“Yes, Power,” said three or four together; “let us have ‘The Irish Dragoon,’ if it’s only to convert your friend O’Malley there.”
“Here goes, then,” said Dick, taking off a bumper as he began the following chant to the air of “Love is the Soul of a gay Irishman”:—
THE IRISH DRAGOON.
Oh, love is the soul of an Irish dragoon
In battle, in bivouac, or in saloon,
From the tip of his spur to his bright sabretasche.
With his soldierly gait and his bearing so high,
His gay laughing look and his light speaking eye,
He frowns at his rival, he ogles his wench,
He springs in his saddle and chasses the French,
With his jingling spur and his bright sabretasche.
His spirits are high, and he little knows care,
Whether sipping his claret or charging a square,
With his jingling spur and his bright sabretasche.
As ready to sing or to skirmish he’s found,
To take off his wine or to take up his ground;
When the bugle may call him, how little he fears
To charge forth in column and beat the Mounseers,
With his jingling spur and his bright sabretasche.
When the battle is over, he gayly rides back
To cheer every soul in the night bivouac,
With his jingling spur and his bright sabretasche.
Oh, there you may see him in full glory crowned,
As he sits ‘midst his friends on the hardly won ground,
And hear with what feeling the toast he will give,
As he drinks to the land where all Irishmen live,
With his jingling spur and his bright sabretasche.
It was late when we broke up; but among all the recollections of that pleasant evening none clung to me so forcibly, none sank so deeply in my heart, as the gay and careless tone of Power’s manly voice; and as I fell asleep towards morning, the words of “The Irish Dragoon” were floating through my mind and followed me in my dreams.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE VICE-PROVOST.
I had now been for some weeks a resident within the walls of the university, and yet had never presented my letter of introduction to Dr. Barret. Somehow, my thoughts and occupations had left me little leisure to reflect upon my college course, and I had not felt the necessity suggested by my friend Sir Harry, of having a supporter in the very learned and gifted individual to whom I was accredited. How long I might have continued in this state of indifference it is hard to say, when chance brought about my acquaintance with the doctor.
Were I not inditing a true history in this narrative of my life, to the events and characters of which so many are living witnesses, I should certainly fear to attempt anything like a description of this very remarkable man; so liable would any sketch, however faint and imperfect, be to the accusation of caricature, when all was so singular and so eccentric.
Dr. Barret was, at the time I speak of, close upon seventy years of age, scarcely five feet in height, and even that diminutive stature lessened by a stoop. His face was thin, pointed, and russet-colored; his nose so aquiline as nearly to meet his projecting chin, and his small gray eyes, red and bleary, peered beneath his well-worn cap with a glance of mingled fear and suspicion. His dress was a suit of the rustiest black, threadbare, and patched in several places, while a pair of large brown leather slippers, far too big for his feet, imparted a sliding motion to his walk that added an air of indescribable meanness to his appearance; a gown that had been worn for twenty years, browned and coated with the learned dust of the Fagel, covered his rusty habiliments, and completed the equipments of a figure that it was somewhat difficult for the young student to recognize as the vice-provost of the university. Such was he in externals. Within, a greater or more profound scholar never graced the walls of the college; a distinguished Grecian, learned in all the refinements of a hundred dialects; a deep Orientalist, cunning in all the varieties of Eastern languages, and able to reason with a Moonshee, or chat with a Persian ambassador. With a mind that never ceased acquiring, he possessed a memory ridiculous for its retentiveness, even of trifles; no character in history, no event in chronology was unknown to him, and he was referred to by his contemporaries for information in doubtful and disputed cases, as men consult a lexicon or dictionary. With an intellect thus stored with deep and far-sought knowledge, in the affairs of the world he was a child. Without the walls of the college, for above forty years, he had not ventured half as many times, and knew absolutely nothing of the busy, active world that fussed and fumed so near him; his farthest excursion was to the Bank of Ireland, to which he made occasional visits to fund the ample income of his office, and add to the wealth which already had acquired for him a well-merited repute of being the richest man in college.