o the family in all its extent
and rigor. Some of them heard it with surprise, and other with that kind
of dogged indignation evinced by those who are in some degree prepared
for the nature of the communication about to be laid before them.
Altogether, the circumstances in which it placed them were peculiar and
embarrassing. The Irish peasant can seldom bear to have the tenderness
of domestic affection tampered with, whether from pride, caprice, or
any other motive not related to his prejudices. In this instance the
strongest feelings of the O'Shaughnessys were brunted, as it were, in
hostile array against each other; and although the moral force on each
side was nearly equal, still the painful revulsion produced by Denis's
pride, as undervaluing their affection, and substituting the cold forms
of artificial life for the warmth of honest hearts like theirs, was, in
the first burst of natural fervor, strongly, and somewhat indignantly
expressed.

Denis had been their pride, the privileged person among them--the
individual whose talents were to throw lustre upon a nameless and
unknown family; the future priest--the embryo preacher of eminence--the
resistless controversialist--the holy father confessor--and, perhaps,
for with that vivacity of imagination peculiar to the Irish, they could
scarcely limit his exaltation--perhaps the bishop of a whole diocese.
Had not the Lord Primate himself been the son of as humble a man? "And
who knows," said his youngest and fairest sister, who of all the family
was most devoted to him, "but Dinny might yet be a primate?" And as she
spoke, the tear of affection, pride, and enthusiasm glistened in her
eye. Denis, therefore, had been much, even in his youth, to their simple
hearts, and far more to their hopes and expectations, than he was in all
the pride of his petty polemics; but when he, before whose merits, both
real and imaginary, every heart among them bowed as before the shrine of
a tutelar saint, turned round, ere the destined eminence he aimed at was
half attained, and laid upon their fervent affection the icy chain of
pride and worldly etiquette--the act was felt keenly and unexpectedly as
the acute spasm of some sudden malady. The father and mother, however,
both, defended him with great warmth; and by placing his motives in that
point of view which agreed best with their children's prejudices, they
eventually succeeded in reconciling his brothers and sisters in some
degree to th