Ennui, or Memoirs of The Earl of Glenthorn

Bred up in luxurious indolence, I was surrounded by friends, who seemed to have no business in this world but to save me the trouble of thinking or acting for myself; and I was confirmed in the pride of helplessness by being continually reminded, that I was the only son and heir of the Earl of Glenthorn. My mother died a few weeks after I was born, and I lost my father when I was very

young. I was left to the care of a guardian, who in hopes of winning my affection never controlled my wishes, or even my whims; I changed schools and masters as often as I pleased, and consequently learned nothing: at last I found a private tutor, who suited me exactly, for he was completely of my own opinion, "that every thing, which the young Earl of Glenthorn did not know by the instinct of genius, was not worth his learning." Money could purchase a reputation for talents, and with money I was immoderately supplied; for my guardian expected to bribe me with a part of my own fortune, to forbear inquiring what had become of a certain deficiency in the remainder. This tacit compact I perfectly understood; we were consequently on the most amicable terms imaginable, and the most confidential, for I thought it better to deal with my guardian than with Jews. Thus at an age when other young men are subject to some restraint, either from the necessity of their circumstances, or the discretion of their friends, I became completely master of myself, and of my fortune. My companions envied me; but even their envy was not sufficient to make me happy. Whilst yet a boy I began to feel the dreadful symptoms of that mental malady, which baffles the skill of medicine, and for which wealth can purchase only temporary alleviation. For this complaint there is no precise English name,———but, alas! the foreign term is now naturalized in England.———Among the higher classes, whether in the wealthy, or the fashionable world, who is unacquainted with ennui?———At first I was unconscious of being subject to this disease; I felt that something was the matter with me, but I did not know what: yet the symptoms were sufficiently marked. I was afflicted with frequent fits of fidgetting, yawning, and stretching, with a constant restlessness of mind and body, an aversion to the place I was in, or the thing I was doing, or rather to that which was passing before my eyes, for I was never doing any thing; I had an utter abhorrence, and an incapacity of voluntary exertion. Unless roused by external stimulus, I sunk into that kind of apathy, and vacancy of ideas, vulgarly known by the name of a brown study. If confined in a room for more than half an hour by bad weather, or other contrarieties, I would pace backwards and forwards, like the restless cavia in his den, with a fretful, unmeaning pertinacity. I felt an insatiable longing for something new, and a childish love of locomotion.

My physician and my guardian, not knowing what else to do with me, sent me abroad. I set out upon my travels in my eighteenth year, attended by my favourite tutor as my companion. We perfectly agreed in our ideas of travelling; we hurried from place to place as fast as horses and wheels, and curses and guineas, could carry us. Milord Anglois rattled over half the globe without getting one inch farther from his ennui. Three years were to be consumed before I should be of age. What sums did I spend during this interval in expedition-money to Time! but the more I tried to hasten him, the slower the rogue went. I lost my money and my temper.

At last the day for which I had so long panted arrived. I was twenty-one! and I took possession of my estate. The bells rang the bonfires blazed, the tables wore spread, the wine flowed, huzzas resounded, friends and tenants crowded about me, and nothing but the voice of joy and congratulation was to be heard. The bustle of my situation kept me awake for some weeks; the pleasure of property was new, and, as long as the novelty lasted, delightful. I cannot say that I was satisfied, but my mind was distended by the sense of the magnitude of my possessions. I had large estates in England; and in one of the remote maritime counties of Ireland, I was lord over an immense territory, annexed to the ancient castle of Glenthorn. A noble pile of antiquity! worth ten degenerate castles of modern days. It was placed in a bold romantic situation; at least as far as I could judge of it by a picture, said to be a striking likeness, which hung in my hall at Sherwood Park in England. I was born in Ireland, and nursed, as I was told, in an Irish cabin; for my father had an idea, that this would make me hardy: he left me with my Irish nurse till I was two years old, and from that time forward neither he nor I ever revisited Ireland. He had a dislike to that country, and I grew up in his prejudices. I declared that I would always reside in England. Sherwood Park, my English country seat, had but one fault. It was completely finished. The house was magnificent, and in the modern taste; the furniture fashionably elegant, and in all the gloss of novelty. Not a single luxury omitted; not a fault could be found by the most fastidious critic. My park, my grounds, displayed all the beauties of nature and of art, judiciously combined. Majestic woods, waving their dark foliage, overhung———But I will spare my readers the description, for I remember falling asleep myself whilst a poet was reading to me an ode on the beauties of Sherwood Park. These beauties too soon became familiar to my eye; and even the idea of being the proprietor of this enchanting place soon palled upon my vanity. Every casual visitor, all the strangers, even the common people, who were allowed once a week to walk in my demesne, enjoyed it a thousand times more than I could. I remember, that, about six weeks after I came to Sherwood Park, I one evening escaped from the crowds of friends who filled my house, to indulge myself in a solitary, melancholy walk. I saw at some distance a party of people, who were coming to admire the grounds, and to avoid meeting them I took shelter under a fine tree, the branches of which, hanging to the ground, concealed me from the view of passengers. Thus seated, I was checked in the middle of a desperate yawn, by hearing one among the party of strangers exclaiming——— How happy the owner of this place must be! Has he any want, or any care?

Yes: had I known how to enjoy the goods of life, I might have been happy; but want of occupation, and antipathy to exertion, rendered me one of the most miserable men upon Earth. Still I imagined, that the cause of my discontent proceeded from some external circumstance. Soon after my coming of age, business of various sorts required my attention; papers were to be signed, and lands were to be let: these things appeared to me terrible difficulties. Not even that minister of state, who so feelingly describes his horrour at the first appearance of the secretary with the great portfolio, ever experienced sensations so oppressive as mine were, when my steward began to talk to me of my own affairs. In the peevishness of my indolence, I declared, that I thought the pains overbalanced the pleasures of property. Captain Crawley, a friend———a sort of a friend——— an humble companion of mine, a gross, unblushing, thorough-going flatterer, happened to be present when I made this declaration: he kindly undertook to stand between me and the shadow of trouble. I accepted this offer.

Aye, Crawley, said I, do see and settle with these people.

I had not the slightest confidence in the person into whose hands, to save myself from the labour of thinking, I thus threw all my affairs; but I satisfied my understanding, by resolving that, when I should have leisure, I would look out for an agent, upon whom I could depend.

I had now been nearly two months at Sherwood Park; too long a time, I thought, to remain in any place, and I was impatient to get away. My steward, who disliked the idea of my spending my summers at home, found it easy to persuade me, that the water on my estate had a brackish unwholesome taste. The man who told me this stood before me in perfect health, though he had drunk this insalubrious water all his life; but it was too laborious a task for my intellects to compare the evidence of my different senses, and I found it most easy to believe what I heard, though it was in direct opposition to what I saw. Away I hurried to a watering-place, after the example of many of my noble contemporaries, who leave their delightful country seats to pay, by the inch, for being squeezed up in lodging houses, with all imaginable inconvenience, during the hottest months in summer. I whiled away my time at Brighton, cursing the heat of the weather, till the winter came, and then cursing the cold, and longing for the London winter.

The London winter commenced, and the young Earl of Glenthorn, and his entertainments, and his equipages, and his extravagance, were the conversation of all the world, and the joy of the newspapers. The immense cost of the fruit at my desserts was recorded; the annual expense of the vast nosegays of hot-house flowers worn daily by the footmen, who clung behind my coach, was calculated; the hundreds of wax-lights, which burned nightly in my house, were numbered by the idle admirers of folly; and it was known by the servants of every genteel family in town, that Lord Glenthorn suffered nothing but wax to be burned in his stables; that his servants drank nothing but claret and champagne; that his liveries, surpassing the imagination of ambassadors, vied with regal magnificence, whilst their golden trappings could have stood even the test of Chinese curiosity. My coachmaker's bill for this year, if laid before the public, would amuse and astonish sober-minded people, as much as some charges which have lately appeared in our courts of justice for extraordinary coaches and very extraordinary landaus. I will not enter into the detail of my extravagance in minor articles of expense; these, I thought, could never be felt by such a fortune as that of the Earl of Glenthorn: but, for the information of those who have the same course to run or to avoid, I should observe, that my diurnal visits to jewellers' shops amounted, in time, to sums worth mentioning. Of the multitude of baubles that I bought, the rings, the seals, the chains, I will give no account; it would pass the belief of man, and the imagination of woman. Those who have the least value for their time have usually the greatest number of watches, and are the most anxious about the exactness of their going. I and my repeaters were my own plagues, and the profit of all the fashionable watchmakers, whose shops I regularly visited for a lounge. My history, at this period, would be a complete lounger's journal; but I will spare my readers this diary. I wish, however, as I have had ample experience, to impress it on the minds of all whom it may concern, that a lounger of fortune must be extravagant. I went into shops merely to pass an idle hour, but I could not help buying something; and I was ever at the mercy of tradesmen, who took advantage of my indolence, and who thought my fortune inexhaustable. I really had not any taste for expense; but I let all who dealt with me, especially my servants, do as they pleased, rather than be at the trouble of making them do as they ought. They assured me, that Lord Glenthorn must have such and such things and must do so and so, and I quietly submitted to this imagnary necessity.

All this time I was the envy of my acquiantance, but I was more deserving of their compassion. Without anxiety or exertion, I possesed every thing they wanted; but then I had no motive———I had nothing to desire; I had an immense fortune, and I was the Earl of Glenthorn; my title and wealth were sufficient distinctionc; how could I be anxious about my boots, or the cape of my coat, or any of those trifles which so happily interest and occupy the lives of fashionable young men, who have not the misfortune to possess a large estate? Most of my companions had some real or imaginary grievance, some old uncle or father, some cursed profession to complain of, but I had none. They had hopes and fears, but I had none. I was on the pinnacle of glory, which they were endeavouring to reach, and I had nothing to do but to sit still, and enjoy the barrenness of the prospect.

In this recital I have communicated, I hope, to my readers, some portion of that ennui which I endured, otherwise they cannot form an adequate idea of my temptation to become a gambler. I really had no vice, nor any of those propensities which lead to vice; but ennui produced most of the effects, that are usually attributed to strong passions or a vicious disposition.

Gaming relieved me from that insuperable listlessness by which I was oppressed. I became interested———became agitated; in short, I found a new kind of stimulus, and I indulged in it most intemperately. I grew immoderately fond of that which supplied me with sensations. My days and nights were passed at the gaming table. I remember once spending three days and three night in the hazard room of a well-known house in St. James's-street: the shutters were closed, the curtains down, and we had candles the whole time; even in the adjoining rooms we had candles, that when our doors were opened to bring in refreshments, no obtrusive gleam of day-light might remind us how the hours had passed. We were knee-deep in cards which had been thrown on the floor by those who had quarrelled with fortune. How human nature supported the fatigue I know not. We scarcely allowed ourselves a moment's pause to take the sustenance our bodies required. At last one of the waiters, who had been in the room with us the whole time, declared that he could hold out no longer, and that sleep he must. With difficulty he obtained an hour's truce: the moment he got out of the room he fell asleep, absolutely at the very threshold of our door. By the rules of the house he was entitled to a bonus on every transfer of property at the hazard table, and he had made, in the course of these three days, upwards of three hundred pounds. Sleep and avarice had struggled to the utmost, but, with his vulgar habits, sleep prevailed. We were wide awake. I never shall forget the figure of one of my noble associates, who sat holding his watch, his eager eyes fixed upon the minute hand, whilst he exclaimed continually, "This hour will never be over." Then he listened to discover whether his watch had stopped; then cursed the lazy fellow for falling asleep, protesting that, for his part, he never would again consent to such waste of time. The very instant the hour was ended, he ordered "that dog" to be wakened, and to work we went. At this sitting 35000l. were lost and won. I was very fortunate, for I lost a mere trifle———ten thousand pounds; but I could not expect to be always so lucky.———Now we come to the old story of being ruined by play. My English John-o'-the-Scales warned me, that he could advance no more money; my Irish agent, upon whom my draughts had indeed been unmerciful, could not oblige me any longer, and he threw up his agency, after having made his fortune at my expense. I railed, but railing would not pay my debts of honour. I inveighed against my grandfather for having tied me up so tight: I could neither mortgage nor sell: my Irish estate would have been sold instantly, had it not been settled upon a Mr. Delamere. The pleasure of abusing him, whom I had never seen, and of whom I knew nothing, but that he was to be my heir, relieved me wonderfully. He died, and left only a daughter, a mere child. My chance of possessing the estate in fee-simple increased: I sold this increased value to the Jews, and gamed on.———Miss Delamere, some time afterwards, had the small-pox. Upon the event of her illness I laid bets to an amazing amount.

She recovered. No more money could be raised, and my debts were to be paid. In this dilemma I recollected, that I once had a guardian, and that I had never settled accounts with him. Crawley, who continued to be my factotum, and flatterer in ordinary and extraordinary, informed me, upon looking over these accounts, that there was a mine of money due to me, if I could but obtain it by law or equity. To law I went, and the anxiety of a law-suit might have, in some degree, supplied the place of gambling; but all my business was managed for me by Crawley, and I charged him never to mention the subject to me till a verdict should be obtained.

A verdict was obtained against me. It was proved in open court by my own witnesses, that I was a fool; but as no judge, jury, or chancellor could believe, that I was so great a fool as my carelessness indicated, my guardian stood acquitted in equity of being so great a rogue as he really was. What was now to be done? I saw my doom. As a highwayman knows, that he must come to the gallows at last, and acts accordingly, so a fashionably extravagant youth knows, that sooner or later he must come to matrimony. No one could have more horrour of this catastrophe than I felt; but it was in vain to oppose my destiny. My opinion of women had been formed from the common-place jests of my companions, and from my own acquaintance with the worst part of the sex. I had never felt the passion of love, and of course believed it to be something that might have existed in former ages, but that was in our days quite obsolete, at least among the knowing part of the world. In my imagination, young women were divided into two classes, those who were to be purchased, and those who were to purchase. Between these two classes, though the division was to be marked externally by a certain degree of ceremony, yet I was internally persuaded, that there was no essential difference. In my feelings towards them there was some distinction; of the first class I was tired, and of the second I was afraid.———Afraid! Yes——— afraid of being taken in. With these fears, and these sentiments, I was now to choose a wife. I chose her by the numeration table. Units, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. I was content, in the language of the newspapers, to lead to the hymeneal altar any fashionable fair one, whose fortune came under this sixth place of figures. No sooner were my dispositions known, than the friends of a young heiress, who wanted to purchase a coronet, settled a match between us. My bride had one hundred wedding dresses, elegant as a select committee of mantuamakers and milliners, French and English, could devise. The least expensive of these robes, as well as I remember, cost fifty guineas; the most admired came to about five hundred pounds, and was thought, by the best judges in these matters, to be wonderfully cheap, as it was of lace such as had never before been trailed in English dust, even by the lady of a nabob. These things were shown in London as a spectacle for some days, by the mantuamaker, who declared, that she had lost many a night's rest in contriving how to make such a variety of dresses sufficiently magnificent and distinguished. The jewellers also requested and obtained permission to exhibit the different sets of jewels; these were so numerous, that Lady Glenthorn scarcely knew them all. One day, soon after her marriage, somebody at court, observing that her diamonds were prodigiously fine, asked where she bought them. "Really," said she, "I cannot tell. I have so many sets I declare! I don't know whether it's my Paris, or my Hamburgh, or my London set."

Poor young creature! I believe her chief idea of happiness in marriage was the possession of the jewels and paraphernalia of a countess———I am sure it was the only hope she could have, that was likely to be realised, in marrying me. I thought it manly and fashionable to be indifferent, if not contemptuous to my wife: I considered her only as an incumbrance, that I was obliged to take along with a fortune. Beside the disagreeable ideas generally connected with the word wife, I had some peculiar reasons for my aversion to my Lady Glenthorn. Before her friends would suffer me to take possession of her fortune, they required from me a solemn oath against gambling; so I was compelled to abjure the hazard table and the turf, the only two objects in life that could keep me awake. This extorted vow I set down entirely to my bride's account, and I therefore became even more averse from her than men usually are who marry for money. Yet this dislike subsided. Lady Glenthorn was only childish———I, of an easy temper- I thought her ridiculous, but it was too much trouble to tell her so continually. I let the occasions pass, and even forgot her ladyship, when she was not absolutely in my way. She was too frivolous to be hated, and the passion of hatred was not to be easily sustained in my mind. The habit of ennui was stronger than all my passions put together.

After my marriage, my old malady rose to an insupportable height. The pleasures of the table were all that seemed left to me in life. Most of the young men of any ton, either were, or pretended to be, connoisseurs in the science of good eating. Their talk was of sauces and of cooks———what dishes each cook was famous for, whether his fort lay in white sauces or brown, in soups, lentilles, fricandeaus, bechemel, matelotes, daubes, Then the history and genealogy of the cooks came after the discussion of the merit of their works; who my Lord C———'s cook lived with formerly———what my Lord D——— gave his cook———where they met with these great geniuses, I cannot boast that our conversation at these select dinners, from which the ladies were excluded, was very entertaining; but true good-eaters detest wit at dinner-time, and sentiment at all times. I think I observed, that amongst these cognoscenti there was scarcely one to whom the delicacy of taste did not daily prove a source of more pain than pleasure. There was always a cruel something that spoiled the rest; or if the dinner were excellent, beyond the power of the most fastidious palate to condemn, yet there was the hazard of being placed far from the favourite dish, or the still greater danger of being deputed to carve at the head or foot of the table. How I have seen a heavy nobleman, of this set, dexterously manoeuvre to avoid the dangerous honour of carving a haunch of venison. But, good heavens, said I, when a confidential whisper pointed this first to my notice———why does he not like to carve?———he would have it in his power to help himself to his mind, which nobody else can do so well———No! if he carves he must give the nice bits to others, every body here understands them as well as he———each knows what is upon his neighbour's plate, and what ought to be there, and what must be in the dish. I found that it was an affair of calculation———a game at which nobody can cheat without being discovered and disgraced———I emulated, and soon equalled my experienced friends. I became a perfect epicure, and gloried in the character, for it could be supported without any intellectual exertion, and it was fashionable. I cannot say, that I could ever eat as much as some of my companions———One of them I once heard exclaim, after a monstrous dinner, "I wish my digestion was equal to my appetite." I would not be thought to exaggerate, therefore I shall not recount the wonders I have seen performed by these capacious heroes of the table. After what I have beheld, to say nothing of what I have achieved, I can believe any thing that is related of the capacity of the human stomach. I can credit even the account of the dinner which Madame (de Bavière) affirms she saw eaten by Lewis the Fourteenth, viz. "quatre assiettes de differentes soupes; un faisan tout entier; un perdrix; une grande assiette pleine de salade; du mouton coupé dans son jus avec de l'ail; deux bons morceaux de jambon; une assiette pleine de pâtisserie; du fruit et des confitures. Nor can I doubt the accuracy of the historian who assures us, that a Roman Emperor [Note: Clodius Albinus.], one of the most moderate of those Imperial gluttons, took for his breakfast, 500 figs, 100 peaches, 10 melons, 100 beccaficoes, and 400 oysters.

Epicurism was scarcely more prevalent during the decline of the Roman Empire, than it is at this day amongst some of the wealthy and noble youths of Britain. Not one of my select dinner party but would have been worthy of a place at the turbot consultation, immortalized by the Roman satirist [Note: A friend of mine, a bishop, one day went into his kitchen, to look at a large turbot, which the cook was dressing. The cook had found it so large, that he had cut off the fins———"What a shame!" cried the bishop; and immediately calling for the cook's apron, he spread it before his cassock, and actually sewed the fins again to the turbot with his own episcopal hands.]. If I might judge from my own experience, I should attribute: fashionable epicurism in a great measure to ennui. Many affect it, because they have nothing else to do; and sensual indulgences are all that exist for those who have not sufficient energy to enjoy intellectual pleasures. I dare say, that if Heliogabalus could be brought in evidence in his own case, and could be made to understand the meaning of the word ennui, he would agree with me in opinion, that it was the cause of half his vices. His offered reward for the discovery of a new pleasure is stronger evidence than any confession he could make. I thank God that I was not born an Emperor, or I might have become a monster. Though not in the least inclined to cruelty, I might have acquired the taste for it, merely from desire of the emotion, which real tragedies excite. Fortunately, I was only an Earl and an epicure. My indulgence in the excesses of the table injured my health; violent bodily exercise was necessary to counteract the effects of intemperance. It was my maxim, that a man could never eat or drink too much, if he would but take exercise enough. I killed fourteen horses [Note: I was not the nobleman who laid a wager, that he could ride a fine horse to death in fifteen minutes. Indeed, I must do myself the justice to say, that I rejoiced at this man's losing his bet. He blew the horse in four minutes, and killed it; but it did not die within the time prescribed by the bet.] and survived; but I grew tired of killing horses, and I continued to eat immoderately. I was seized with a nervous complaint, attended with extreme melancholy. Frequently the thoughts of putting an end to my existence occurred, and I had many times determined upon the means, but very small, and apparently inadequate and ridiculous motives, prevented the execution of my design. Once, I was kept alive by a piggery, which I wanted to see finished. Another time, I delayed destroying myself, till a statue, which I had just purchased at a vast expense, should be put up in my Egyptian salon. By the awkwardness of the unpacker, the statue's thumb was broken. This broken thumb saved my life; it converted ennui into anger. Like Montaigne and his sausage, I had now something to complain of, and I was happy. But at last my anger subsided, the thumb would serve me no longer as a subject of conversation, and I relapsed into silence and black melancholy. I was "a'weary of the sun;" my old thoughts recurred. At this time I was just entering my twenty-fifth year. Rejoicings were preparing for my birth-day. My Lady Glenthorn had prevailed upon me to spend the summer at Sherwood Park, because it was new to her. She filled the house with company and noise; but this only increased my discontent. My birth-day arrived——— I wished myself dead———and I resolved to shoot myself at the close of the day. I put a pistol into my pocket, and stole out towards evening, unobserved by my jovial companions. Lady Glenthorn and her set were dancing, and I was tired of these sounds of gayety. I took the private way to the forest which was near the house, but one of my grooms met me with a fine horse, which an old tenant had just sent as a present on my birth-day. The horse was saddled and bridled, the groom held the stirrup, and up I got. The fellow told me the private gate was locked, and I turned as he pointed to go through the grand entrance. At the outside of the gate sat upon the ground, huddled in a great red cloak, an old woman, who started up and sprung forwards the moment she saw me, stretching out her arms and her cloak with one and the same motion.

"Ogh! is it you I see?" cried she, in a strong Irish tone.

At this sound and this sight my horse, who was shy, backed a little. I called to the woman to stand out of my way.

"Heaven bless your sweet face! I'm the nurse that suckled yees when ye was a baby in Ireland. Many's the day I've been longing to see you," continued she, clasping her hands, and standing her ground in the middle of the gateway, regardless of my horse, which I was pressing forward.

"Stand out of the way, for God's sake, my good woman, or I shall certainly ride over you."

"So! so! so!" said I, patting my restless horse.

"Oh! he's only shy, God bless him; he's as quite now as a lamb, and kiss one or other of yees I must," cried she, throwing her arms about the horse's neck.

The horse, unaccustomed to this mode of salutation, suddenly plunged, and threw me. My head fell against the pier of the gate. The last sound I heard was the report of a pistol; but I can give no account of what happened afterwards. I was stunned by my fall, and senseless. When I opened my eyes, I found myself stretched on one of the cushions of my landau, and surrounded by a crowd of people, who seemed to be all talking at once: in the buzz of voices I could not distinguish any thing that was said, till I heard Captain Crawley's voice above the rest, saying,

"Send for a surgeon instantly; but it's all over! it's all over! Take the body the back way to the banquetting-house; I must run to Lady Glenthorn."

I perceived that they thought me dead. I did not at this moment feel that I was hurt. I was curious to know what they would all do; so I closed my eyes again before any one perceived that I had opened them. I lay motionless, and they proceeded with me, according to Captain Crawley's orders, to the banquetting-house. When we arrived there, my servants laid me on one of the Turkish sofas, and the crowd, after having satisfied their curiosity, dropped off one by one, till I was left with a single footman and my steward.

"I don't believe he's quite dead," said the footman, "for his heart beats."

"Oh, he's all as well as dead, for he does not stir hand or foot, and his scull, they say, is fractured for certain; but it will all be seen when the surgeon comes. I am sure he will never do. Crawley will have every thing his own way now, and I may as well decamp."

"Ay, and amongst them," said the footman, "I only hope I may get my wages."

"What a fool that Crawley made of my lord!" said the steward.

"What a fool my lord made of himself," said the footman, "to be ruled, and let all his people be ruled, by such an upstart. With your leave, Mr. Turner, I'll just run to the house to say one word to James, and be back immediately."

"No, no, you must stay, Robert, whilst I step home to lock my places, before Crawley begins to rummage."

The footman was now left alone with me. Scarcely had the steward been gone two minutes, when I heard a low voice near me saying, in a tone of great anxiety, "Is he dead?"

I half opened my eyes to see who it was that spoke. The voice came from the door, which was opposite to me, and whilst the footman turned his back, I raised my head, and beheld the figure of the old woman, who had been the cause of my accident. She was upon her knees on the threshold———her arms crossed over her breast. I never shall forget her face, it was so expressive of despair.

"Is he dead?" she repeated.

"I ten you yes," replied the footman.

"For the love of God let me come in, if he is here," cried she.

"Come in then, and stay here whilst I run to the house [Note: If any one should think it improbable, that a man of Lord Glenthorn's consequence should, at the supposed moment of his death, be thus neglected, let them recollect the scenes that followed the death of Tiberius———of Henry the Fourth of France———of William Rufus, and of George the Second.]."

The footman ran off, and my old nurse, on seeing me, burst into an agony of grief. I did not understand one word she uttered, as she spoke in her native language; but her lamentations went to my heart, for they came from hers. She hung over me, and I felt her tears dropping upon my forehead. I could not refrain from whispering, "Don't cry———I am alive."

"Blessings on him!" exclaimed she, starting back; she then dropped down on her knees to thank God. Then calling me by every fondling name that nurses use to their children, she begged my forgiveness, and alternately cursed herself, and prayed for me.

The strong affections of this poor woman touched me more than any thing I had ever yet felt in my life; she seemed to be the only person upon Earth, who really cared for me, and in spite of her vulgarity, and my prejudice against the tone in which she spoke, she excited in my mind emotions of tenderness and gratitude. "My good woman, if I live, I will do something for you; tell me what I can do," said I. "Live! live! God bless you, live; that's all in the wide world I want of you, my jewel; and, till you are well, let me watch over you at nights, as I used to do when you were a child, and I had you in my arms all to myself, dear."

Three or four people now ran into the room, to get before Captain Crawley, whose voice was heard at this instant at a distance. I had only time to make the poor woman understand that I wished to appear to be dead; she took the hint with surprising quickness. Captain Crawley came up the steps, talking in the tone of a master to the steward and people, who followed.

"What is this old hag doing here: Where is Robert? Where is Thomas: I ordered them to stay till I came. Mr. Turner, why did not you stay? What! has not the coroner been here yet? The coroner must see the body, I tell you. Good God! What a parcel of blockheads you all are! How many times must I tell you the same thing? Nothing can be done till the coroner has seen him; then we'll talk about the funeral, Mr. Turner———one thing at a time. Every thing shall be done properly, Mr. Turner. Lady Glenthorn trusts every thing to me———Lady Glenthorn wishes that I should order every thing."

"To be sure———no doubt———very proper———I don't say against that."

"But," continued Crawley, turning towards the sofa upon which I lay, and seeing Ellinor kneeling beside me, "What keeps this old Irish witch still here? What business have you here pray, and who are you or what are you?

"Please you honour, I was his nurse formerly, and so had a nat'ral longing to see him once again before I would die."

"And did you come all the way from Ireland on this wise errand."

"Troth, I did———every inch of the way from his own sweet place."

Why, you are little better than a fool, I think," said Crawley.

"Little better, plase your honour; but I was always so about them childer that I nursed."

"Childer! Well, get along about hour business now, you see your nursing is not wanted here.'

"I'll not stir out of this, while he is here," said my nurse, cathing hold of the leg of the sofa and clinging to it.

"You'll not stir, you say!" cried Captain Crawley: "Turn her out."

"Oh, sure you would not have the cru'lty to turn his old nurse out before he's even cowld. And won't you let me see him buried?"

"Out with her! out with her, the old Irish hag! We'll have no howling here. Out with her, John!" said Crawley to my groom.

The groom hesitated, I fancy; for Crawley repeated the order more imperiously. "Out with her, or go yourself."

"May be it's you that will go first yourself," said she.

"Go first myself!" cried Captain Crawley, furiously; "are you insolent to me?"

"And are not you cru'l to me, and to my child I nursed, that lies all as one as dead before you, and was a good friend to you in his day, no doubt?"

Crawley seized hold of her; but she resisted with so much energy, that she dragged along with her the sofa to which she clung, and on which I lay.

"Stop!" cried I, starting up. There was sudden silence. I looked round, but could not utter another syllable. Now, for the first time, I was sensible that I had been really hurt by the fall. My head grew giddy, and my stomach sick. I just saw Crawley's fallen countenance, and him and the steward looking at one another; they were like hideous faces in a dream. I sunk back.

"Ay, lie down my darling, don't be disturbing yourself for such as them," said my nurse. "Let them do what they will with me; it's little I'd care for them, if you were but once in safe hands.

I beckoned to the groom who had hesitated to turn out Ellinor, and bid him go to the housekeeper, and have me put to bed. "She," added I, pointing to my old nurse, "is to sit up with me at night." It was all I could say. What they did with me afterwards, I do not know; but I was in my bed, and a bandage was round my temples, and my poor nurse was kneeling on one side of the bed, with a string of beads in her hand, and a surgeon and physician, and Crawley and my Lady Glenthorn were on the other side, whispering together. The curtain was drawn between me and them; but the motion I made on wakening was instantly observed by Crawley, who immediately left the room. Lady Glenthorn drew back my curtain, and began to ask me how I did; but when I fixed my eyes upon her, she sunk upon the bed, trembling violently, and could not finish her sentence. I begged her to go to rest, and she retired. The physician ordered that I should be kept quiet, and seemed to think I was in danger. I asked what was the matter with me? and the surgeon, with a very grave face, informed me, that I had an ugly contusion on my head. I had heard of a concussion of the brain; but I did not know distinetly what it was, and my fears were increased by my ignorance. The life which, but a few hours before, I had been on the point of voluntarily destroying, because it was insupportably burdensome, I was now, the moment it was in danger, most anxious to preserve; and the interest which I perceived others had in getting rid of me, increased my desire to recover. My recovery was, however, for some time doubtful. I was seized with a fever, which left me in a state of alarming debility. My old nurse, whom I shall henceforward call by her name of Ellinor, attended me with the most affectionate solicitude during my illness

 [Note: 
"For fostering, I did never hear or read, that it was in use or reputation in any country, barbarous or civil, as it hath been, and yet is in Ireland.    In the opinion of this people, fostering hath always been a stronger alliance than blood; and the foster-children do love, and are beloved of their foster-fathers and their sept (or clan), more than of their natural parents and kindred; and do participate of their means more frankly, and do adhere unto them, in all fortunes, with more affection and constancy.              Such a general custom in a kingdom, in giving and taking children to foster, making such a firm alliance as it doth in Ireland, was never seen or heard of in any other country of the world beside."
Davies.
];

she scarcely stirred from my bed-side, night or day: and, indeed, when I came to the use of my senses, she was the only person whom I really liked to have near me. I knew that she was sincere, and, however unpolished her manners, and however awkward her assistance, the good-will with which it was given made me prefer it to the most delicate and dexterous attentions, which I believed to be interested. The very want of a sense of propriety, and the freedom with which she talked to me, regardless of what was suited to her station, or due to my rank, instead of offending or disgusting me, became agreeable; besides, the novelty of her dialect, and of her turn of thought, entertained me as much as a sick man could be entertained. I remember once her telling me, that "if it plased God she would like to die on a Christmas-day, of all days; because the gates of Heaven, they say, will be opened all that day; and who knows but a body might slip in unknownst." When she sat up with me at nights, she talked on eternally; for she assured me there was nothing like talking, as she had always found, to put any one asy asleep. I listened or not, just as I liked; any way she was content. She was inexhaustible in her anecdotes of my ancestors, all tending to the honour and glory of the family; she had also an excellent memory for all the insults, or traditions of insults, which the Glenthorns had received for many ages back, even to the times of the old kings of Ireland; long and long before they stooped to be lorded; when their "names, which it was a pity and a murder, and moreover a burning shame, to change, was O'Shagnasee." She was well stored with histories of Irish and Scottish chiefs. The story of O'Neill, the Irish black-beard, I am sure I ought to remember, for Ellinor told it to me at least six times. Then she had a large assortment of fairies and shadowless [Note: In Ireland it is a belief among the vulgar, that witches have no shadows.] witches, and banshees; and besides, she had legions of spirits and ghosts, and haunted castles without end, my own castle of Glenthorn not excepted, in the description of which she was extremely eloquent; she absolutely excited in my mind some desire to see it. "For many a long year," she said, "it had been her nightly prayer, that she might live to see me in my own castle; and often and often she was coming over to England to tell me so, only her husband, as long as he lived, would not let her set out on what he called a fool's errand; but it pleased God to take him to himself last fair-day, and then she resolved that nothing should hinder her to be with her own child, against his birth-day; and now could she see me in my own Castle Glenthorn, she would die contint———and what a pity but I should be in it! I was only a lord, as she said, in England; but I could be all as one as a king in Ireland."

Ellinor impressed me with the idea of the sort of feudal power I should possess in my vast territory over tenants, who were almost vassals, and amongst a numerous train of dependants. We resist the efforts made by those, who we think exert authority or employ artifice to change our determinations, whilst the perverse mind insensibly yields to those, who appear not to have power, or reason, or address sufficient to obtain a victory. I should not have heard any human being with patience try to persuade me to go to Ireland, except this ignorant poor nurse, who spoke, as I thought, merely from the instinct of affection to me and to her native country. I promised her that I would, sometime or other, visit Glenthorn Castle: but this was only a vague promise, and it was but little likely that it should be accomplished. As I regained my strength, my mind turned, or rather was turned, to other thoughts.

CHAPTER II.

One morning———it was the day after my physicians had pronounced me out of all danger, Crawley sent me a note by Ellinor, congratulating me upon my recovery, and begging to speak to me alone for half an hour. I refused to see him, and said, that I was not yet well enough to do business. The same morning Ellinor came with a message from Turner, my steward, who, with his humble duty, requested to see me for five minutes, to communicate to me something of importance. I consented to see Turner. He entered with a face of suppressed joy and affected melancholy.

"Sad news I am bound in duty to be the bearer of, my lord. I was determined, whatever came to pass, however, not to speak till your honour was out of danger, which, I thank Heaven, is now the case, and I am happy to be able to congratulate your lordship upon looking as well as———"

"Never mind my looks. I will excuse your congratulations, Mr. Turner," said I, impatiently; for the recollection of the banquetting-house, and the undertaker, whom Turner was so eager to introduce, came full into my mind———"Go on, if you please; five minutes is all I am at present able to give to any business, and you sent me word you had something of importance to communicate."

"True, my lord; but in case your lordship is not at present well enough, or not so disposed, I will wait your lordship's leisure."

"Now or never, Mr. Turner. Speak, but speak at once."

"My lord, I would have done so long ago, but was loath to make mischief; and besides, could not believe what I heard whispered, and would scarce believe what I verily saw; though now, as I cannot reasonably have a doubt, I think it would be a sin, and a burden upon my conscience, not to speak; only that I am unwilling to shock your lordship too much, when but just recovering, for that is not the time one would wish to tell or to hear disagreeable things."

"Mr. Turner, either come to the point at once, or leave me, for I am not strong enough to bear this suspense."

"I beg pardon, my lord: why, then, my lord, the point is Captain Crawley."

"What of him? I never desire to hear his name again."

"Nor I, I am sure, my lord; but there are some in the house might not be of our opinion."

"Who? you sneaking fellow; speak out, can't you?"

"My lady———my lord———Now it is out. She'll go off with him this night, if not prevented."

My surprise and indignation were as great, as if I had always been the fondest and the most attentive of husbands. I was at length roused from that indifference and apathy into which I had sunk; and though I had never loved my wife, the moment I knew she was lost to me for ever was exquisitely painful. Astonishment, the sense of disgrace, the feeling of rage against that treacherous parasite, by whom she had been seduced, all combined to overwhelm me. I could command my voice only enough to bid Turner leave the room, and tell no one that he had spoken to me on this subject.———"Not a soul," he said, "should be told, or could guess it."

Left to my own reflections, as soon as the first emotions of anger subsided, I blamed myself for my conduct to Lady Glenthorn. I considered, that she had been married to me by her friends, when she was too young and too childish to judge for herself; that from the first day of our marriage I had never made the slightest effort to win her affections, or to guide her conduct; that, on the contrary, I had shown her marked indifference, if not aversion. With fashionable airs, I had professed, that provided she left me at liberty to spend the large fortune which she brought me, and in consideration of which she enjoyed the title of Countess of Glenthorn, I cared for nothing farther. With the consequences of my neglect I now reproached myself in vain. Lady Glenthorn's immense fortune had paid my debts, and had for two years supplied my extravagance, or rather my indolence: little remained, and she was now, in her twentieth year, to be consigned to public disgrace, and to a man whom I knew to be destitute of honour and feeling.——— I pitied her, and resolved to go instantly and make an effort to save her from destruction.

Ellinor, who watched all Crawley's motions, informed me, that he was gone to a neighbouring town, and had left word that he should not be home till after dinner. Lady Glenthorn was in her dressing-room, which was at a part of the house farthest from that which I now inhabited. I had never left my room since my illness, and had scarcely walked farther than from my bed to my armchair; but I was so much roused by my feelings at this instant, that, to Ellinor's great astonishment, I started from my chair, and, forbidding her to follow me, walked without any assistance along the corridor, which led to the back-stairs, and to Lady Glenthorn's apartment. I opened the private door of her dressing-room suddenly———the room was in great disorder———her woman was upon her knees packing a trunk: Lady Glenthorn was standing at a table, with a parcel of open letters before her, and a diamond necklace in her hand. She started at the sight of me as if she had beheld a ghost: the maid screamed, and ran to a door at the farther end of the room, to make her escape, but that was bolted. Lady Glenthorn was pale and motionless, till I approached, and then recollecting herself, she reddened all over, and thrust the letters into her table drawer. Her woman, at the same instant, snatched a casket of jewels, swept up in her arms a heap of clothes, and huddled them altogether into the half-packed trunk.

"Leave the room," said I to her stemly. She locked the trunk, pocketed the key, and obeyed.

I placed a chair for Lady Glenthorn, and sat down myself. We were almost equally unable to stand. We were silent for some moments. Her eyes were fixed upon the ground, and she leaned her head upon her hand in an attitude of despair. I could scarcely articulate, but making an effort to command my voice, I at last said——— "Lady Glenthorn, I blame myself more than you for all that has happened."

"For what?" said she, making a feeble attempt at evasion, yet at the same time casting a guilty look towards the drawer of letters.

"You have nothing to conceal from me," said I.

———"Nothing," said she, in a feeble voice.

"Nothing!" said I, "for I know every thing"———She started———"and am willing to pardon every thing."

She looked up in my face astonished. "I am conscious," continued I, "that you have not been well treated by me. You have had much reason to complain of my neglect. To this I attribute your errour.———Forget the past ———I will set you the example.———Promise me never to see the man more, and what has happened shall never be known to the world."

She made me no answer, but burst into a flood of tears. She seemed incapable of decision, or even of thought. I felt suddenly inspired with energy.

"Write this moment," continued I, placing a pen and ink before her,———"write to forbid him ever to return to this house, or even more to appear in your presence. If he appears in mine, I know how to chastise him, and to vindicate my own honour. To preserve, your reputation, I refrain, upon these conditions, from making my contempt of him public."

I put a pen into Lady Glenthorn's hand; but she trembled so that she could not write. She made several ineffectual attempts, then tore the paper, and again giving way to tears, exclaim'd——— "I cannot write———I cannot think———I do not know what to say. Write what you will, and I will sign it."

"I write to Captain Crawley! Write what I will!" "Lady Glenthorn, it must be your will to write, not mine. If it be not your will, say so."

"Oh! I do not say so———I do not say that. Give me a moment's time. I do not know what I say. I have been very foolish———very wicked. You are very good———but it is too late: it will all be known. Crawley will betray me; he will tell it to Mrs. Mattocks: so whichever way I turn I am undone.———Oh! what will become of me?"

She wrung her hands and wept, and was for an hour in this state, in all the indecision and imbecility of a child. At last she wrote a few scarcely legible lines to Crawley, forbidding him to see or think of her more. I dispatched the note, and she was full of penitence, and gratitude, and tears. The next morning, when I wakened, I in my turn received a note from her ladyship.

"Since I saw you, Captain Crawley has convinced me, that I am his wife, in the eye of Heaven, and I therefore desire a divorce, as much as your whole conduct, since my marriage, convinces me you must in your heart, whatever may be your motives to pretend otherwise. Before you receive this I shall be out of your way, and beyond your reach; so do not think of pursuing one who is no longer

"Yours.

"A. Crawley."

After reading this note, I thought not of pursuing or saving Lady Glenthorn. I was as anxious for a divorce as she could be. ———Some months afterwards the affair was brought to a public trial. When the cause came on, so many circumstances were brought in mitigation of damages, to prove my utter carelessness respecting my wife's conduct, that a suspicion of collusion arose. From this imputation I was clear in the opinion of all who really knew me, and I repelled the charge publicly, with a degree of indignation that surprised all who knew the usual apathy of my temper. I must observe, that during the whole time my divorce bill was pending, and whilst I was in the greatest possible anxiety, my health was perfectly good. But no sooner was the affair settled, and a decision made in my favour, than I relapsed into my old nervous complaints. Illness was a sort of occupation to me, and I was always sorry to get well. When the interest of being in danger ceased, I had no other to supply its place. I fancied that I should enjoy my liberty after my divorce; but "even freedom grew tasteless." I do not recollect anything that wakened me from my torpor, during two months after my divorce, except a violent quarrel between all my English servants and my Irish nurse. Whether she assumed too much, upon the idea that she was a favourite, or whether national prejudice was alone the cause of the hatred that prevailed against her, I know not; but they one and all declared, that they could not, and would not, live with her. She expressed the same dislike to consorting with them; "but would put up with worse, aye, with the devils themselves, to oblige my honour, and to lie under the same roof wid my honour."

The rest of the servants laughed at her blunders. This she could bear with good humour; but when they seriously affected to reproach her with having, by her uncouth appearance at her first presenting herself at Sherwood Park, endangered my life, she retorted.

"And who cared for him in the wide world but I, amongst you all, when he lay for dead? I ask you that," said she.

To this there was no reply; and they hated her the more for their having been silenced by her shrewdness. I protected her as long as I could; but, for the sake of peace, I at last yielded to the combined forces of the steward's room and the servants' hall, and dispatched Ellinor to Ireland, with a renewal of the promise, that I would visit Glenthorn castle this year or the next. To comfort her at parting, I would have made her a considerable present; but she would take only a few guineas, to bear her expenses back to her native place. The sacrifice I made did not procure me a peace of any continuance in my own house; ruined by indulgence, and by my indolent, reckless temper, my servants were now my masters. In a large, ill-regulated establishment, domestics become, like spoiled children, discontented, capricious, and the tyrants over those who have not the sense or steadiness to command. I remember one delicate puppy parted with me, because, as he informed me, the curtains of his bed did not close at the foot; he had never been used to such a thing, and had told the housekeeper so three times, but could obtain no redress, which necessitated him to beg my permission to retire from the service.

In his stead another coxcomb came to offer himself, who, with an incomparably easy air, begged to know whether I wanted a man of figure or a man of parts? For the benefit of those to whom this fashionable classification of domestics may not be familiar, I should observe, that the department of a man of figure is specially and solely to announce company on gala days; the business of the man of parts is multifarious: to write cards of invitation, to speak to impertinent tradesmen, to carry confidential messages, et cetera. Now, where there is an et cetera in an agreement, there is always an opening for dispute. The functions of the man of parts not being accurately defined, I unluckily required from him some service, which was not in his bond: I believe it was to go for my pocket handkerchief ———"He could not possibly do it, because it was not his business;" and I, the laziest of mortals, after waiting a full quarter of an hour, whilst they were settling whose business it was to obey me, was forced to get up and go for what I wanted. I comforted myself by the recollection of the poor king of Spain and the brazier. With a regal precedent I could not but be satisfied. All great people, said I to myself, are obliged to submit to these inconveniences. I submitted with so good a grace, that my submission was scarcely felt to be a condescension. My bachelor's house soon exhibited, in perfection, "High Life below Stairs."

It is said, that a foreign nobleman permitted his servants to take their own way so completely, that one night he and his guests being kept waiting an unconscionable time for supper, he at last went down stairs to inquire into the cause of the delay: he found the servant, whose business it was to take up supper, quietly at cards with a large party of his friends. The man coolly remonstrated, that it was impossible to leave his game unfinished. The master candidly acknowledged the force of the plea; but insisted upon the man's going up stairs to lay the cloth for supper, whilst he took his cards, sat down, and finished the game for him.

The suavity of my temper never absolutely reached this degree of complaisance. My home was disagreeable to me: I had not the resolution to remove the causes of the discontents. Every day I swore I would part with all these rascals the next morning; but still they staid. Abroad I was not happier than at home. I was disgusted with my former companions; they had convinced me, the night of my accident at Sherwood Park, that they cared not whether I was alive or dead: and ever since that time I had been more and more struck with their selfishness, as well as folly. It was inexpressibly fatiguing and irksome to me to keep up a show of good fellowship and joviality with these people, though I had not sufficient energy to make the attempt to quit them. When these dashers and loungers found that I was not always at their disposal, they discovered that Glenthorn had always something odd about him; that Glenthorn had always had a melancholy turn; that it ran in the family, Satisfied with these phrases, they let me take my own way, and forgot my existence. Public amusements had lost their charm; I had sufficient steadiness to resist the temptation to game: but, for want of stimulus, I could hardly endure the tedium of my days. At this period of my life, ennui was very near turning into misanthropy. I balanced between becoming a misanthrope and a democrat.

Whilst I was in this critical state of ineptitude, my attention was accidentally roused by the sight of a boxing match. My feelings were so much excited, and the excitation was so delightful, that I was now in danger of becoming an amateur of the pugilistic art. It did not occur to me, that it was beneath the dignity of a British nobleman, to learn the vulgar terms of the boxing trade. I soon began to talk very knowingly of first rate bruisers, game men, and pleasing fighters, making play———beating a man under the ropes———sparring ———rallying———sawing———and chopping. What farther proficiency I might have made in this language, or how long my interest in these feats of prize-fighters might have continued, had I been left to myself, I cannot determine; but I was unexpectedly seized with a fit of national shame, on hearing a foreigner of rank and reputation express astonishment at our taste for these savage spectacles. It was in vain that I repeated the arguments of some of the parliamentary panegyrists of boxing and bull-baiting; and asserted, that these diversions render a people hardy and courageous. My opponent replied, that he did not perceive the necessary connexion between cruelty and courage; that he did not comprehend how the standing by in safety to see two men bruise each other almost to death could evince or inspire heroic sentiments or warlike dispositions. He observed, that the Romans were most eager for the fights of gladiators during the reigns of the most effeminate and cruel emperors, and in the decline of all public spirit and virtue. These arguments would have probably made but a feeble impression on an understanding like mine; unaccustomed to general reasoning, and on a temper habituated to pursue, without thought of consequences, my immediate individual gratification; but it happened that my feelings were touched at this time by the dreadful sufferings of one of the pugilistic combatants. He died a few hours after the battle. He was an Irishman: most of the spectators being English, and triumphing in the victory of their countryman, the poor fellow's fate was scarcely noticed. I spoke to him a little while before he died, and found that he came from my own county. His name was Michael Noonan. He made it his dying request, that I would carry half a guinea, the only money he possessed, to his aged father, and a silk handkerchief he had worn round his neck to his sister. Pity for this unfortunate Irishman recalled Ireland to my thoughts. Many small reasons concurred to make me now desirous of going to that country. I should get rid at once of a tormenting establishment, and of servants, without the odium of turning them away; for they all declined going into banishment, as they called it. Beside this, I should leave my companions, with whom I was disgusted. I was tired of England, and wanted to see something new, even if it were to be worse than what I had seen before. These were not my ostensible reasons: I professed to have more exalted motives for my journey. It was my duty, I said, to visit my Irish estate, and to encourage my tenantry, by residing some time among them. Duties often spring up to our view at a convenient opportunity. Then my promise to poor Ellinor. It was impossible for a man of honour to break a promise, even to an old woman. In short, when people are determined upon any action, they seldom fail to find arguments capable of convincing them, that their resolution is reasonable. Mixed motives govern the conduct of half mankind; so I set out upon my journey to Ireland.

CHAPTER III.

I was detained six days by contrary winds at Holyhead; sick of that miserable place, in my ill humour I cursed Ireland, and twice resolved to return to London: but the wind changed, my carriage was on board the packet, so I sailed, and landed safely in Dublin. I was surprised by the excellence of the hotel at which I was lodged. I had not conceived, that such excellent accommodation could have been found in Dublin. The house had, as I was told, belonged to a nobleman: it was fitted up and appointed with a degree of elegance, and even magnificence, beyond what I had been used to in the most fashionable hotels in London.

"Ah! sir," said an Irish gentleman, who found me in admiration upon the staircase, "this is all very good, very fine, but it is too good and too fine to last; come here again in two years, and I am afraid you will see all this going to rack and ruin. This is too often the case with us in Ireland; we can project, but we can't calculate: we must have every thing upon too large a scale. We mistake a grand beginning for a good beginning. We begin like princes, and we end like beggars."

I rested only a few days in a capital, in which, I took it for granted, there could be nothing worth seeing by a person who was just come from London. In driving through the streets, I was however surprised to see buildings, which my prejudices could scarcely believe to be Irish. I also saw some things, which recalled to my mind the observations I had heard at my hotel. I was struck with instances of grand beginnings and lamentable want of finish, with mixtures of the magnificent and the paltry; of admirable and execrable taste: some which reminded me of the Elector of Brandenburgh's gilt coach [Note: The gate of Brandenburgh-house, in Berlin, built in the model of the Athenian Propyleum.], stuck up over one of the finest modern imitations of Grecian architecture. Though my understanding was wholly uncultivated, these things struck my eye. Of all the faculties of my mind, my taste had been most exercised, because its exercise had given me least trouble.

Impatient to see my own castle, I left Dublin. I was again astonished by the beauty of the prospects, and the excellence of the roads. I had in my ignorance believed, that I was never to see a tree in Ireland, and that the roads were almost impassable. With the promptitude of credulity, I now went from one extreme to the other: I concluded that we should travel with the same celerity as upon the Bath road; and I expected, that a journey for which four days had been allotted might be performed in two. Like all those who have nothing to do any where, I was always in a prodigious hurry to get from place to place; and I ever had a noble ambition to go over as much ground as possible in a given space of time. I travelled in a light barouche, and with my own horses. My own man, an Englishman, and my cook, a Frenchman, followed in a hackney chaise; I cared not how, so that they kept up with me; the rest was their affair. At night, my gentleman complained bitterly of the Irish post carriages, and besought me to let him follow at an easier rate the next day; but to this I could by no means consent: for how could I exist without my own man and my French cook? In the morning, just as I was ready to set off, and had thrown myself back in my carriage, my Englishman and Frenchman came to the door, both in so great a rage, that the one was inarticulate, and the other unintelligible. At length the object of their indignation spoke for itself. From the inn yard came a hackney chaise, in a most deplorably crazy state; the body mounted up to a prodigious height, on unbending springs, nodding forwards, one door swinging open, three blinds up, because they could not be let down, the perch tied in two places, the iron of the wheels half off, half loose, wooden pegs for linch-pins, and ropes for harness. The horses were worthy of the harness; wretched little dog-tired creatures, that looked as if they had been driven to the last gasp, and as if they had never been rubbed down in their lives; their bones starting through their skin; one lame, the other blind; one with a raw back, the other with a galled breast; one with his neck poking down over his collar, and the other with his head dragged forward by a bit of a broken bridle, held at arms' length by a man dressed like a mad beggar, in half a hat and half a wig, both awry in opposite directions; a long tattered great coat, tied round his waist by a hay-rope; the jagged rents in the skirts of this coat showing his bare legs, marbled of many colours; while something like stockings hung loose about his ankles. The noises he made, by way of threatening or encouraging his steeds, I pretend not to describe.

In an indignant voice I called to the landlord ———"I hope these are not the horses———I hope this is not the chaise, intended for my servants."

The innkeeper, and the pauper who was preparing to officiate as postillion, both in the same instant exclaimed———

"Sorrow better chaise in the county!" 
"Sorrow!" said I———"what do you mean by sorrow?"

"That there's no better, plase your honour, can be seen. We have two more to be sure———but one has no top, and the other no bottom. Any way there's no better can be seen than this same [Note: Verbatim.]."

"And these horses," cried I———"why this horse is so lame he can hardly stand."

"Oh, plase your honour, tho' he can't stand, he'll go fast enough. He has a great deal of the rogue in him, plase your honour. He's always that way at first setting out."

"And that wretched animal with the galled breast!"

"He's all the better for it, when once he warms; it's he that will go with the speed of light, plase your honour. Sure, is not he Knockecroghery? and didn't I give fifteen guineas for him, barring the luck penny, at the fair of Knockecroghery, and he rising four year old at the same time?"

I could not avoid smiling at this speech; but my gentleman, maintaining his angry gravity, declared, in a sullen tone, that he would be cursed if he went with such horses; and the Frenchman, with abundance of gesticulation, made a prodigious chattering, which no mortal understood.

"Then I'll tell you what you'll do," said Paddy; "you'll take four, as becomes gentlemen of your quality, and you'll see how we'll powder along."

And straight he put the knuckle of his fore-finger in his mouth, and whistled shrill and strong; and, in a moment, a whistle somewhere out in the fields answered him.

I protested against these proceedings, but in vain; before the first pair of horses were fastened to the chaise, up came a little boy with the others fresh from the plough. They were quick enough in putting these to; yet how they managed it with their tackle, I know not. "Now we're fixed handsomely," said Paddy.

"But this chaise will break down the first mile."

"Is it this chaise, plase your honour? I'll engage it will go the world's end. The universe wouldn't break it down now; sure it was mended but last night."

Then seizing his whip and reins in one hand, he clawed up his stockings with the other; so with one easy step he got into his place, and seated himself, coachman-like, upon a well-worn bar of wood, that served as a coach-box. "Throw me the loan of a trusty Bartly, for a cushion," said he. A frieze coat was thrown up over the horse's heads——— Paddy caught it. "Where are you, Hosey," cried he. "Sure I'm only rowling a wisp of straw on my leg," replied Hosey. "Throw me up," added this paragon of postillions, turning to one of the crowd of idle by-standers. "Arrah, push me up, can't ye?"

A man took hold of his knee, and threw him upon the horse; he was in his seat in a trice; then clinging by the mane of his horse, he scrambled for the bridle which was under the other horse's feet———reached it, and well satisfied with himself, looked round at Paddy, who looked back to the chaise door at my angry servants, "secure in the last event of things." In vain the Englishman in monotonous anger, and the Frenchman in every note of the gamut, abused Paddy; necessity and wit were on Paddy's side: he parried all that was said against his chaise, his horses, himself, and his country, with invincible comic dexterity, till at last both his adversaries, dumb-founded, clambered into the vehicle, where they were instantly shut up in straw and darkness. Paddy, in a triumphant tone, called to my postillions, bidding them "get on, and not be stopping the way any longer."

Without uttering a syllable, they drove on; but they could not, nor could I refrain from looking back to see how these fellows would manage. We saw the fore-horses make towards the right, then to the left, and every way but straight forwards; whilst Paddy bawled to Hosey———"Keep the middle of the road, can't ye? I don't want ye to draw a pound at all."

At last, by dint of whipping, the four horses were compelled to set off in a lame gallop; but they stopped short at a hill near the end of the town, whilst a shouting troop of ragged boys followed, and pushed them fairly to the top. Half an hour afterwards, as we were putting on our drag-chain to go down another steep hill, to my utter astonishment, Paddy, with his horses in full gallop, came rattling and chehupping past us. My people called to warn him that he had no drag, but still he cried———"Never fear!"——— and shaking the long reins, and stamping with his foot, on he went thundering down the hill. My Englishmen were aghast.

"The turn yonder below, at the bottom of the hill, is as sharp and ugly as ever I see," said my postillion, after a moment's stupified silence. "He will break their necks, as sure as my name is John."

Quite the contrary; when we had dragged and undragged, and came up with Paddy, we found him safe on his legs, mending some of his tackle very quietly.

"If that breeching had broke as you were going down the steep hill," said I, "it would have been all over with you, Paddy."

"That's true, plase your honour; but it never happened me going down hill———nor never will, by the blessing of God, if I've any luck."

With this mixed confidence in a special providence, and in his own good luck, Paddy went on, much to my amusement. It was this glory to keep before us, and he rattled on till he came to a narrow part of the road, where they were rebuilding a bridge. Here there was a dead stop. Paddy lashed his horses, and called them all manner of names; but the wheel horse, Knockecroghery, was restive, and at last began to kick most furiously. It seemed inevitable that the first kick which should reach the splinter bar, at which it was aimed, must demolish it instantly. My English gentleman and my Frenchman both put their heads out of the only window which was pervious, and called most manfully to be let out. "Never fear," said Paddy. To open the door for themselves, was beyond their force or skill. One of the hind wheels, which had belonged to another carriage, was too high to suffer the door to be opened, and the blind at the other side prevented their attempts, so they were close prisoners. The men who had been at work on the broken bridge came forward, and rested on their spades to see the battle. As my carriage could not pass, I also was compelled to be a spectator of this contest between man and horse.

"Never fear," reiterated Paddy; "I'll engage I'll be up wid him. Now for it Knockecroghery! Oh the rogue, he thinks he has me at a nonplush, but I'll show him the differ."

After this brag of war, Paddy whipped, Knockecroghery kicked, and Paddy, seemingly unconscious of danger, sat within reach of the kicking horse, twitching up first one of his legs, then the other, and shifting as the animal aimed his hoofs, escaping every time as it were by miracle. With a mixture of temerity and presence of mind, which made us alternately look upon him as a madman and a hero, he gloried in the danger, secure of success, and of the sympathy of the spectators.

"Ah! didn't I compass him cleverly then? Oh the villain, to be browbating me! I'm too cute for him yet. See, there now, he's come to; and I'll be his bail he'll go asy enough wid me. Ogh! he has a fine spirit of his own, but it's I that can match him; 'twould be a poor case if a man like me couldn't match a horse any way, let alone a mare, which this is, or it never would be so vicious."

After this hard-fought battle, and suitable rejoicing for the victory, Paddy walked his subdued adversary on a few yards to allow us to pass him; but to the dismay of my postillions, a hay-rope was at this instant thrown across the road, before our horses, by the road-makers, who, to explain this proceeding, cried out, "Plase your honour, the road is so dry, we'd expect a trifle to wet it."

"What do these fellows mean?" said I.

"It's only a tester or a hog they want, your honour, to give 'em to drink your honour's health," said Paddy.

"A hog to drink my health?"

"Ay, that is a thirteen, plase your honour; all as one as an English shilling."

I threw them a shilling; the hay-rope was withdrawn, and at last we went on. We heard no more of Paddy till evening. He came in two hours after us, and expected to be doubly paid for driving my honour's gentlemen so well."

I must say that on this journey, though I met with many delays and disasters; though one of my horses was lamed in shoeing by a smith, who came home drunk from a funeral; and though the back pannel of my carriage was broken by the pole of a chaise; and though one day I went without my dinner at a large desolate inn, where nothing was to be had but whiskey; and though one night I lay in a little smoky den, in which the meanest of my servants in England would have thought it impossible to sleep; and though I complained bitterly, and swore it was impracticable for a gentleman to travel in Ireland; yet I never remember to have experienced, on any journey, less ennui. I was out of patience twenty times a day, but I certainly felt no ennui; and I am convinced, that the benefit some patients receive from a journey is in an inverse proportion to the ease and luxury of their mode of travelling. When they are compelled to exert their faculties, and to use their limbs, they forget their nerves, as I did. Upon this principle I should recommend to wealthy hypochondriacs a journey in Ireland, preferably to any country in the civilized world. I can promise them, that they will not only be moved to anger often enough to make their blood circulate briskly, but, they will even, in the acmé of their impatience, be thrown into salutary convulsions of laughter, by the comic concomitants of their disasters; besides, if they have hearts, their best feelings cannot fail to be awakened by the warm, generous hospitality they will receive in this country, from the cabin to the castle.

Late in the evening of the fourth day, we came to an inn on the verge of the county where my estate was situate. It was one of the wildest parts of Ireland. We could find no horses, nor accommodations of any sort, and we had several miles farther to go. For our only comfort, the dirty landlady, who had married the hostler, and wore gold drop ear-rings, reminded us, that, "Sure, if we could but wait an hour, and take a fresh egg, we should have a fine moon."

After many fruitless imprecations, my French cook was obliged to mount one of my saddle-horses; my groom was left to follow us the next day; I let my gentleman sit on the barouche box, and proceeded with my own tired horses. The moon, which my landlady had promised me, rose, and I had a full view of the face of the country. As we approached my maritime territories, the cottages were thinly scattered, and the trees had a stunted appearance; they all slanted one way, from the prevalent winds that blew from the ocean. Our road presently stretched along the beach, and I saw nothing to vary the prospect but rocks, and their huge shadows upon the water. The road being sandy, the feet of the horses made no noise, and nothing interrupted the silence of the night, but the hissing sound of the carriage wheels passing through the sand.

"What o'clock is it now, think you, John?" said one of my postillions to the other.

"Past twelve for sartain," said John; "and this bees a strange Irish place," continued he, in a drawling voice; "with no possible way o'getting at it, as I see." John, after a pause, resumed———"I say, Timothy, to the best of my opinion, this here road is leading on us into the sea." John replied, "that he did suppose there might be such a thing as a boat farther on, but where he could not say for sartain. Dismayed and helpless, they at last stopped to consult whether they had come the right road to the house. In the midst of their consultation there came up an Irish carman, whistling as he walked beside his horse and car.

"Honest friend, is this the road to Glenthorn Castle?"

"To Glenthorn, sure enough, your honour."

"Whereabouts is the castle?"

"Forenent you, if you go on to the turn."

"Forenent you!" As the postillions pondered upon this word, the carman, leaving his horse and car, turned back to explain by action, what he could not make intelligible by words.

"See, isn't here the castle?" cried he, darting before us to the turn of the road, where he stood pointing at what we could not possibly see, as it was hid by a promonory of rock. When we reached the spot where he was stationed, we came full upon the view of Glenthorn Castle; it seemed to rise from the sea, abrupt and insulated, in all the gloomy grandeur of ancient times, with turrets and battlements, and a huge gateway, the pointed arch of which receded in perspective between the projecting towers.

"It's my lord himself, I'm fond to believe!" said our guide, taking off his hat"I had best step on and tell 'em at the castle."

"No, my good friend, there is no occasion to trouble you farther; you had better go back to your horse and car, which you have left on the road."

"Oh! they are used to that, plase your honour; they'll go on very quite, and I'll run like a redshank with the news to the castle."

He ran on before us with surprising velocity, whilst our tired horses dragged us slowly through the sand. As we approached, the gateway of the castle opened, and a number of men, who appeared to be dwarfs, when compared with the height of the buildin, came out with torches in their hands: by their bustle, and the vehemence with which they bawled to one another, one might have thought that the whole castle was in flames; but they were only letting down a draw-bridge. As I was going over this bridge, a casement window opened in the castle, and a voice, which I knew to be old Ellinor's, exclaimed, "Mind the big hole in the middle of the bridge. God bless yeas!"

I passed over the broken bridge, and through the massive gate, under an arched way, at the farthest end of which a lamp had just been lighted: then I came into a large open area, the court of the castle. The hollow sound of the horses feet and of the carriage rumbling over the draw-bridge was immediately succeded by the strange and eager voices of the people, who filled the court with variety of noises, contrasting, in the most striking manner with the silence, in which we had travelled over the sands. The great effect that my arrival instantaneously produced upon the multitude of servants and dependants who issued from the castle, gave me an idea of my own consequence beyond anything which I had ever felt in England. These people seemed "born for my use:" the officious precipitation with which they ran to and fro; the style in which they addressed me: some crying, "Long life to the Earl of Glenthorn!" some blessing me for coming to reign over them; altogether gave more the idea of vassals than of tenants, and carried my imagination centuries back to feudal times.

The first person I saw on entering the hall of my castle was poor Ellinor; she pushed her way up to me——— "'Tis himself!" cried she. Then turning about suddenly, "I've seen him in his own castle———I've seen him———and if it pleases God this minute to take me to himself, I would die with pleasure."

"My good Ellinor," said I, touched to the heart by her affection, "my good Ellinor, I hope you will live many a happy year; and if I can contribute"———"And himself to speak to me so kind before them all!" interrupted she. "Oh! this is too much———quite too much!" She burst into tears; and hiding her face with her arm, made her way out of the hall.

The flights of stairs which I had to ascend, and the length of galleries through which I was conducted, before I reached the apartment where supper was served, gave me a vast idea of the extent of my castle; but I was too much fatigued to enjoy fully the gratifications of pride. To the simple pleasures of appetite I was more sensible: I ate heartily of one of the most profusely hospitable suppers, that ever was prepared for a noble baron, even in the days when oxen were roasted whole. Then I grew so sleepy, that I was impatient to be shown to my bed. I was ushered through another suite of chambers and galleries; and, as I was traversing one of these, a door of some strange dormitory opened, and a group of female heads were thrust out, in the midst of which I could distinguish old Ellinor's face; but, as I turned my head, the door closed so quickly, that I had no time to speak: I only heard the words ———"Blessings on him! that's he!"

I was so sleepy, that I rejoiced having escaped an occasion where I might have been called upon to speak, yet I was really grateful to my poor nurse for her blessing. The state tower, in which, after reiterated entreaties, I was at last left alone to repose, was hung with magnificent, but ancient tapestry. It was so like a room in a haunted castle, that if I had not been too much fatigued to think of any thing, I should certainly have thought of Mrs. Radcliffe. I am sorry to say, that I have no mysteries, or even portentous omens to record of this night; for the moment that I lay down in my antiquated bed, I fell into a profound sleep.

CHAPTER IV.

When I awoke, I thought that I was on shipboard; for the first sound I heard was that of the sea booming against the castle walls. I arose, looked out of the window of my bed-chamber, and saw that the whole prospect bore an air of savage wildness. As I contemplated the scene, my imagination was seized with the idea of remoteness from civilized society: the melancholy feeling of solitary grandeur took possession of my soul.

From this feeling I was relieved by the affectionate countenance of my old nurse, who at this instant put her head half in at the door.

"I only just made bold to look in at the fire to see did it burn, because I lighted it myself, and would not be blowing of it for fear of wakening you."

"Come in, Ellinor, come in," said I. "Come quite in."

"I will, since you've nobody with you——— that I need be afraid of———" said she, looking round satisfied, when she saw my own man was not in the room.

"You need never be afraid of any body, Ellinor, whilst I am alive," said I, "for I will always protect you. I do not forget your conduct, when you thought I was dead in the banquetting-room."

"Oh! don't be talking of that: thanks be to God there was nothing in it. I see you well now. Long life to you. Sure you must have been tired to death last night, for this morning early you lay so quite, sleeping like a an angel; and I could see a great likeness in yees, to what you were when you were a child in my arms."

"But sit down, sit down, my good Ellinor," said I, "and let us talk a little of your own affairs."

"And are not these my own affairs," said she, rather angrily.

"Certainly; but I mean, that you must tell me now you are going on in the world, and what I can do to make you comfortable and happy."

"There's one thing would make me happy," said she.

"Name it," said I.

"To be let light your fire myself every morning, and open your shutters, dear."

I could not help smiling at the simplicity of the request. I was going to press her to ask something of more consequence, but she heard a servant coming along the gallery, and starting from her chair, she ran and threw herself upon her knees before the fire, blowing it with her mouth with great vehemence.

The servant came to let me know that Mr. M'Leod, my agent, was waiting for me in the breakfast-room.

"And will I be let light your fire then every morning?" said Ellinor eagerly, turning as she knelt.

"And welcome," said I.

"Then you won't forget to speak about it for me," said she, "else may be I won't be let up by them English. God bless you, and don't forget to speak about it," said I; but I went down stairs and forgot it.

Mr. M'Leod, whom I found reading the newspaper in the breakfast-room, seemed less affected by my presence than any body I had seen since my arrival. He was a hard-featured, strong-built, perpendicular man, with a remarkable quietness of deportment: he spoke with deliberate distinctness, in an acoent slightly Scotch; and, in speaking, he made use of no gesticulation, but held himself surprisingly still. No part of him, but his eyes, moved; and they had an expression of slow, but determined good sense. He was sparing of his words, but the few that he used said much, and went directly to the point. He pressed for the immediate examination and settlement of his accounts: he enumerated several things of importance, which he had done for my service; but he did this without pretending the slightest attachment to me; he mentioned them only as proofs of his having done his duty to his employer, for which he neither expected nor would accept of thanks. He seemed to be cold and upright in his mind as in his body. I was not influenced in his favour even by his striking appearance of plain dealing, so strong was the general abhorrence of agents, which Crawley's treachery had left in my mind. The excess of credulity, when convinced of its errour, becomes the extreme of suspicion. Persons not habituated to reason often argue absurdly, because, from particular instances, they deduce general conclusions, and extend the result of their limited experience of individuals indiscriminately to whole classes. The labour of thinking was so great to me, that having once come to a conclusion upon any subject, I would rather persist in it, right or wrong, than be at the trouble of going over the process again, to revise and rectify my judgement.

Upon this occasion national prejudice heightened the prepossession, which circumstances had raised. Mr. M'Leod was not only an agent, but a Scotchman; and I had a notion that all Scotchmen were crafty: therefore I concluded, that his blunt manner was assumed, and his plain dealing but a more refined species of policy.

After breakfast, he laid before me a general statement of my affairs; obliged me to name a day for the examination of his accounts; and then, without expressing either mortification or displeasure at the coldness of my behaviour, or at my evident impatience of his presence, he, unmoved of spirit, rang for his horse, wished me a good morning, and departed.

By this time my castle-yard was filled with a crowd of "great-coated suitors," who were all come to see———could they see my lordship? or waiting just to say two words to my honour. In various lounging attitudes, leaning against the walls, or pacing backwards and forwards before the window, to catch my eye, they, with a patience passing the patience of courtiers, waited, hour after hour, the live-long day, for their turn, or their chance of an audience. I had promised myself the pleasure of viewing my castle this day, and of taking a ride through my demesne, but that was totally out of the question. I was no longer a man with a will of my own, or with time at my own disposal.

"Long may you live to reign over us!" was the signal, that I was now to live, like a prince, only for the service of my subjects. How these subjects of mine had contrived to go on for so many years in my absence, I was at a loss to conceive; for, the moment I was present, it seemed evident that they could not exist without me.

One had a wife and six childer, and not a spot in the wide world to live in, if my honour did not let him live under me, in any bit of a skirt of the estate that would feed a cow.

Another had a brother in jail, who could not be got out without me.

Another had three lives dropped in a lase for ever; another wanted a renewal; another a farm; another a house; and one expected my lard would make his son an exciseman; and another that I would make him a policeman; and another was racked, if I did not settle the mearing between him and Corny Corkran; and half a hundred had given in proposials to the agent for lands that would be out next May; and half a hundred more came with legends of traditionary promises from the old lord, my lordship's father that was: and for hours I was forced to listen to long stories out of the face, in which there was such a perplexing and provoking mixture of truth and fiction, involved in language so figurative, and tones so new to my English ears, that, with my utmost patience and strained attention, I could comprehend but a very small portion of what was said to me.

Never were my ears so weary any day of my life as they were this day. I could not have endured the fatigue, if I had not been supported by the agreeable idea of my own power and consequence; a power seemingly next to despotic. This new stimulus sustained me for three days that I was kept a state prisoner in my own castle, by the crowds who came to do me homage, and to claim my favour and protection. In vain every morning was my horse led about saddled and bridled: I never was permitted to mount. On the fourth morning, when I felt sure of having dispatched all my tormentors, I was in astonishment and despair on seeing my levee crowded with a fresh succession of petitioners. I gave orders to my people to say that I was going out, and absolutely could see nobody. I supposed that they did not understand what my English servants said, for they never stirred from their posts. On receiving a second message, they acknowledged that they understood the first; but replied, that they could wait there till my honour came back from my ride. With difficulty I mounted my horse, and escaped from the closing ranks of my persecutors. At night I gave directions to have the gates kept shut, and ordered the porter not to admit any body at his peril. When I got up, I was delighted to see the coast clear; but the moment I went out, lo! at the outside of the gate, the host of besiegers were posted, and in my lawn, and along the road, and through the fields, they pursued me; and when I forbade them to speak to me when I was on horseback, the next day I found parties in ambuscade, who laid wait for me in silence, with their hats off, bowing and bowing, till I could not refrain from saying, "Well, my good friend, what do you stand bowing there for?" Then I was fairly prisoner, and held by the bridle for an hour.

In short, I found that I was now placed in a situation, where I could hope neither for privacy nor leisure; but I had the joys of power: my rising passion for which would certainly have been extinguished in a short time by my habitual indolence, if it had not been kept alive by jealousy of Mr. M'Leod.

One day, when I refused to hear an importunate tenant, and declared that I had been persecuted with petitioners ever since my arrival, and that I was absolutely tired to death, the man answered———"True, for ye, my lard; and it's a shame to be troubling you this way. Then, may be it's to Mr. M'Leod I'll go? Sure the agent will do as well, and no more about it. Mr. M'Leod will do every thing the same way as usual."

"Mr. M'Leod will do every thing!" said I hastily: "no, by no means."

"Who will we speak to then?" said the man.

"To myself," said I, with as haughty a tone as Lewis XIV could have assumed, when he announced to his court his resolution to be his own minister. After this intrepid declaration to act for myself, I could not yield to my habitual laziness. So much had my pride been hurt, as well as my other feelings, by Captain Crawley's conduct, that I determined to show the world I was not to be duped a second time by an agent.

When, on the day appointed, Mr. M'Leod came to settle accounts with me, I, with an air of self-important capability, as if I had been all my life used to look into my own affairs, sat down to inspect the papers; and, incredible as it may appear, I went through the whole at a sitting, without a single yawn; and, for a man, who never before had looked into an account, I understood the nature of debtor and creditor wonderfully well: but, with my utmost desire to evince my arithmetical sagacity, I could not detect the slightest errour in the accounts; and it was evident, that Mr. M'Leod was not Captain Crawley; yet, rather than believe that he could be both an agent and an honest man, I concluded, that if he did not cheat me out of money, his aim was to cheat me out of power; and fancying that he wished to be a man of influence and consequence in the county, I transferred to him instantly the feelings that were passing in my own mind, and took it for granted, that he must be actuated by a love of power in every thing that he did apparently for my service.

About this time I remember being much disturbed in my mind, by a letter which Mr. M'Leod received in my presence, and of which he read to me only a part: I never rested till I saw the whole. The epistle proved well worth the trouble of deciphering: it related merely to the paving of my chicken-yard. Like the King of Prussia [Note: Mirabeau———Secret Memoirs.], who was said to be so jealous of power, that he wanted to regulate all the mouse-traps in his dominions, I soon engrossed the management of a perplexing multiplicity of minute insignificant details. Alas! I discovered, to my cost, that trouble is the inseparable attendant upon power: and many times, in the course of the first ten days of my reign, I was ready to give up my dignity from excessive fatigue.

CHAPTER V.

Early one morning, after having passed a feverish night, tortured in my dreams by the voices and faces of the people who had surrounded me the preceeding day, I was wakened by the noise of somebody lighting my fire. I thought it was Ellinor, and the idea of the disinterested affection of this poor woman came full into my mind, contrasted in the strongest manner with the recollection of the selfish encroaching people by whom, of late, I had been worried.

"How do you do, my good Ellinor?" said I; "I have not seen any thing of you this week past."

"It's not Ellinor at all, my lord," said a new voice.

"And why so? Why does not Ellinor light my fire?"

"Myself does not know, my lard."

"Go for her directly."

"She's gone home these three days, my lard."

"Gone! is she sick?"

"Not as I know on, my lard. Myself does not know what ailed her, except she would be jealous of my lighting the fire. But I can't say what ailed her; for she went away without a word good or bad, when she seen me lighting this fire, which I did by the housekeeper's orders."

I now recollected poor Ellinor's request, and reproached myself for having neglected to fulfil my promise, upon an affair which, however trifling in itself, appeared of consequence to her. In the course of my morning's ride I determined to call upon her at her own house, and make my apologies: but first I satisfied my curiosity about a prodigious number of parks and towns which I had heard of upon my estate. Many a ragged man had come to me, with the modest request that I would let him one of the parks near the town. The horse-park, the deer-park, and the cow-park, were not quite sufficient to answer the ideas I had attached to the word park: but I was quite astonished and mortified when I beheld the bits and corners of land near the town of Glenthorn, on which these high-sounding titles had been bestowed:———just what would feed a cow is sufficient in Ireland to constitute a park.

When I heard the names of above a hundred towns on the Glenthorn estate, I had an exalted idea of my own territories; and I was impatient to make a progress through my dominions: but, upon visiting a few of these places, my curiosity was satisfied. Two or three cabins gathered together were sufficient to constitute a town, and the land adjoining thereto is called a town-land. The denominations of these town-lands having continued from generation to generation, according to ancient surveys of Ireland, it is sufficient to show the boundaries of a town-land, to prove that there must be a town, and a tradition of a town continues to be satisfactory, even when only a single cabin remains. I turned my horse's head away in disgust from one of these traditionary towns, and desired a boy to show me the way to Ellinor O'Donoghoe's house.

"So I will, plase your honour, my lard; sure I've a right to know, for she's my own mother."

The boy, or, as he was called, the gossoon, ran across some fields where there was abundance of fern and of rabbits. The rabbits, sitting quietly at the entrance of their holes, seemed to consider themselves as proprietors of the soil, and me and my horse as intruders. The boy apologized for the number of rabbit holes on this part of the estate: "It would not be so, my lard, if I had a gun allowed me by the gamekeeper, which he would give me, if he knew it would be plasing to your honour." The ingenuity, with which even the young boys can introduce their requests in a favourable moment, sometimes provoked me, and sometimes excited my admiration. This boy made his just at the time he was rolling out of my way a car that stopped a gap in the hedge, and he was so hot and out of breath with running in my service, that I could not refuse him a token to the game keeper that he might get a gun as soon as I understood what it meant.

We came to Ellinor's house, a wretched-looking, low, mud-walled cabin; at one end it was propped by a buttress of loose stones, upon which stood a goat reared on his hind legs, to browze on the grass that grew on the housetop. A dunghill was before the only window, at the other end of the house, and close to the door was a puddle of the dirtlest of dirty water, in which ducks were dabbling. At my approach there came out of the cabin, a pig, a calf, a lamb, a kid, and two geese, all with their legs tied; followed by cocks, hens, chickens, a dog, a cat, a kitten, a beggar-man, a beggar-woman, with a pipe in her mouth; children innumerable, and a stout girl, with a pitchfork in her hand; altogether more than I, looking down upon the roof as I sat on horseback, and measuring the superficies with my eye, could have possibly supposed the mansion capable of containing. I asked if Ellinor O'Donoghoe was at home; but the dog barked, the geese cackled, the turkeys gobbled, and the beggars begged with one accord, so loudly, that there was no chance of my being heard. When the girl had at last succeeded in appeasing them all with her pitchfork, she answered, that Ellinor O'Donoghoe was at home, but that she was out with the potatoes; and she ran to fetch her, after calling to the boys, who was within in the room smoking, to come out to his honour. As soon as they had crouched under the door, and were able to stand upright, they welcomed me with a very good grace, and were proud to see me in the kingdom. I asked if they were all Ellinor's sons.

"All entirely," was the first answer.

"Not one but one," was the second answer. The third made the other two intelligible.

"Plase your honour, we are all her sons-in-law, except myself, who am her lawful son."

"Then you are my foster-brother."

"No, plase your honour, it's not me, but my brother, and he's not in it.

"Not in it?"

"No," plase your honour, "becaase he's in the forge up above. Sure he's the blacksmith, my lard."

"And what are you?"

"I'm Ody, plase your honour;" the short for Owen.

"And what is your trade?"

"Trade, plase your honour, I was bred to none, more than another; but expects, only that my mother's not willing to part me, to go into the militia next month; and I'm sure she'd let me, if your honour's lordship would spake a word to the colonel, to see to get me made a sergeant immadiately."

As Ody made his request, all his companions came forward in sign of sympathy, and closed round my horse's head to make me sinsible of their expectations; but at this instant Ellinor came up, her old face colouring all over with joy when she saw me.

"So, Ellinor," said I, "you were affronted, I hear, and left the eastle in anger?"

"In anger! And if I did, more shame for me———but anger does not last long with me any way; and against you, my lord, dear how could it? Oh, think how good he is, coming to see me in such a poor place!"

"I will make it a better place for you, Ellinor," said I. Far from being eager to obtain promises, she still replied, that "all was good enough for her." I desired that she would come and live with me at the castle, till a better house than her present habitation could be built for her; but she seemed to prefer this hovel. I assured her that she should be permitted to light my fire.

"Oh it's better for me not!" said she; "better keep out of the way. I could not be asy if I got any one ill-will."

I assured her that she should be at liberty to do just as she liked, and whilst I rode home I was planning a pretty cottage for her near the porter's gate. I was pleased with myself for my gratitude to this poor woman. Before I slept, I actually wrote a letter, which obtained for Ody the honour of being made a sergeant in the———militia; and Ellinor, dazzled by this military glory, was satisfied that he should leave home, though he was her favourite.

"Well, let him leave me then," said she; "I won't stand in his light. I never thought of my living to see Ody a sergeant. Now Ody, have done being wild, honey-dear, and be a credit to your family, and to his honour's commendation———God bless him for ever for it! From the very first I knew it was he than had the kind heart."

I am not sure, that it was a very good action to get a man made a sergeant, of whom I knew nothing, but that he was my foster brother. Self-complacency, however, cherished my first indistinct feelings of benevolence Though not much accustomed to reflect upon my own sensations, I think I remember, at this period, suspecting that the feeling of benevolence is a greater pleasure than the possession of barouches, and horses, and castles, and parks———greater even than the possession of power. Of this last truth, however, I had not as yet a perfectly clear conception. Even in my benevolence I was as impatient and unreasonable as a child. Money, I thought, had the power of Aladdin's lamp, to procure with magical celerity the gratification of my wishes. I expected that a cottage for Ellinor should rise out of the earth at my command. But the slaves of Aladdin's lamp were not Irishmen. The delays, and difficulties, and blunders, in the execution of my orders, provoked me beyond measure; and it would have been difficult for a cool spectator to decide, whether I or my workmen were most in fault; they for their dilatory habits, or I for my impatient temper.

"Well, plase your honour, when the pratees are set, and the turf cut, we'll fall-to at Ellinor's house."

"Confound the potatoes and the turf! you must fall-to, as you call it, directly."

"Is it without the lime, and plase your honour? Sure that same is not drawn yet, nor the stones quarried, since it is of stone it will be———nor the foundations itself dug, and the horses were all putting out dung."

Then after the bog and the potatoes came funerals and holidays innumerable. The masons were idle one week waiting for the mortar, and the mortar another week waiting for the stones, and then they were at a stand for the carpenter when they came to the door-case, and the carpenter was looking for the sawyer, and the sawyer was gone to have the saw mended. Then there was a stop again at the window-sills for the stone-cutter, and he was at the quarter sessions, processing his brother for tin and tinpence, hay-money. And when, in spite of all delays and obstacles, the walls reached their destined height, the roof was a new plague; the carpenter, the slater, and the nailer, were all at variance, and I cannot tell which was the most provoking rogue of the three. At last, however, the house was roofed and slated: then I would not wait till the walls were dry before I plastered and papered and furnished it. I fitted it up in the most elegant style of English cottages, for I was determined that Ellinor's habitation should be such as had never been seen in this part of the world. The day when it was finished, and when I gave possession of it to Ellinor, paid me for all my trouble; I tasted a species of pleasure that was new to me, and which was the sweeter from having been earned with some difficulty. And now, when I saw a vast number of my tenants assembled at a rural feast, which I gave on Ellinor's installation, my benevolence enlarged, even beyond the possibility of its gratification, and I wished to make all my dependants happy, provided I could accomplish it without much trouble. The method of doing good, which seemed to require the least exertion, and which I, therefore, most willingly practised, was giving away money. I did not wait to inquire, much less to examine, into the merits of the claimants; but, without selecting proper objects, I relieved myself from the uneasy feeling of pity, by indiscriminate donations to objects apparently the most miserable.

I was quite angry with Mr. M'Leod, my agent; and considered him as a selfish, hardhearted miser, because he did not seem to sympathize with me, or to applaud my generosity. I was so much irritated by his cold silence, that I could not forbear pressing him to say something.

"I doubt, then," said he, "since you desire me to speak my mind, my lord, I doubt whether the best way of encouraging the industrious, is to give premiums to the idle."

"But, idle or not, these poor wretches are so miserable, that I cannot refuse to give them something; and, surely, when one can do it so easily, it is right to relieve misery Is it not?"

"Undoubtedly, my lord; but the difficulty is to relieve present misery, without creating more in future. Pity for one class of beings sometimes makes us cruel to others. I am told that there are some Indian Brahmins so very compassionate, that they hire beggars to let fleas feed upon them; I doubt whether it might not be better to let the fleas starve."

I did not in the least understand what Mr. M'Leod meant; but I was soon made to comprehend it, by crowds of eloquent beggars, who soon surrounded me: many who had been resolutely struggling with their difficulties, slackened their exertions, and left their labour for the easier trade of imposing upon my credulity. The money I had bestowed was wasted at the dram-shop, or it became the subject of family quarrels; and those whom I had relieced, returned to my honour, with fresh and insatiable expectations. All this time my industrious tenants grumbled, because no encouragement was given to them; and, looking upon me as a weak good-natured fool, they combined in a resolution to ask me for long leases, or reduction of rent.

The rhetoric of my tenants succeeded, in some instances; and again, I was mortified by Mr. M'Leod's silence. I was too proud to ask his opinion. I ordered, and was obeyed. A few leases for long terms were signed and sealed; and when I had thus my own way completely, I could not refrain from recurring to Mr. M'Leod's opinion.

"I doubt, my lord," said he, "whether this measure may be as advantageous as you hope. These fellows, these middle men, will underset the land, and live in idleness, whilst they rank a parcel of wretched under-tenants."

"But they said they would keep the land in their own hands, and improve it; and that the reason why they could not afford to improve before was, that they had not long leases."

"It may be doubted whether long leases alone will make improving tenants; for in the next county to us there are many farms of the dowager Lady Ormsby's land, let at ten shillings an acre, and her tenantry are beggars: and the land now, at the end of the leases, is worn out, and worse than at their commencement."

I was weary listening to this cold reasoning, and resolved to apply no more for explanations to Mr. M'Leod; yet I did not long keep this resolution: infirm of purpose, I wanted the support of his approbation, at the very time I was jealous of his interference.

At one time I had a mind to raise the wages of labour; but Mr. M';Leod said———"It might be doubted whether the people would not work less, when they could with less work have money enough to support them."

I was puzzled, and then I had a mind to lower the wages of labour, to force them to work or starve———Still, provoking Mr. M'Leod said———"It might be doubted whether it would not be better to leave them alone."

I gave marriage portions to the daughters of my tenants, and rewards to those who had children; for I had always heard that legislators should encourage population.

Still Mr. M'Leod hesitated to approve: he observed, "that my estate was so populous, that the complaint in each family was, that they had not land for the sons. It might be doubted whether, if a farm could support but ten people, it were wise to encourage the birth of twenty. It might be doubted whether it were not better for ten to live, and be well fed, than for twenty to be born, and to be half-starved."

To encourage manufactures in my town of Glenthorn, I proposed putting a clause in my leases, compelling my tenants to buy stuffs and linens manufactured at Glenthorn, and no where else. Stubborn M'Ledo, as usual, began with——— "I doubt whether that will not encourage the manufacturers at Glenthorn to make bad stuffs and bad linen, since they are sure of a sale, and without danger of competition."

At all events, I thought my tenants would grow rich and independent, if they made every thing at home that they wanted: yet Mr. M'Ledo perplexed me by his

"Doubt whether it would not be better for a man to buy shoes, if he could buy them cheaper than he could make them." He added something about the division of labour, and Smith's Wealth of Nations. To which I could only answer———Smith's a Scotchman.

I cannot express how much I dreaded Mr. M'Leod's I doubt———and———It may be doubted.

From the pain of doubt, and the labour of thought, I was soon most agreeably reprieved by the company of a Mr. Hardcastle, whose visits I constantly encouraged by a most gracious reception. Mr. Hardcastle was the agent of the dowager Lady Ormsby, who had a large estate in my neighbourhood: he was the very reverse of my Mr. M'Leod in his deportment and conversation. Talkative, self-sufficient, peremptory, he seemed not to know what it was to doubt; he considered doubt as a proof of ignorance, imbecility, or cowardice. "Can any man doubt?" was his usual beginning. On every subject of human knowledge, taste, morals, politics, economy, legislation; on all affairs, civil, military, or ecclesiastical, he decided at once in the most confident tone. Yet he "never read, not he!" he had nothing to do with books; he consulted only his own eyes and ears, and appealed only to common sense. As to theory, he had no opinion of theory; for his part, he only pretended to understand practice and experience———and his practice was confined steadily to his own practice, and his experience uniformly to what he had tried at New-town-Hardcastle.

At first I thought him a mighty clever man, and I really rejoiced to see my doubter silenced. After dinner, when he had finished speaking in his decisive manner, I used frequently to back him with a———Very true——— very fair———very clear———though I understood what he said, as little as he did himself; but it was an ease to my mind to have a disputed point settled———and I filled my glass with an air of triumph, whilst M'Leod never contradicted my assertions, or controverted Mr. Hardcastle's arguments. There was still an air of content and quiet self-satisfaction in M'Leod's very silence, which surprised and vexed me.

One day, when Hardcastle was laying down the law upon several subjects, in his usual dictatorial manner, telling us how he managed his people, and what order he kept them in, I was determined that M'Leod should not enjoy the security of his silence, and I urged him to give us his general opinion, as to the means of improving the poor people in Ireland.

"I doubt," said M'Leod, "whether any thing effectual can be done, till they have a better education."

"Education!———Pshaw!———There it is now; these book-men," cried Hardcastle———"Why, my dear sir, can any man alive, who knows this country, doubt, that the common people have already too much education, as it is called———a vast deal too much? Too many of them know how to read, and write, and cipher, which I presume is all you mean by education."

"Not entirely," said M'Leod———"a good education comprehends something more."

"The more the worse," interrupted Hardcastle. The more they know, the worse they are, sir, depend on that: I know the people of this country, sir; I have a good right to know them, sir, being born amongst them, and bred amongst them; so I think I may speak with some confidence on these matters. And I give it as my decided humble opinion, founded on irrefragable experience, which is what I always build upon, that the way to ruin the poor of Ireland would be to educate them, sir. Look at the poor scholars, as they call themselves; and what are they? a parcel of young vagabonds in rags, with a book under their arm instead of a spade or a shovel, sir. And what comes of this? that they grow up the worst-disposed, and the most troublesome seditious rascals in the community. I allow none of them about New-town-Hardcastle; none———banished them all. Useless vagrants———hornets———vipers, sir: and show me a quieter, better-mannged set of people, than I have made of mine. I go upon experience, sir; and that's the only thing to go upon; and I'll go no farther than New-town-Hardcastle: if that won't bring conviction home to you, nothing will."

"I never was at New-town-Hardcastle," said M'Leod drily.

"Well, sir, I hope it will not be the case long. But in the mean time, my good sir, do give me leave to put it to your own common sense, what can reading or writing do for a poor man, unless he is to be a bailiff or an exciseman? and you know all men can't expect to be bailiffs or excisemen. Can all the book-learning in the world, sir, dig a poor man's potatoes for him, or plough his land, or cut his turf? Then, sir, in this country, where's the advantages of education, I humbly ask? No, sir, no, trust me———keep the Irish common people ignorant, and you keep 'em quiet; and that's the only way with them; for they are too quick and smart as it is naturally. Teach them to read and write, and it's just adding fuel to fire———fire to gunpowder, sir. Teach them any thing, and directly you set them up: now, it's our business to keep them down, unless, sir, you'd wish to have your throat cut. Education! sir; Lord bless your soul, sir! they have a great deal too much; they know too much already, which makes t