treme and urgent circumstances--that some brilliant
orator, whose eloquence was at once the dread and the delight of the
House--that some gifted poet, whose verses came home to the heart
alike of prince and peasant--that the painter, whose canvas might
stand unblushingly amid the greatest triumphs of art--could be asked to
lionise for those cold and callous votaries of fashion, across the lake
of whose stagnant nature no breath of feeling stirred, esteeming it the
while, that in her card of invitation he was reaping the proudest proof
of his success; but that such could be made acquaintances or companions,
could be regarded in the light of equals or intimates, the thing
never entered into her imagination, and she would as soon have made a
confidant of the King of Kongo as a gentleman from Connaught.

Less for the purposes of dwelling upon my lady-mother's "Hibernian
horrors," than of showing the school in which I was trained, I have made
this somewhat lengthened _expose_. It may, however, convey to my reader
some faint impression of the feelings which animated me at the outset of
my career in Ireland.

I have already mentioned the delight I experienced with the society
at the Viceroy's table. So much brilliancy, so much wit, so much of
conversational power, until that moment I had no conception of. Now,
however, while reflecting on it, I was actually astonished to find how
far the whole scene contributed to the support of my ancient prejudices.
I well knew that a party of the highest functionaries--bishops and
law-officers of the crown--would not have conducted themselves in the
same manner in England. I stopped not to inquire whether it was more the
wit or the will that was wanting; I did not dwell upon the fact that
the meeting was a purely convivial one, to which I was admitted by the
kindness and condescension of the Duke; but, so easily will a warped
and bigoted impression find food for its indulgence, I only saw in
the meeting an additional evidence of my early convictions. How far my
theorising on this point might have led me--whether eventually I should
have come to the conclusion that the Irish nation were lying in the
darkest blindness of barbarism, while, by a special intervention
of Providence, I, was about to be erected into a species of double
revolving light--it is difficult to say, when a tap at the door suddenly
aroused me from my musings.

"Are ye awake, yet?" said a harsh, husky voice, like a bear i