IRISH LIFE:

IN

THE CASTLE, THE COURTS, AND THE COUNTRY.

CHAPTER I.

Lord Angelo is precise;

Stands at a guard with envy; scarce confesses

That his blood flows, or that his appetite

Is more to bread than stone.

Measure for Measure.

When on the past the memory dwells,

And with full tide remembrance swells;
When o'er the heart are wildly flung,

Thoughts, feelings, passions, which have wrung
Each, in their turn, the tortured breast;

The struggle o'er, and now at rest,

The soul reviews with bootless pain,

Those faults it now deplores in vain.

Unpublished Poem.

It was my misfortune, at a very early age, to lose my mother, who was only able to bequeath to me on her death-bed the aversion and dislike of a father, transferred from a persecuted wife to an unoffending child. Though I was little more than an infant at the time,-and many years have since

VOL I.

B

rolled by, and many and varied scenes have each left the impress of their occurrences on my mind -still, amid the otherwise confused recollections of childhood, the fatal moment of this bereavement stands out in bold and prominent relief.

They told me she was dying. I knew not what it meant; beyond, indeed, that it would part her from me, and that I should henceforth be deprived of the refuge which her protection afforded from the harsh treatment of my father; shared, indeed, and more than equally, by her. A disappointment in the amount of her fortune was the principal and original cause of estrangement. My father, of a respectable family, had inherited from his predecessor a crippled patrimony, and had embraced the Bar as the best mode to repair the shattered fortunes of his house. Cold, proud-yet calculating; filled with ambition, the natural austerity of his character was heightened by the force of circumstances: with his eye, from the first, steadily fixed on the highest step of the ladder, he cheerfully underwent all the drudgery of its ascent. Laborious and self-denying, the pleasures of life never drew him from his pursuit; and as with untiring patience he toiled over

the earlier and rougher stages of his career; so in the more elevated position of its termination, he still flinched not from its steady prosecution; nor, in the end, did he suffer himself, by the independence he had procured, to be seduced from the habits necessity had at first engendered. His early jealousy and almost hatred of mankind, had, from the experience of his life, mellowed into a profound and unmitigated contempt for his fellows, which marked all his intercourse with them. Whilst he was yet far from commanding his professional position, the commendable assiduity and industry of so young a man, co-existing with a deportment and character so utterly unimpeachable, had recommended him to the respect and countenance of his seniors. My grandfather by my mother's side, being at that time in the very zenith of forensic fame, with the reputation of about ten times the wealth his liberal and generous character allowed him to possess, was naturally a connexion suited both to the narrow means and restless ambition of Charles Tarleton.

The result was, his marriage with my mother,a marriage rendered wretched, almost from the first, in consequence of the comparatively small

fortune it brought; but hopelessly embittered by the success which its assistance afforded him, as enabling him to reach a position on the slippery ascent, too high to be longer benefited by her father's name or interest. At the time of my birth, a high office, the immediate stepping-stone to the bench, had already rewarded the long labour necessary for its procurement. As usual too, friends, as mutually useful acquaintances are termed, now thronged around him; but, in this respect, Sir Charles Tarleton differed from most. Few, none indeed, could, even in the enlarged sense in which the word is used, call themselves his friends; his cold and repulsive nature shrunk from the ripening into intimacy of the acquaintance, which his polished and even engaging manners, could at all times command. A profound worldling, he scarcely ever suffered the mask to drop from his countenance, or the lively and softened tone to grate on his hearer's ear, except when the curtain of domestic privacy was drawn; and, wearied with the effort of supporting a character alien to his nature, in the retirement of his home his austere harshness utterly annihilated all the gentler charities which that