Project Gutenberg's The Bramleighs Of Bishop's Folly, by Charles James Lever

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Title: The Bramleighs Of Bishop's Folly

Author: Charles James Lever

Illustrator: W. Cubitt Cooke, And E. J. Wheeler

Release Date: May 27, 2010 [EBook #32561]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRAMLEIGHS OF BISHOP'S FOLLY ***

Produced by David Widger

THE BRAMLEIGHS OF BISHOP'S FOLLY

By Charles James Lever

With Illustrations By W. Cubitt Cooke, And E. J. Wheeler.

Boston:

Little, Brown, And Company.

1904.

TO ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE, Esq. M.P., ETC., ETC.

My Dear Kinglake,--If you should ever turn over these pages, I have no
greater wish than that they might afford you a tithe of the pleasure I
have derived from your own writings. But I will not ask you to read me,
but to believe that I am, in all sincerity your devoted admirer, for
both your genius and your courage, and your attached friend,

CHARLES LEVER. Trieste, August 31, 1868.

THE BRAMLEIGHS OF BISHOP'S FOLLY.

CHAPTER I. THE BISHOP'S FOLLY

Towards the close of the last century there was a very remarkable
man, Bishop of Down, in Ireland: a Liberal in politics, in an age
when Liberalism lay close on the confines of disloyalty; splendidly
hospitable, at a period when hospitality verged on utter recklessness;
he carried all his opinions to extremes. He had great taste, which had
been cultivated by foreign travel, and having an ample fortune, was able
to indulge in many whims and caprices, by which some were led to doubt
of his sanity; but others, who judged him better, ascribed them to
the self-indulgence of a man out of harmony with his time, and
comtemptuously indifferent to what the world might say of him.

He had passed many years in Italy, and had formed a great attachment to
that country. He liked the people and their mode of life; he liked the
old cities, so rich in art treasures and so teeming with associations
of a picturesque past; and he especially liked their villa architecture,
which seemed so essentially suited to a grand and costly style of
living. The great reception-rooms, spacious and lofty; t