rupted the Commodore, as he threw open the door of the room, which Mrs. Magillicuddy announced as the presence chamber.

"Aye, curish enough!" said she. "Here it was that royal idolater, James the Second, held a court in his way through Munster, and was attended by all the papist lords, the RECUSANTS,' as Miss Crawley tells me. Oh! she's a great scholar; and was here in her way to Dublin just afore I went to England for that legacy left me by the pious Mr. Scare'um two months agofor the Fitzadelms," she continued in her digressive way, "was then Romans themselves; until, by abandoning the scarlet lady of Babylon, they secured their lands and rights; and the king, when he looked out at this window (called the king's casement ever since), started back, wondering much at the great hight of the house above the river.”

She threw open the window as she spoke; and the precipitous declivity beneath seemed to justify the royal astonishment.* But the strangers were little attracted by the bold and beautiful views without, nor by the fine friezes within, which were painted by the Franchinis, two Italian artists, who visited Ireland a century back, and were employed in ornamenting its noble mansions: the few pictures, which mouldered in their tarnished frames, upon the oaken wainscot, seemed to fix their most earnest attention. They were surprised to find the greater number to be portraits of the most eminent characters of Charles the Second's court.

The beauties, the wits, and the war

A similar apartment and window are shewn at Lismore Castle, one of the Duke of Devon. shire's scats, as distinguished for its romantic beauty, as the inhabitants of its immediate neigh.. bourhood are for their courtesy, elegance, and hospitality.

riors of that day, were in a large proportion Irish; and while the pictures of the Hamiltons, the Butlers, the Villarses, the Fitzgeralds, the Talbots, the Muskerries, the Taafes, the Dongons, and the Burkes, are sketched for immortality in the delightful Memoires de Grammont, their less durable portraits by Lilly and Kneller have been copied ad infinitum* in Ireland, and are still to be found in many of the deserted mansions of the long-absent great. Many of these faded representatives of all that was once lovely and animated lay upon the ground; and the dilletante traveller soon detected "la plus jolie taille du

Some by Souillard, a French artist, brought to Ireland by Lord Muskerry, to paint his castle of Lixnaw, in Munster, after the cartoons of Raphael; others by Gandy, who came over with his patron, the great Duke of Ormond, and who seems to have furnished half the great houses in Munster with the royal harem; and many also by inferior and nameless artists.

monde" of the coquettish Countess of Chesterfield, stopping a broken window. "La Muskerry faite comme la plupart des riches heritieres," skreening out the ungrated hearth of a capacious chimney-piece; while the fair Hamilton, "grande et gracieuse dans les moindres de ses mouvements," hung in a most maudlin state out of her frame; and "la belle Stewart," lay undistinguished in a corner, with "la blonde Blague," now literally plus jaune qu'un coing."

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"And are these pictures to go with the rest of the premises?" asked the Commodore.

"Its little matter where they go,' returned Mrs. Magillicuddy, indignantly,

* Lady Elizabeth Butler, daughter of the Duke of Ormond, and second wife of the Earl of Chesterfield she died 1666.

:

+ Lady Margaret Burke, daughter and heiress of Ulic Burke, fifth Earl of Clanrickard, wife to Charles Lord Muskerry.

or if they went with them they liken:-a parcel of rakes and harlots! as Miss Crawley tells me; they are paying for their scarlet and fine linen now, I warrant; for they that plough iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same. Fie upon such shameless Jezebels! say I, who look full of nought but worldly vanity and fleshly ease."

Fleshly ease, indeed!" repeated De Vere, gazing earnestly upon the picture of the beautiful Duchess of Cleveland.* "There is something in the swimming eyes and thick lips of the

* Lady Barbara Villiers, daughter and heiress of William Villiers, Lord Grandison: she was native of the scenes here described, and spent the innocent and early part of her life in her fa. ther's castle of Dromana, on the lovely banks of the black water. She was afterwards consigned to immortal infamy as the mistress of Charles the Second, under the titles of Countess of Cas. tlemain and Duchess of Cleveland. Part of the summer of 1817 was delightfully spent by the author amidst these delicious scenes.