ys appeared to be a naturalist, perplexed at not
understanding the species among which his lot was for the time cast.

His mother was subsequently married to Mr. Crosbie Moore, and she ran
away with Colonel Fitz-Gibbon, afterwards Lord Clare.

Mr. Crosbie Moore had not much sense of humour, as the following tale
will show.

He was presiding at Ballyporeen Petty Sessions, when a village tailor
was summoned for having his pig wandering on the road.

The fellow pleaded that it was due to great curiosity on the part of the
pig, who saw some constabulary passing by, and rushed out to see what
they were like.

He made this explanation in such humorous fashion that most of the
magistrates were for letting him off; but Mr. Crosbie Moore said it was
scandalous that they had directed the police to summon people on that
very ground, and they wanted to acquit the culprit because he had made a
joke.

The rest of the Bench had to acquiesce, and the tailor was fined one
shilling.

He paid his shilling, and said:--

'I have no blame to you at all, gentlemen, except to Mr. Crosbie Moore;
and, indeed, if he reflected, he should have known that no live man
could keep a woman or a pig in the house when she wanted to be off.'

A subscription raised for him outside the Court realised twenty-three
shillings.

Tradition goes that when Lord Kimberley, Lord Carlingford, and Lord
Granville were all in Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet, Mr. Chamberlain--then at
the Board of Trade--in a moment of vexation called them 'Gladstone's
grannies,' and if the phrase is not his, it most certainly was apt and
truthful.

Lord Kimberley was known as 'Pussy' among a gang of disrespectful
subordinates. He really did as little to earn respect as he did to
forfeit it; in fact he was a pre-eminently respectable mediocrity of the
kind that, towards the close of the mid-Victorian period, clung like
barnacles to office, and he was a Whig during the period that Whiggism
was growing obsolete.

The Duke of Abercorn certainly had no tendencies towards the lavish
extravagance by which a modern Lord-Lieutenant has to pay his footing. A
short time before he was chosen he had claimed the Dukedom of
Chatelherault in France, and was known in consequence among the
malcontents as the 'French Frog.' His wife was the daughter of one Duke
of Bedford, and when another came to stay at the viceregal, it was for a
time called the 'Dukeries.' The A.D.C.'s, who were particularly
go