of strangers, the mother, crying out to her husband that the stranger was surely a witch, ran to pick up her child; the woman heard the exclamation, and turning, looked for an instant at the child, and then went her way through the jungle. In two hours from that moment the child was dead. The witch, said the distressed parents, had killed it with a glance. It must be buried at once; but they both agreed that the witch, though she had killed, should not devour their poor little one. So it was buried under a great mango-tree, a short distance from the house; and it being a very dark night, the father and mother climbed into the tree, and determined to watch over the grave until the witch should come. Slowly the hours passed. At midnight they distinguished, among the faint nightsounds peculiar to a thick jungle, footsteps approaching; it was verily the witch. She came cautiously to the grave, and muttering her incantations, dug up the body, which she placed in a sitting posture against the trunk of the tree; she then lit a fire, and after performing certain devilish charms, seized the corpse in her arms, and executed a horrible dance round the fire with it. Life at that moment seemed to re-enter the body; it stood up of itself, and began moving solemnly round the fire. The witch was preparing to end the scene, when on a sudden the father and mother sprang to the ground, seized their son, dashed out the embers of the fire, and fled to the village, leaving the witch in a state of astonishment; and the strangest part of the story is that the child lived, grew up, learnt his father's trade, became the father himself of a numerous family, and lived happily ever after.

There is much nonsense talked about the injustice of taking Native provinces under British rule; but it may be argued that if the result of such usurpation is to be the clearing away of this dark cloud of ignorance and superstition from the minds of the people, and substituting for it a clearer and brighter light-then the wider British rule extends the better and happier for India.

VOL. XVI.-No. 94.

21.

The Beautiful Miss Gunnings.

Ir is curious with what frequency Irish names turn up in the memoirs of the last century. Whether it be the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons betting at Newmarket, Lord Barrymore's private theatricals, or St. Leger's extravagant dinners-in every direction the Irish appear conspicuous.

It was in fortune-hunting, however, that they seem to have been most successful-a pursuit in which they excited considerable jealousy. There was that tall Hibernian, Mr. Hussey, whose stalwart person and handsome face not only won the favour of the widowed Duchess of Manchester, coheiress of the last Duke of Montagu, and owner in her own right of immense possessions, but procured for him the earldom of Beaulieu and the red riband of the Bath to boot. Sir Charles Hanbury Williams wrote some verses on this occasion, the conclusion of which set half the Irishmen in London examining their pistols. "Nature," said the famous wit,

Nature, indeed, denies them sense,

But gives them legs and impudence.
That beats all understanding.

Of all the celebrated Irish, or, indeed, English names, in the social history of the eighteenth century, none, however, are so famous as those of the "beautiful Miss Gunnings."

These wild Irish girls burst upon London society in the autumn of 1751, and in a moment carried it by storm. For the next ten years the gossiping writers of the age are incessantly chronicling their appearance, their manners or want of them, their marriages, and the admiration they excited, not only in fashionable circles, but still more among the populace. If it were not that the accounts they give are in most cases those of eyewitnesses, we should hesitate to believe them. Imagine a shoemaker realizing three guineas in one day by the exhibition at a penny a head of one of their shoes! Surely since the time of Cinderella and her glass slipper there has been nothing like it. We doubt if Madame Tussaud would think it worth while adding such a relic to her museum of curiosities at the present day.

Will our readers believe that these girls were unable to walk in the Park on account of the crowd that surrounded them in sheer admiration, and that they were obliged to obtain the protection of a file of the Guards? That when they were travelling through the country crowds lined the roads to gaze at them, and hundreds of people remained up all night around the inn at which they were staying, on the chance of getting a peep at them in the morning? Can we believe such things of our great

grandfathers and mothers, for we are sure the latter were not the least curious? We think we may propound the same question about our ancestors as one of the Bishops did in reference to the French, at the time of the Revolution,-" Can a whole nation lose its senses?" Where is all our enthusiasm at the present day? Has it oozed away through our fingers' ends in this sceptical age? If "those goddesses the Gunnings" now descended upon us, we warrant that no extraordinary means need be taken for their protection. London, in fact, has become too extended and its population too numerous to have any longer but one centre of attraction. In our opinion, the popular admiration excited by "the beauties" is even more astonishing than their great alliances, splendid as these undoubtedly were.

The elder became Countess of Coventry, and the younger married successively two dukes, refused a third, and was the mother of four, besides obtaining a peerage in her own right. Not bad for two penniless Irish girls! We have called these celebrated beauties "Irish," and as such they are generally spoken of. Strictly speaking, however, the popular belief is incorrect, inasmuch as there is no doubt they were born at Hemingford Grey in Huntingdonshire, but from thence were removed to the family seat in Roscommon when little more than infants.

The Gunning family was an offshoot of a respectable English house, and had settled in Ireland in the reign of James I. They possessed a fair estate, called Castle Coote, in Roscommon; but it was probably heavily encumbered. In the year 1731, Mr. Gunning, then a student in the Temple, and his father's heir, married the Hon. Bridget Bourke, daughter of Lord Mayo, and in the two ensuing years were born Maria, afterwards Countess of Coventry, and Elizabeth, the future Duchess of Hamilton. At the time of Mr. Gunning's marriage his father was still living, and it was not till his death a few years after that the family were transplanted to the wilds of Connaught.

It is hardly possible for us now to realize the desolation of that remote province in the early part of the last century. "To Hell or to Connaught " presented then a much more uncertain alternative than at the present day; and the worst of it was that, once there, escape was nearly as difficult from one place as the other. There were neither roads nor conveyances, and the travellers of the time complain bitterly of the hardships of the journey.

We are sure our readers share our regret that we know so little of Mrs. Gunning. If the lives of the mothers of great men have been thought worthy of record, surely the mothers of fair women deserve a niche in history. That Mrs. Gunning was handsome we take for granted. We are told that she was "a lady of most elegant figure," a grace her daughters inherited; but we should like to have known much more than this. Bitterly, we imagine, she must have lamented her exile in the far West, especially when she beheld her daughters developing every day new beauties, and yet lacking those graces and accomplishments without

which their charms would lose half their attraction. Occasionally, too, she would hear of the splendour of the Irish capital, where Lord Chesterfield was ruling with unwonted magnificence.

Perhaps, however, the country breeding of the Miss Gunnings in reality contributed to their future triumphs. Their natural and unaffected manners must have contrasted pleasantly with the artificial and ceremonious society of the period, while there is no doubt that the healthy breezes of the country contributed not a little to those brilliant complexions which added so materially to their loveliness.

In the year 1748 Mrs. Gunning resolved that her daughters should no longer "waste their sweetness on the desert air," and accordingly the whole family removed to Dublin; Maria, afterwards Lady Coventry, being then about sixteen, and her sister a year younger.

At that period the society of the Irish metropolis possessed many attractions. Sheridan had succeeded to the theatrical sceptre, and his accession heralded a new era in the Irish drama. The riots and disturbances which had so long disgraced the performances were quelled by his firm government, while the engagements of Garrick, Cibber, Mrs. Woffington, and Miss Bellamy shed a lustre over the Irish stage such as had never before been equalled.

The musical taste, too, for which the Hibernian capital is still famous was even then conspicuous. Some years had elapsed since Handel's visit, but early in 1748 his Judas Maccabeus was produced for the first time, by the special command of the Earl of Harrington, then Lord Lieutenant, and met with a much more cordial reception than in London. Lord Harrington had just succeeded the famous Earl of Chesterfield, who had departed the previous year, leaving behind him memories of magnificence and hospitality to which the Irish Court had hitherto been a stranger. Lord Harrington, however, seems to have been determined to prove that the junior branch of the Stanhopes could vie with the parent stem in splendour and elegance. His Court was graced by the presence of his eldest son's bride, Lady Caroline Petersham, daughter of the Duke of Grafton, and one of the handsomest women in England, who thus early entered on her career of rivalry with the beautiful Countess of Coventry. But from this English belle the lovely Mrs. Madden, afterwards Lady Ely and the reigning Irish toast, was considered by many to bear off the palm -perhaps through national prejudice.

Of the brilliant festivities at the Castle of Dublin Mr. Victor, who aided Sheridan in ruling the fierce democracy of an Irish audience, gives us some idea. He tells us that, in virtue of his office, he attended Court on the birthnight (October 30, 1748), and that "nothing in the memory of the oldest courtier living ever equalled the taste and splendour of the supper-room at the Castle on that occasion. The ball was in the new room designed by Lord Chesterfield, which is allowed to be very magnificent. After the dancing was over, the company retired to a long gallery, where, as you passed slowly through, you stopped by the way at shops

elegantly formed, where was cold eating and all sorts of wines and sweetmeats, and the whole most beautifully disposed by transparent paintings, through which a shade was cast like moonlight. Flutes and other soft instruments were playing all the while, but, like the candles, unseen. At each end of the long building were placed fountains of lavender-water constantly playing, that diffused a most grateful odour through this amazing fairy scene, which certainly surpassed everything of the kind in Spenser, as it proved not only a fine feast for the imagination but, after the dream, for the senses also, by the excellent substantials at the sideboards." The tradition is that the Miss Gunnings having no dresses in which to appear at the fête thus described, applied to Mr. Sheridan in their difficulty, and that he at once placed his whole theatrical wardrobe at their disposal—a piece of generosity repaid by neglect and ingratitude, when, some years later, they were in a position to make a proper return for it. That the Gunnings were in a state of impecuniosity, deeper even than became the Irish gentry of the period, not only when in Dublin, but afterwards in London, is evident from some anecdotes about them related by Miss Bellamy, who at this time was acting in the Irish capital. One day as Miss Bellamy was returning through the streets from a rehearsal, she heard a voice of distress, and at once entered the house from which it proceeded. She there found "a lady of most elegant figure," surrounded by four beautiful girls and a boy of about three years old. This lady was Mrs. Gunning, who informed the actress that having lived beyond their income, her husband had been compelled to retire into the country to avoid the disagreeable consequences which were about to ensue, leaving his family to the tender mercy of the bailiffs, who were then in the house, and preparing to turn them out of doors. Miss Bellamy, with that kindness which is still the characteristic of her profession, took pity on the family, and brought them to her own residence. The bailiffs, too, were outwitted by the actress's serving-man, who was sent at night to remain under the windows of the house, from which everything portable was thrown to him. While they were thus residing with Miss Bellamy, the Gunnings, conscious of their charms and eager to learn what their effect would be, insisted on consulting a fortuneteller who had then gained great celebrity in Dublin. This female seer, we are informed, told their fortunes with even greater accuracy than the mediums of the present day; foreseeing not only the exalted rank to which both would attain, but also the premature death of the Countess of Coventry.

Of the sensation the youthful beauties created in Dublin we have, unfortunately, but little record. Mrs. Delany, whose charming Letters lately edited by Lady Llanover throw such light upon the social history of the past century, gives us just one peep at them in a letter written in June, 1750, to her sister, from her residence at Delville, near Dublin. Her sister had probably written to her, curious to learn about the wonderful Gunnings. In reply, Mrs. Delany informs her that all she has