LETTER VII

TO J.D. ESQ. M.P.

This is the sixth day of my convalescence, and the first of my descent from my western tower; for I find it is literally in a tower, or turret, which terminates a wing of these ruins, I have been lodged. These good people, however, would have persuaded me into the possession of a slow fever, and confined me to my room another day, had not the harp of Glorvina, with ‘supernatural solicitings,’ spoken more irresistibly to my heart than all their eloquence.

I had just made my toilette, for the first time since my arrival at the castle; and with a black ribbon of the nurse’s across my forehead, and silk handkerchief of the priest’s supporting my arm, with my own ‘customary suit of solemn black,’ tintless cheek, languid eye, and pensive air, I looked indeed as though ‘melancholy had marked me for her own;’ or an excellent personification of ‘pining atrophy’ in its last stage of decline.

While I contemplated my memento mori of a figure in the glass, I heard a harp tuning in an underneath apartment. The Prince, I knew, had not yet left his bed, for his infirmities seldom permit him to rise early; the priest had rode out; and the venerable figure of the old harper at that moment gave a fine effect to a ruined arch under which he was passing, led by a boy, just opposite my window. ‘It is Glorvina then,’ said I, ‘and alone!’ and down I sallied; but not with half the intrepidity that Sir Bertram followed the mysterious blue flame along the corridors of the enchanted castle.

A thousand times since my arrival in this trans-mundane region, I have had reason to feel how much we are the creatures of situation; how insensibly our minds and our feelings take their tone from the influence of existing circumstances. You have seen me frequently the very prototype of nonchalance, in the midst of a circle of birth-day beauties, that might have put the fabled charms of the Mount Idea triumviri to the blush of inferiority. Yet here I am, groping my way down the dismantled stone stairs of a ruined castle in the wilds of Connaught, with my heart fluttering like the pulse of green eighteen in the presence of its first love, merely because on the point of appearing before a simple rusticated girl, whose father calls himself a prince, with a potatoe ridge for his dominions! O! with what indifference I should have met her in the drawing-room, or at the Opera! — there she would have been merely a woman! — here, she is the fairy vision of my heated fancy.

Well, having finished the same circuitous journey that a squirrel diurnally performs in his cage, I found myself landed in a dark stone passage, which was terminated by the identical chamber of fatal memory already mentioned, and the vista of a huge folding door, partly thrown back, beheld the form of Glorvina! She was alone, and bending over her harp; one arm was gracefully thrown over the instrument, which she was tuning; with the other she was lightly modulating on its chords.

Too timid to proceed, yet unwilling to retreat, I was till hovering near the door, when, turning round, she observed me, and I advanced. She blushed to the eyes, and returned my profound bow with a slight inclination of the head, as if I were unworthy a more marked obeisance.

Nothing in the theory of sentiment could be more diametrically opposite, than the bashful indication of that crimson blush, and the haughty spirit of that graceful bow. What a logical analysis would it have afforded to Father John, on innate and acquired ideas! Her blush was the effusion of nature; her bow the result of inculcation — the one spoke the native woman; the other the ideal princess.

I endeavoured to apologize for my intrusion; and she, in a manner that amazed me, congratulated me on my recovery; then drawing her harp towards her, she seated herself on the great Gothic couch, with a motion of the hand, and a look, that seemed to say, ‘there is room for you too.’ I bowed my acceptance of the silent welcome invitation.

Behold me then seated tête-à- tête with this Irish Princess! — my right arm thrown over her harp, and her eyes rivetted on my left.

‘Do you still feel any pain from it?’ said she so naturally, as though we had actually been discussing the accident it had sustained.

Would you believe it! I never thought of making her an answer; but fastened my eyes on her face. For a moment she raised her glance to mine, and we both coloured, as if she read there — I know not what!

‘I beg your pardon,’ said I, recovering from the spell of this magic glance — ‘you made some observation, Madam?’

‘Not that I recollect,’ she replied, with a slight confusion of manner, and running her finger carelessly over the chords of the harp, till it came in contact with my own, which hung over it. The touch circulated like electricity through every vein. I impulsively arose, and walked to the window from whence I had first heard the tones of that instrument which had been the innocent accessary to my present unaccountable emotion. As if I were measuring the altitude of my fall, I hung half my body out of the window, thinking, Heaven knows, of nothing less than that fall, of nothing more than its fair cause, until abruptly drawing in my dizzy head, I perceived her’s (such a cherub head you never beheld!) leaning against her harp, and her eye directed towards me. I know not why, yet I felt at once confused and gratified by this observation.

‘My fall,’ said I, glad of something to say, to relieve my school-boy bashfulness, ‘was greater than I suspected.’

‘It was dreadful!’ she replied shuddering. ‘What could have led you to so perilous a situation?’

‘That,’ I returned, ‘which has led to more certain destruction, senses more strongly fortified than mine — the voice of a syren!’

I then briefly related to her the rise, decline, and fall, of my physical empire; obliged, however, to qualify the gallantry of my debut by the subsequent plainness of my narration, for the delicate reserve of her air made me tremble, lest I had gone too far.

By Heavens! I cannot divest myself of a feeling of inferiority in her presence, as though I were actually that poor, wandering, unconnected being I have feigned myself.

My compliment was received with a smile and a blush; and to the eulogium which rounded my detail on the benevolence and hospitality of the family of Inismore, she replied, that ‘had the accident been of less material consequence to myself, the family of Inismore must have rejoiced at any event which enriched its social circle with so desirable an acquisition.’

The matter of this little politesse was nothing; but the manner, the elegance of manner! — reared amidst rocks, and woods, and mountains! deprived of all those graceful advantages which society confers — a manner too that is at perpetual variance with her looks, which are so naïf — I had almost said so wildly simple — that while she speaks in the language of a court, she looks like the artless inhabitant of a cottage:— a smile, and a blush, rushing to her cheek, and her lip, as the impulse of fancy or feeling directs, even when smiles and blushes are irrelevant to the etiquette of the moment.

This elegance of manner, then, must be the pure result of elegance of soul; and if there is a charm in woman, I have hitherto vainly sought, and prized beyond all I have discovered, it is this refined, celestial, native elegance of soul, which effusing its spell through every thought, word, and motion, of its enviable possessor, resembles the peculiar property of gold, which subtilely insinuates itself through the most minute and various particles, without losing any thing of its own intrinsic nature by the amalgamation.

In answer to the flattering observation which had elicited this digression, I replied: That far from regretting the consequences, I was enamoured of an accident that had procured me such happiness as I now enjoyed (even with the risk of life itself); and that I believed there were few who, like me, would not prefer peril to security, were the former always the purchase of such felicity as the latter, at least on me, had never bestowed.

Whether this reply savoured too much of the world’s commonplace gallantry, or that she thought there was more of the head than the heart in it, I know not; but, by my soul, in spite of a certain haughty motion of the head not unfrequent with her, I thought she looked wonderfully inclined to laugh in my face, though she primed up her pretty mouth, and fancied she looked like a nun, when her lip pouted with the smiling archness of an Hebe.

In short, I never felt more in all its luxury the comfort of looking like a fool; and to do away the not very agreeable sensation which the conviction of being laughed at awakens, as a pis-aller, I began to examine the harp, and expressed the surprize I felt at its singular construction.

‘Are you fond of music?’ she asked with naiveté.

‘Sufficiently so,’ said I, ‘to risk my life for it.’

She smiled, and cast a look at the window, as much as to say, ‘I understand you.’

As I now was engaged in examining her harp, I observed that it resembled less any instrument of that kind I had seen, than the drawings of the Davidic lyre in Montfaucon.

‘Then,’ said she with animation, ‘this is another collateral proof of the antiquity of its origin, which I never before heard adduced, and which sanctions that universally received tradition among us, by which we learn, that we are indebted to the first Milesian colony that settled here, for this charming instrument, although some modern historians suppose that we obtained it from Scandinavia.’ [1]

‘And is this, Madam?’ said I, ‘the original ancient Irish harp?’

‘Not exactly, for I have strung it with gut instead of wire, merely for the gratification of my own ear; [2] but it is, however, precisely the same form as that preserved in the Irish university, which belonged to one of the most celebrated of our heroes, Brian Boru, for the warrior and the bard often united in the character of our kings, and they sung the triumphs of those departed chiefs whose feats they emulated.

‘You see,’ she added, with a smile, while my eager glance pursued the kindling animation of her countenance as she spoke, — ‘you see, that in all which concerns my national music, I speak with national enthusiasm; and much indeed do we stand indebted to the most charming of all the sciences for the eminence it has obtained us; for in music only, do you English allow us poor Irish any superiority; and therefore your King, who made the harp the armorial bearing of Ireland, perpetuated our former musical celebrity beyond the power of time or prejudice to destroy it.’

Not for the world would I have annihilated the triumph which this fancied superiority seemed to give to this patriotic little being, by telling her, that we thought as little of the music of her country, as of every thing else that related to it; and that all we knew of the style of its melodies, reached us through the false medium of comic airs, sung by some popular actor, who, in coincidence with his author, caricatures those national traits he attempts to delineate.

I therefore simply told her, that though I doubted not the former musical celebrity of her country, yet that I perceived the Bardic order in Wales seemed to have survived the tuneful race of Erin; for that though every little Cambrian village had its harper, I had not yet met one of the profession in Ireland.

She waved her head with a melancholy air, and replied — ‘The rapid decline of the Sons of Song, once the pride of our country, is indeed very evident; and the tones of that tender and expressive instrument which gave birth to those which now survive them in happier countries, no longer vibrates in our own; for of course you are not ignorant that the importation of Irish bards and Irish instruments into Wales, [3] by Griffith ap Conan, formed an epocha in Welsh music, and awakened there a genius of style in composition, which still breathes a kindred spirit to that from whence it derived its being, and that even the invention of Scottish music is given to Ireland.’ [4]

‘Indeed,’ said I, ‘I must plead ignorance to this singular fact, and almost to every other connected with this now to me, most interesting country.’

‘Then suffer me,’ said she, with a most insinuating smile, ‘to indulge another national little triumph over you, by informing you, that we learn from musical record, that the first piece of music ever seen in score, in Great Britain, is an air sung time immemorial in this country on the opening of summer — an air which, though animated in its measure, yet still, like all the Irish melodies, breaths the very soul of melancholy.’ [5]

‘And do your melodies then, Madam, breathe the soul of melancholy?’ said I.

‘Our national music,’ she returned, ‘like our national character, admits of no medium in sentiment: it either sinks our spirit to despondency, by its heart-breaking pathos, or elevates it to wildness by its exhilarating animation.

‘For my own part, I confess myself the victim of its magic — an Irish planxty cheers me into maddening vivacity; an Irish lamentation depresses me into a sadness of melancholy emotion, to which the energy of despair might be deemed comparative felicity.’

Imagine how I felt while she spoke — but you cannot conceive the feelings, unless you beheld and heard the object who inspired them — unless you watched the kindling lumination of her countenance, and the varying hue of that mutable complexion, which seemed to ebb and flow to the impulse of every sentiment she expressed; while her round and sighing voice modulated in unison with each expression it harmonized.

After a moment’s pause, she continued:

‘This susceptibility to the influence of my country’s music, discovered itself in a period of existence, when no associating sentiment of the heart could have called it into being; for I have often wept in convulsive emotion at an air, before the sad story it accompanied was understood: but now — now — that feeling is matured, and understanding awakened. Oh! you cannot judge — cannot feel — for you have no national music; and your country is the happiest under heaven!’

Her voice faltered as she spoke — her fingers seemed impulsively to thrill on the chords of the harp — her eyes, her tear-swollen beautiful eyes, were thrown up to heaven, and her voice, ‘low and mournful as the song of the tomb,’ sighed over the chords of her national lyre, as she faintly murmured Campbell’s beautiful poem to the ancient Irish air of Erin go Brack!

Oh! is there on earth a being so cold, so icy, so insensible, as to have made a comment, even an encomiastic one, when this song of the soul ceased to breathe! God knows how little I was inclined or empowered to make the faintest eulogium, or disturb the sacred silence which succeeded to her music’s dying murmur. On the contrary, I sat silent and motionless, with my head unconsciously leaning on my broken arm, and my handkerchief to my eyes: when at last I withdrew it, I found her hurried glance fixed on me with a smile of such expression! Oh! I could weep my heart’s most vital drop for such another glance — such another smile! — they seemed to say, but who dares to translate the language of the soul, which the eye only can express?

In (I believe) equal emotion, we both arose at the same moment, and walked to the window. Beyond the mass of ruins which spread in desolate confusion below, the ocean, calm and unruffled, expanded its awful bosom almost to infinitude; while a body of dark sullen clouds, tinged with the partial beam of a meridian sun, floated above the summits of those savage cliffs which skirt this bold and rocky coast; and the tall spectral figure of Father John, leaning on a broken pediment, appeared like the embodied spirit of philosophy moralizing amidst the ruins of empires, on the instability of all human greatness.

What a sublime assembly of images!

‘How consonant,’ thought I, gazing at Glorvina, ‘to the sublimated tone of our present feelings.’ Glorvina waved her head in accedence to the idea, as though my lips had given it birth.

How think you I felt, on this sweet involuntary acknowledgement of a mutual intelligence?

Be that as it may, my eyes, too faithful I fear to my feelings, covered the face on which they were passionately rivetted, with blushes.

At that moment Glorvina was summoned to dinner by a servant, for she only is permitted to dine with the Prince, as being of royal descent. The vision dissolved — she was again the proud Milesian Princess, and I, the poor wandering artist — the eleemosynary guest of her hospitable mansion.

The priest and I dined tête-à-tête; and, for the first time, he had all the conversation to himself; and got deep in Locke and Malbranche, in solving quidities, and starting hypotheses, to which I assented with great gravity, and thought only of Glorvina.

I again beheld her gracefully drooping over her harp — I again caught the melody of her song, and the sentiment it conveyed to the soul; and I entered fully into the idea of the Greek painter, who drew Love, not with a bow and arrow, but a lyre.

I could not avoid mentioning with admiration her great musical powers.

‘Yes,’ said he, ‘she inherits them from her mother, who obtained the appellation of Glorvina, from the sweetness of her voice, by which name our little friend was baptized at her mother’s request.’ [6]

Adieu! Glorvina has been confined in her father’s room during the whole of the evening — to this circumstance you are indebted for this long letter.

Adieu!

H.M.

LETTER VIII

TO J.D. ESQ. M.P.

The invitation I received from the hospitable Lord of these ruins, was so unequivocal, so cordial, that it would have been folly, not delicacy, to think of turning out of his house the moment my health was re-established. But then, I scarcely felt it warranted that length of residence here, which, for a thousand reasons, I am now anxious to make.

To prolong my visit till the arrival of my father in this country was my object; and how to effect the desired purpose, the theme of cogitation during the whole of the restless night which succeeded my interview with Glorvina; and to confess the truth, I believe this interview was not the least potent spell which fascinated me to Inismore.

Wearied by my restlessness, rather than refreshed by my transient slumbers, I arose with the dawn, and carrying my port-feuille and pencils with me, descended from my tower, and continued to wander for some time among the wild and romantic scenes which surround these interesting ruins, while

‘La sainte recueilment le paisible innocence
Sembler de ceslieus habiter le silence;’

until, almost wearied in the contemplation of the varying sublimities which the changes of the morning’s seasons shed over the ocean’s boundless expanse, from the first grey vapour that arose from its swelling wave, to that splendid refulgence with which the risen sun crimsoned its bosom, I turned away my dazzled eye, and fixed it on the ruins of Inismore. Never did it appear in an aspect so picturesquely felicitous: it was a golden period for the poet’s fancy or the painter’s art; and in a moment of propitious genius, I made one of the most interesting sketches my pencil ever produced. I had just finished my successful ebauche, when Father John, returning from matins, observed, and instantly joined me. When he had looked over, and commended the result of my morning’s avocation, he gave my port-folio to a servant who passed us, and taking my arm, we walked down together to the sea shore.

‘This happy specimen of your talent,’ said he, as we proceeded, ‘will be very grateful to the Prince. In him, who has no others left, it is a very innocent pride, to wish to perpetuate the fading honours of his family — for as such the good Prince considers these ruins. But, my young friend, there is another and a surer path to the Prince’s heart, to which I should be most happy to lead you.’

He paused for a moment, and then added:

‘You will, I hope, pardon the liberty I am going to take; but as I boast the merit of having first made your merit known to your worthy host, I hold myself in some degree (smiling, and pressing my hand) accountable for your confirming the partiality I have awakened in your favour.

‘The daughter of the Prince, and my pupil, of whom you can have yet formed no opinion, is a creature of such rare endowments, that it should seem Nature, as if foreseeing her isolated destiny, had opposed her own liberality to the chariness of fortune: and lavished on her such intuitive talents, that she almost sets the necessity of education at defiance. To all that is most excellent in the circle of human intellect, or human science, her versatile genius is constantly directed; and it is my real opinion, that nothing more is requisite to perfect her in any liberal or elegant pursuit, but that method of system which even the strongest native talent, unassisted, can seldom attain (without a long series of practical experience), and which is unhappily denied her; while her doating father incessantly mourns over that poverty, which withholds from him the power of cultivating those shining abilities that would equally enrich the solitude of their possessor, or render her an ornament to that society she may yet be destined to grace. Yet the occasional visits of a strolling dancing-master, and a few musical lessons received in her early childhood from the family bard, are all the advantages these native talents have received.

‘But who that ever beheld her motions in the dance, or listened to the exquisite sensibility of her song, but would exclaim — “here is a creature for whom Art can do nothing — Nature has done all!”

‘To these elegant acquirements, she unites a decided talent for drawing, arising from powers naturally imitative, and a taste, early imbibed (from the contemplation of her native scenes), for all that is most sublime and beautiful in Nature. But this, of all her talents, has been the least assisted, and yet is the most prized by her father, who, I believe, laments his inability to detain you here as her preceptor; or rather, to make it worth your while to forego your professional pursuits, for such a period as would be necessary to invest her with such rudiments in the art, as would form a basis for her future improvement. In a word, can you, consistently with your present plans, make the Castle of Inismore your head-quarters for two or three months, from whence you can take frequent excursions amidst the neighbouring scenery, which will afford to your pencil subjects rich and various as almost any other part of the country?’

Now, in the course of my life, I have had more than one occasion to remark certain desirable events, brought about by means diametrically opposite to the supposition of all human probability; — but that this worthy man should (as if infected with the intriguing spirit of a French Abbé reared in the purlieus of the Louvre) — should thus forward my views, and effect the realization of my wishes, excited so strong an emotion of pleasurable surprize, that I with difficulty repressed my smiles, or concealed my triumph.

After, however, a short pause, I replied with great gravity, that I always conceived with Pliny, that the dignity we possess by the good offices of a friend, is a kind of sacred trust, wherein we have his judgment as well as our own character to maintain, and therefore to be guarded with peculiar attention; that consequently, on his account, I was as anxious as on my own, to confirm the good opinion conceived in my favour through the medium of his partiality; and with very great sincerity I assured him, that I knew of no one event so coincident to my present views of happiness, as the power of making the Prince some return for his benevolent attentions, and of becoming his (the priest’s) coadjutor in the tuition of his highly-gifted pupil.

‘Add then, my dear Sir,’ said I, ‘to all the obligations you have forced on me, by presenting my respectful compliments to the Prince, with the offer of my little services, and an earnest request that he will condescend to accept of them; and if you think it will add to the delicacy of the offer, let him suppose that it voluntarily comes from a heart deeply impressed with a sense of his kindness.’

‘That is precisely what I was going to propose,’ returned this excellent and unsuspecting being. ‘I would even wish him to think you conceive the obligation all on your own side; for the pride of fallen greatness is of all others the most sensitive.’

‘And God knows so I do,’ said I, fervently; — then carelessly added, ‘do you think your pupil has a decided talent for the art?’

‘It may be a partiality,’ he replied; ‘but I think she has a decided talent for every elegant acquirement. If I recollect right, somebody has defined genius to be “the various powers of a strong mind directed to one point:” making it the result of combined force, not the vital source whence all intellectual powers flow; in which light, the genius of Glorvina has ever appeared to me as a beam from heaven, an emanation of divine intelligence, whose nutritive warmth cherishes into existence that richness and variety of talent which wants only a little care to rear it to perfection.

‘When I first offered to become the preceptor to this charming child, her father, I believe, never formed an idea that my tuition would have extended beyond a little reading and writing; but I soon found that my interesting pupil possessed a genius that bore all before it — that almost anticipated instruction by force of its intuitive powers, and prized each task assigned it, only in proportion to the difficulty by which it was to be accomplished.

‘Her young ambitious mind even emulated rivalry with mine, and that study in which she beheld me engaged, seldom failed to become the object of her desires and her assiduity. Availing myself, therefore, of this innate spirit of emulation — this boundless thirst of knowledge, I left her mind free in the election of its studies, while I only threw within its powers of acquisition, that which could tend to render her a rational, and consequently a benevolent being; for I have always conceived an informed, intelligent, and enlightened mind, to be the best security for a good heart; although the many who mistake talent for intellect, and unfortunately too often find the former united to vice, are led to suppose that the heart loses in goodness what the mind acquires in strength, as if (as a certain paradoxical writer has asserted), there was something in the natural mechanism of the human frame necessary to constitute a fine genius, that is not altogether favourable to the heart.

‘But here comes the unconscious theme of our conversation.’

And at that moment Glorvina appeared, springing lightly forward, like Gresset’s beautiful personification of Health:

‘As Hebe swift, as Venus fair,
Youthful, lovely, light as air.’

As soon as she perceived me she stopt abruptly, blushed, and returning my salutation, advanced to the priest, and twining her arm familiarly in his, said with an air of playful tenderness,

‘O! I have brought you something you will be glad to see — here is the spring’s first violet, which the unusual chillness of the season has suffered to steal into existence: this morning as I gathered herbs at the foot of the mountain, I inhaled its ordour ere I discovered its purple head, as solitary and unassociated it drooped beneath the heavy foliage of a neighbouring plant.

‘It is but just you should have the first violet, as my father has already had the first snow-drop. Received, then, my offering,’ she added with a smile; and while she fondly placed it in his breast, with an air of exquisite naiveté, to my astonishment she repeated from B. Tasso, those lines so consonant to the tender simplicity of the act in which she was engaged:

‘Poiche d’altro honorarte
Non posso, prendi lieta
Queste negre viole
Dall umor rugiadose.’

The priest gazed at her with looks of parental affection, and said, ‘Your offering, my dear, is indeed the

“Incense of the heart;”

‘and more precious to the receiver, than the richest donation that ever decked the shrine of Loretto. How fragrant it is!’ he added, presenting it to me.

I took it in silence, but raised it no higher than my lip — the eye of Glorvina met mine, as my kiss breathed upon her flower: Good God! what an undefinable, what a delicious emotion thrilled through my heart at that moment! and the next — yet I know not how it was, or whether the motion was made by her, or by me, or by the priest — but somehow, Glorvina had got between us, and while I gazed at her beautiful flower, I personified the blossom, and addressed to her the happiest lines that form ‘La Guirlande de Julie,’ while, as I repeated

‘Mais si sur votre front je peux briller un jour,
La plus humble des fleurs sera la plus superbe,’

I reposed it for a moment on her brow in passing it over to the priest.

‘Oh!’ said she with an arch smile, ‘I perceive you too…expect a tributary flower for these charming lines; and the summer’s first rose’ — she paused abruptly; but her eloquent eye continued, ‘should be thine, but that thou may’st be far from hence when the summer’s first rose appears.’ I thought too — but it might be only the fancy of my wishes, that a sigh floated on the lip, when recollection checked the effusion of the heart.

‘The rose,’ (said the priest with simplicity, and more engaged with the classicality of the idea, than the inference to be drawn from it), ‘the rose is the flower of Love.’

I stole a look at Glorvina, whose cheek now emulated the tint of the theme of our conversation; and plucking a thistle that sprung from a broken pediment, she blew away its down with her balmy breath, merely to hide her confusion.

Surely she is the most sensient of all created beings!

‘I remember,’ continued the priest, ‘being severely censured by a rigid old priest, at my college at St Omers, who found me reading the Idylium of Ausonius, in which he so beautifully celebrates the rose, when the good father believed me deep in St Augustus.’

‘The rose,’ said I, ‘has always been the poet’s darling theme. The impassioned Lyre of Sappho has breathed upon its leaves. Anacreon has wooed it in the happiest effusions of his genius; and poesy seems to have exhausted her powers in celebrating the charms of the most beautiful and transient of flowers.

‘Among its modern panegyrists, few have been more happily successful than Monsieur de Bernard, in that charming little ode beginning –

“Tendre fruits des pleurs d’aurore,
Objets des baisers du zephyrs,
Reine de l’empire de Flore,
Hâte toi d’epanouir.”’

‘O! I beseech you go on,’ exclaimed Glorvina; and at her request, I finished the poem.

‘Beautiful, beautiful!’ said she, with enthusiasm. ‘O! there is a certain delicacy of genius in elegant trifles of this description, which I think the French possess almost exclusively; it is a language formed almost by its very construction d’éterniser la bagatelle, and to clothe the fairy effusions of fancy in the most appropriate drapery.

‘I thank you for this beautiful ode; the rose was always my idol flower; in all its different stages of existence, it speaks a language my heart understands; from its young bud’s first crimson glow, to the last silky blush of its faded essence which still survives the bloom and symmetry of the fragile form which every beam too ardent, every gale too chill, injures and destroys.’

‘And is there,’ said I, ‘no parallel in the moral would for this lovely offspring of the natural?’ —

Glorvina raised her humid eyes to mine, and I read the parallel there.

‘I vow,’ said the priest with affected pettishness, ‘I am half tempted to fling away my violet, since this idol flower has been decreed to Mr Mortimer; and to revenge myself, I will shew him your ode on the rose.’

At these words, he took out his pocket-book, laughing at his gratified vengeance, while Glorvina coaxed, blushed, and threatened; until snatching the book out of his hand, as he was endeavouring to put it into mine, away she flew like lightning, laughing heartily at her triumph, in all the elixity and playfulness of a youthful spirit.

‘What a Hebe!’ said I, as she kissed her hand to us in her airy flight.

‘Yes,’ said he, ‘she at least illustrates the possibility of a woman uniting in her character, the extremes of intelligence and simplicity: you see, with all her information and talent, she is a mere child.’

When we reached the castle, we found her waiting for us at the breakfast table, flushed with her race — all animation, all spirits! her reserve seemed gradually to vanish, and nothing could be more interesting, yet more enjoueé, than her manner and conversation. While the fertility of her imagination supplied incessant topic of conversation, always new, always original, I could not help reverting in idea to those languid tête-à- têtes, even in the hey-day of our intercourse, when Lady C- and I have sat yawning at each other, or biting our fingers, merely for want of something to say, in those intervals of passion, which every connexion even of the tenderest nature, must sustain — she in the native dearth of her mind, and I, in the habitual apathy of mine.

But here is a creature who talks of a violet or a rose with the artless air of infancy, and yet fascinates you in the simple discussion, as though the whole force of intellect was roused to support it.

By Heaven! if I know my own heart, I would not love this being for a thousand worlds; at least as I have hitherto loved. As it is, I feel a certain commerce of the soul — a mutual intelligence of mind and feeling with her, which a look, a sigh, a word is sufficient to betray — a sacred communion of spirit, which raises me in the scale of existence almost above mortality; and though we had been known to each other by looks only, still would this amalgamation of soul (if I may use the expression), have existed.

What a nausea of every sense does the turbulent agitation of gross common-place passion bring with it. But the sentiment which this seraph awakens, ‘brings with it no satiety.’ There is something so pure, so refreshing about her, that in the present state of my heart, feelings, and constitution, she produces the same effect on me as does the health-giving breeze of returning spring to the drooping spirit of slow convalescence!

After breakfast she left us, and I was permitted to kiss his Highness’s hand, on my instalment in my new and enviable office. He did not speak much on the subject, but with his usual energy. However, I understood I was not to waste my time, as he termed it, for nothing.

When I endeavoured to argue the point (as if the whole business was not a farce), the Prince would not hear me; so behold me to all intents and purposes an hireling tutor. Faith, to confess the truth, I know not whether to be pleased or angry with this wild romance: this too, in a man whose whole life has been a laugh at romancers of every description.

What, if my father learns the extent of my folly, in the first era too of my probation! Oh! what a spirit of bizarté ever drives me from the central point of common sense, and common prudence! With what tyranny does impulse rule my wayward fate? and how imperiously my heart still takes the lead of my head! yet if I could ever consider the ‘meteor ray’ that has hitherto misled my wanderings, as a ‘light from heaven,’ it is now, when virtue leads me to the shrine of innocent pleasure; and the mind becomes the better for the wanderings of the heart.

‘But what,’ you will say with your usual foreseeing prudence — ‘what is the aim, the object of your present romantic pursuit?’

Faith, none; save the simple enjoyment of present felicity, after an age of cold, morbid apathy; and a self-resignation to an agreeable illusion, after having recently sustained the actual burthen of real suffering (sufferings the more acute, as they were self-created), succeeded by that dearth of feeling and sensation which, in permitting my heart to lie fallow for an interval, only rendered it the more genial to those exotic seeds of happiness which the vagrant gale of chance has flung on its surface. But whether they will take deep root, or only wear ‘the perfume and suppliance of a moment,’ is an unthought of ‘circumstance still hanging in the stars;’ to whose decision I commit it.

Would you know my plans of meditated operation, they run thus:— In a few days I shall avail myself of my professional vocation, and fly home, merely to obviate suspicion in Mr Clendinning, receive and answer letters, and get my books and wardrobe sent to the Lodge, previous to my own removal there, which I shall effect under the plausible plea of the dissipated neighbourhood of M— house being equally inimical to the present state of my constitution and my studious pursuits; and in fact, I must either associate with, or offend these hospitable Milesians — an alternative by no means consonant to my inclinations.

From Inismore to the Lodge, I can make constant sallies, and be in the way to receive my father, whose arrival I think I may still date at some weeks’ distance; besides, should it be necessary, I think I should find no difficulty in bribing the old steward of the lodge to my interest. His evident aversion to Clendinning, and attachment to the Prince, renders him ripe for any scheme by which the latter could be served, or the former outwitted; and I hope in the end to effect both: for, to unite this old Chieftain in bonds of amity with my father, and to punish the rascality of the worthy Mr Clendinning, is a double ‘consummation devoutly to be wished.’ In short, when the heart is interested in a project, the stratagems of the imagination to forward it are inexhaustible.

It should seem that the name of M. is interdicted at Inismore: I have more than once endeavoured (though remotely) to make the residence of our family in this country a topic of conversation; but every one seemed to shirk from the subject, as though some fatality was connected with its discussion. To avoid speaking ill of those of whom we have but little reason to speak well, is the temperance of aversion, and seldom found but in great minds.

I must mention to you another instance of liberality in the sentiments of these isolated beings:— I have only once attended the celebration of divine service here since my arrival; but my absence seemed not to be observed, or my attendance noticed; and though, as an Englishman, I may be naturally supposed to be of the most popular faith, yet for all they know to the contrary, I may be Jew, Mussulman or Infidel; for, before me at least, religion is a topic never discussed.

Adieu!

H.M.

END OF VOL. I