“However,” said Glorvina, smiling, “I will gratify you by resigning for the present in your favour,” and away she flew speaking in Irish to the nurse, who passed her at the door.
The benevolent confessor then approached, and seated himself beside my bed, with that premeditated air of chit-chat sociality, that it went to my soul to disappoint him. But the thing was impossible, to have tamely conversed in mortal language on mortal subjects, after having held “high communion” with an etherial spirit; when a sigh, a tear, a glance, were the delicious vehicles of our souls’ secret intercourse—to stoop from this “colloquy sublime!” I could as soon have delivered a logical essay on identity and adversity, or any other subject equally interesting to the heart and imagination.
I therefore closed my eyes, and breathed most sonorously: the good priest drew the curtain and retired on tip-toe, and the nurse once more took her distaff, and, for her sins, was silent.
These good people must certainly think me a second Epimenides, for I have done nothing but sleep, or feign to sleep, since I have been thrown amongst them.
LETTER VI.
TO J. D. ESQ., M. P.
I have already passed four days beneath this hospitable roof. On the third, a slight fever with which I had been threatened passed off, my head was disincumbered, and on the fourth I was able to leave my bed, and to scribble thus far of my journal. Yet these kind solicitous beings will not suffer me to leave my room, and still the nurse at intervals gives me the pleasure of her society, and hums old cronans, or amuses me with what she calls a little shanaos, * as she plies her distaff; while the priest frequently indulges me with his interesting and intelligent conversation. The good man is a great logician, and fond of displaying his metaphysical prowess, where he feels that he is understood, and we diurnally go over infinity, space, and duration, with innate, simple, and complex idea, until our own are exhausted in the discussion; and then we generally relax with Ovid, or trifle with Horace and Tibullus, for nothing can be less austerely pious than this cheerful gentle being: nothing can be more innocent than his life; nothing more liberal than his sentiments.
* A term in very general use in Ireland, and is applied to a
kind of genealogical chit chat, or talking over family
antiquity, family anecdotes, descent, alliances, &c., to
which the lower, as well as the higher order of Irish in the
provincial parts are much addicted.
The Prince, too, has thrice honoured me with a visit. Although he possesses nothing of the erudition which distinguishes his all-intelligent chaplain, yet there is a peculiar charm, a spell in his conversation, that is irresistibly fascinating; and chiefly arising, I believe, from the curious felicity of his expressions, the originality of the ideas they clothe, the strength and energy of his delivery, and the enthusiasm and simplicity of his manners.