nterest when it shifts to Ireland, whither Lady Clonbrony drives her
only son, Lord Colambre, whom she has sought to marry against his will
to an English heiress. Unknown to his tenants, from whom he has so long
been absent, and further purposely disguised in order to elicit the
truth concerning certain unfavorable rumors that have reached his ears,
Lord Colambre is a witness of the oppressions under which his tenants
labor from an unscrupulous and rapacious agent, who feels secure in his
master's absence, and in that master's indifference to all but the money
result of his estate. Charmingly is the Irish character here described;
we see it in its best phases, with all its kindliness, wit, generosity.
There are elements of simple pathos scattered about this story. With
delicate and playful humor we are shown the heroic and imaginative side
of the Irish peasantry. We quite love the kindly old woman who kills her
last fowl to furnish supper to the stranger, whom she does not know to
be her landlord. On the other hand we are amused beyond measure with
Mrs. Rafferty, the Dublin grocer's wife and _parvenue_, who, in the
absence of those who should have upheld Irish society, is able to make
that dash that Lady Clonbrony vainly seeks to make in London. Her
mixture of taste and incongruity, finery and vulgarity, affectation and
ignorance, is delightful. The dinner-party scene at her house would make
the reputation of many a modern novelist. It was a dinner of profusion
and pretension, during which Mrs. Rafferty toiled in vain to conceal the
blunders of her two untrained servants, who were expected to do the work
of five accomplished waiters, talking high art meanwhile to her lordly
guest, and occasionally venting her ill humor at the servants' blunders
upon her unfortunate husband, calling out so loud that all the table
could hear, "Corny Rafferty, Corny Rafferty, you're no more _gud_ at the
_fut_ of my table than a stick of celery!" As for the scene in which
Lord Colambre discovers himself to his tenantry and to their oppressor,
Macaulay has ventured to pronounce it the best thing written of its kind
since the opening of the twenty-second book of the Odyssey. No mean
authority and no mean praise! As a story it is certainly one of the best
contrived, and the end is particularly happy. Instead of a tedious moral
there is a racy letter from the post-boy who drove Lord Colambre, and
who paints, with true Hibernian vivacity and some d