To repeat the words of the Prince is to deprive them of half their effect: his great eloquence lies in his air, his gestures, and the forcible expression of his dark-rolling eye. He sat down exhausted with the impetuous vehemence with which he had spoken.
“If we were to believe Dr. Warner, however,” (said the priest) “the modern Irish are a degenerated race, comparatively speaking, for he asserts, that even in the days of Elizabeth, ‘the old natives had degenerated, and that the wars of several centuries had reduced them to a state far inferior to that in which they were found in the days of Henry the Second.’ But still, like the modern Greeks, we perceive among them strong traces of a free, a great, a polished, and an enlightened people.”
Wearied by a conversation in which my heart now took little interest, I made the palinod of my prejudices, and concluded by saying, “I perceive that on this ground I am always destined to be vanquished, yet always to win by the loss, and gain by the defeat; and therefore I ought not in common policy to cease to oppose, until nothing further can be obtained by opposition.”
The Prince, who was getting a little testy at my “heresy and schism,” seemed quite appeased by this avowal; and the priest, who was gratified by a compliment I had previously paid to his talents, shook me heartily by the hand, and said, I was the most generous opponent he had ever met with. Then taking up his book, was suffered to proceed in its perusal uninterupted. During the whole of the evening, Glorvina maintained an uninterrupted silence; she appeared lost in thought, and unmindful of our conversation, while her eyes, sometimes turned on me, but oftener on her father, seemed humid with a tear, as she contemplated his lately much altered appearance.
Yet when the debility of the man was for a moment lost in the energy of the patriot, I perceived the mind of the daughter kindling at the sacred fire which illumined the father’s; and through the tear of natural affection sparkled the bright beam of national enthusiasm.
I suspect that the embassy of the good priest is not of the most pleasant nature. To-night as he left me at the door of my room, he said that we had a long journey before us; for that the house of the nobleman to whom we are going lay in a remote part of the province of Ulster; that he was a Scotchman, and only occasionally visited this country (where he had an immense property) to receive his rents. “The Prince (said he) holds a large but unprofitable farm from this Highland chief, the lease of which he is anxious to throw up: that surly looking fellow who dined with us the other day, is a steward; and if the master is as inexorable as the servant, we shall undertake this journey to very little purpose.”
Adieu.—I endeavour to write and think on every subject but that nearest my heart, yet there Glorvina and her mysterious friend still awaken the throb of jealous doubt and anxious solicitude. I shall drop this for you in the postoffice of the first post-town I pass through; and probably endeavour to forget myself, and my anxiety to return hither, at your expense, by writing to you in the course of my journey.