Molière.”
_Lettres de Madame de Sévigné_, vol. i. p. 199.
[46] “Mes petits arbres sont d’une beauté surprenante. Pilois les élève
jusqu’au nues. Rien n’est si beau que ces Allées, que vous avez vu
naitre. Vous savez que je vous donnai une manière de dévise, qui vous
convenoit. Voici un mot que j’ai écrit sur un arbre pour mon fils, qui
est revenu de Candie, ‘vago di fama.’”—_Lettres de Madame de Sévigné_, p.
200.
[47] This article, already printed, has been so favourably received
by the public, that I have ventured to reclaim it from the miscellany
in which it originally appeared. It may be scarcely necessary to add,
that as far as the personal narrative is concerned, the production is a
mere _jeu d’esprit_, undertaken to fulfil a task incurred at a game of
forfeits.
[48] Every possible encouragement should be held out to the rising
aristocracy, to pursue other roads to distinction than those acquired by
coronets and quarterings. Upon such heaven-born distinctions, the world
is now somewhat _désabusé!_ thanks to the Monsieur Tonsons of the French
revolution, and to the Jesuitism and _toujours en arrière_ vocation of
the _premier sang Chrétien de l’Europe_. The _bel air_ pages of “Matilda”
and “Granby,” light as they are, are real benefactions, after the eternal
imitations of the Scotch novels.
[49] Archæology, so called playfully by H. W.
[50] “It was an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance,” says its
author, “the ancient and the modern. In the former, all was imagination
and improbability: in the latter, nature is always intended to be (and
sometimes has been) copied with success. Invention has not been wanting;
but the great resources of fancy have been dammed up, by a strict
adherence to common life. But if in the latter species nature has cramped
imagination, she did but take her revenge, having been totally excluded
from old romances. The actions, sentiments, conversations, of the heroes
and heroines of ancient days, were as unnatural as the machines employed
to put them in motion.”—_Preface to the second edition of Otranto._
[51] The first imitation of Otranto was “The Old English Baron,” of which
Walpole gives the following notice. “I have seen, too, the criticism
you mention on ‘The Castle of Otranto,’ in the preface to ‘The Old
English Baron.’ It is not at all oblique, but, though mixed with high
compliments, directly attacks the visionary part, which, says the author
or authoress, makes one laugh. I do assure you, I have not had the
smallest inclination to return that attack. It would even be ungrateful,
for the work is a professed imitation of mine, only stripped of the
marvellous—and so entirely stripped, except in one awkward attempt at a
ghost or two, that it is the most insipid dull nothing you ever saw. It
certainly does not make one laugh; for what makes one doze, seldom makes
one merry.”—_Correspondence of Horace Walpole._
[52] Lady M. W. Montagu’s letters, judged by the conventional standard
of modern refinement, must be deemed occasionally vulgar, coarse, and
indelicate; but they are clever, spirited, and easy, and invaluable
for the traits of manners they have preserved of her own times. Her
anecdotes of her friends, Moll Skerratt, Peg Pelham, Biddy Noel, and the
pretty fellows,—her lady-like remedy against spleen, galloping all day,
and champagne at night,—are exquisite. Her account also of the state
of morals, in those good old times, is worth quoting:—“When honour,
virtue, and reputation, are laid aside like crumpled ribbons, the forlorn
state of matrimony is as much ridiculed by young ladies as by young
fellows.”—See her Letters, Vol. I.
It is worth adding, that Lady Mary was so sensible of the superiority
of her own letters over those of her contemporaries, that she makes the
following prophecy of their future success:—“The last pleasant work that
fell in my way, was Madame de Sévigné’s Letters: very pretty they are;
but I assure you, without the least vanity, that mine will be full as
interesting in forty years.”
[53] See Pope’s love-letter to Lady M. W. Montagu, in which he talks of
“Momus his project,” and gets in, neck and shoulders, Herod and Herodias,
Jupiter and Curtius, to show off his power of “wit and raillery,” and
prove the strength of his passion by the force of his learning. “Before
Addison and Swift,” says Walpole, “style was scarce aimed at even by our
best authors.”
[54] “Mr. Addison travelled through the poets, and not through Italy;
for all his ideas are borrowed from descriptions, and not from the
reality.”—_Correspondence of Horace Walpole._
[55] I allude here to Ninon’s genuine letters, many of which are to be
found scattered through the works of St. Evremond, and her supposed
letters, addressed to the Marquis de Sévigné. “Les vraies lettres de
Ninon,” says a modern French critic, “étoient moins recherchés et plus
délicates, quoique le tour en soit singulier et qu’elles soient remplies
de morale et brillantes d’esprit.”
[56] He says of his own letters:—“I write more trifling letters than any
man living; am ashamed of them; and yet they are expected of me.”
[57] For the schemers see Lady M. W. Montagu’s letters. The following
passage from one of Walpole’s letters contains a curious prediction of
the future supremacy of Almack’s:—“Mrs. Cornelis, apprehending the future
assembly at Almack’s, has enlarged her vast room, and hung it with blue
satin, and another with yellow satin; but Almack’s room, which is to be
ninety feet long, proposes to swallow up both hers as easily as Moses’s
rod gobbled down those of the magicians.”
[58] See his admirable sketches of those “rags of a dishclout ministry,”
which he has scattered through his letters; particularly the Duke of
Newcastle. See also his letters to, and various anecdotes of Lord Chatham.
[59] “For my writings, they do not depend on venal authors, but on
their own merits and demerits. It is from men of sense they must expect
their sentence, not from boobies and hireling authors, whom I have
always shunned, with the whole fry of minor wits, critics, and monthly
censors.”—_H. Walpole’s Correspondence._
[60] “The turn-coat, hypocrite, infidel, Bishop Warburton.”—_Ibid._
[61] “There are two more volumes come out of Sir Charles Grandison. I
shall detain them till the last is published, and not think I postpone
much of your pleasure. For my part, I stopped at the fourth: I was so
tired of sets of people getting together and saying, ‘Pray, Miss, with
whom are you in love?’ and of mighty good young men, who convert your Mr.
M.’s in the twinkling of a sermon.”—_Correspondence of H. Walpole._
[62] “On Wednesday we expect a third she-meteor. Those learned luminaries
the Ladies Pomfret and W—— are to be joined by the Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu. You have not been witness to the rhapsody of mystic nonsense
which these two fair ones debate incessantly, and consequently cannot
figure what must be the issue of this triple alliance; we have some idea
of it. Only figure the coalition of prudery, debauchery, sentiment,
history, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and metaphysics, all except the
second understood by halves, by quarters, or not at all. You shall have
the journals of this notable academy.”—_Correspondence of H. Walpole._
[63] “I was diverted with two relics of St. Charles the martyr: one,
the pearl you see in his pictures, taken out of his ear after his
foolish head was off; the other, the cup out of which he took his last
sacrament. They should be given to that nursery of nonsense and bigotry,
Oxford.”—_Ibid._