he ample
antechambers, made for crowds of attendants; and the stairs wide enough
for even equipages to ascend them. No more striking illustration of
his capricious turn of mind need be given than the fact that it was
his pleasure to build one of these magnificent edifices in an Irish
county!--a costly whim, obliging him to bring over from Italy a whole
troop of stucco-men and painters, men skilled in fresco-work and
carving,--an extravagance on which he spent thousands. Nor did he live
to witness the completion of his splendid mansion.

After his death the building gradually fell into decay. His heirs, not
improbably, little caring for a project which had ingulfed so large
a share of their fortune, made no efforts to arrest the destroying
influences of time and climate, and "Bishop's Folly"--for such was the
name given to it by the country people--soon became a ruin. In some
places the roof had fallen in, the doors and windows had all been
carried away by the peasants, and in many a cabin or humble shealing in
the county around slabs of colored marble or fragments of costly carving
might be met with, over which the skill of a cunning workman had been
bestowed for days long. The mansion stood on the side of a mountain
which sloped gradually to the sea. The demesne, well wooded, but with
young timber, was beautifully varied in surface, one deep glen running,
as it were, from the very base of the house to the beach, and showing
glimpses, through the trees, of a bright and rapid river tumbling onward
to the sea. Seen in its dilapidation and decay, the aspect of the place
was dreary and depressing, and led many to wonder how the bishop could
ever have selected such a spot; for it was not only placed in the midst
of a wild mountain region, but many miles away from anything that could
be called a neighborhood. But the same haughty defiance he gave the
world in other things urged him here to show that he cared little
for the judgments which might be passed upon him, or even for the
circumstances which would have influenced other men. "When it is my
pleasure to receive company, I shall have my house full no matter where
I live," was his haughty speech, and certainly the whole character of
his life went to confirm his words.

Some question of disputed title, after the bishop's death, threw the
estate into Chancery, and so it remained till, by the operation of the
new law touching incumbered property, it became marketable, and wa