her character. In all likelihood
there is not any one less adapted to solitude than a young, very
handsome, and much-flattered Frenchwoman. Neither her education nor her
tastes fit her for it; and the very qualities which secure her success
in society are precisely those which most contribute to melancholy when
alone; wit and brilliancy when isolated from the world being like the
gold and silver money which the shipwrecked sailor would willingly have
bartered for the commonest and vilest articles of simple utility.

Let the reader, then, bearing all this in his mind, picture to himself
my mother, who, as the night wore on, became more and more impatient,
starting at every noise, and watching the door, which she momentarily
expected to see open.

During all this time, the company of the dinner-room were in the fullest
enjoyment of their conviviality,--and let me add, too, of that species
of conviviality for which the Ireland of that day was celebrated. It
is unhappily too true: those habits of dissipation prevailed to such
an extent that a dinner-party meant an orgie; but it is only fair to
remember that it was not a mere festival of debauch, but that native
cleverness and wit, the able conversationalist, the brilliant talker,
and the lively narrator had no small share in the intoxication of
the hour. There was a kind of barbaric grandeur in the Irish country
gentleman of the time--with his splendid retinue, his observance of the
point of honor, his contempt of law, and his generous hospitality--that
made him a very picturesque, if not a very profitable, feature of his
native country. The exact period to which I refer was remarkable in this
respect: the divisions of politics had risen to all the dignity of a
great national question, and the rights of Ireland were then on trial.

It is not my object, perhaps as little would it be the reader's wish, to
enter on any description of the table-talk, where debates in the House,
duels, curious assize cases, hard runs with fox-hounds, adventures
with bailiffs, and affairs of gallantry all followed pell-mell, in
wild succession. None were above telling of their own defeats and
discomfitures. There was little of that overweening self-esteem which in
our time stifles many a good story, for fear of the racy ridicule that
is sure to follow it. Good fellowship and good temper were supreme, and
none felt that to be offence which was uttered in all the frank gayety
of the bottle. Even