hly respected legal character in the Emerald Isle, that, on being
asked by a friend why his son had left the country, replied, 'By Jasus,
sir, it was high time: sure I am there's enough of the family left
behind. Is not his lady in a _promising_ way, and both his female
servants, and those of two or three of his friends, and are not both
mine in a similar situation? Zounds, sir, if he had remained here much
longer, there would not have been a single female in the whole country.
However, 'Good wine, they say, needs no Bushe,' so I shall leave him
unmarked by his family cognomen, lest this ~232~~should be taken as
a puff-card of his capabilities, and thereby add to the list of his
Cytherean exploits. In a late affair, when the colonel was called
out (but did not come), Sir Patrick beat about the Bushe for him very
judiciously, and by great skill in diplomacy enabled his friend to come
off second best. But here comes one who stands at odds with description,
and attracts more notice in Cheltenham than even the colonel, his
companions, and all the metropolitan visitory put together. If I was to
lend myself to the circulation of half the strange tales related of him
by the Chelts, I could fill a small-sized volume; but brevity is the
soul of wit, and the eccentric Mackey, with all his peculiarities and
strange fancies for midnight mastications, has a soul superior to the
common herd, and a 'heart and hand, open as day, to melting charity.'
It is strange, 'passing strange,' that one so rich and fond of society,
and well-descended withal, should choose thus to ape the ridiculous; a
man, too, if report speaks truly, of no ordinary talents as a writer
on finance, and an expounder of the solar system. Vanity! vanity! what
strange fantasies and eccentric fooleries dost thou sometimes fill the
brain of the biped with, confining thy freaks, however, to that strange
animal--man. The countenance of our eccentric is placid and agreeable,
and, provided it was cleared of a load of snuff, which weighs down the
upper lip, might be said to be, although in the sear o' the leaf, highly
intellectual; but the old Scotch cloak, the broad-brimmed hat of the
covenanter, the loose under vest, the thread-bare coat shaking in
the wind, like the unmeasured garment of the scarecrow, and the
colour-driven nankeens, grown short by age and frequent hard rubbings;
then, too, the flowing locks of iron gray straggling over the shoulders
like the withered tendri