But let not your vivid imagination thus hurry over at once the scale of my feelings from one extreme to the other, forgetting the many intermediate degrees that lie between the deadly chill of the coldest, and the burning ardour of the most vehement of all human sentiments.
If I am less an apathist, which I am willing to confess, trust me, I am not a whit more the lover.—Lover!—Preposterous! I am merely interested for this girl on a philosophical principle, I long to study the purely national, natural character of an Irish woman: In fine, I long to behold any woman in such lights and shades of mind, temper, and disposition, as nature has originally formed her in. Hitherto I have only met servile copies, sketched by the finger of art and finished off by the polished touch of fashion I fear, however, that this girl is already spoiled by the species of education she has received. The priest has more than once spoke of her erudition! Erudition! the pedantry of a school-boy of the third class, I suppose. How much must a woman lose, and how little can she gain, by that commutation which gives her our acquirements for her own graces! For my part, you know, I have always kept clear of the basbleus; and would prefer one playful charm of a Ninon to all the classic lore of a Dacier.
But you will say, I could scarcely come off worse with the pedants than I did with the dunces; and you will say right. And, to confess the truth, I believe I should have been easily led to desert the standard of the pretty fools, had female pedantry ever stole on my heart under such a form as the little soi-disant Princess of Inis-more. ’Tis indeed, impossible to look less like one who spouts Latin with the priest of the parish than this same Glorvina. There is something beautifully wild about her air and look, that is indescribable; and, without a very perfect regularity of feature, she possesses that effulgency of countenance, that bright lumine purpureo, which poetry assigns to the dazzling emanations of divine beauty. In short, there are a thousand little fugitive graces playing around her, which are not beauty, but the cause of it; and were I to personify the word spell, she should sit for the picture........ A thousand times she swims before my sight, as I last beheld her; her locks of living gold parting on her brow of snow, yet seeming to separate with reluctance, as they were lightly shaken off with that motion of the head, at once so infantile and graceful; a motion twice put into play, as her recumbent attitude poured the luxuriancy of her tresses over her face and neck, for she was unveiled, and a small gold bodkin was unequal to support the redundancy of that beautiful hair, which I more than once apostrophized in the words of Petrarch:
“Onde totse amor l’oro e di qual vena
Per far due treccie bionde, &c.
I understand a servant is dispatched once a week to the next post town, with and for letters; and this intelligence absolutely amazed me; for I am astonished that these beings, who
“Look not like the inhabitants of the earth,
And yet are on it,”
should hold an intercourse with the world.
This is post day, and this packet is at last destined to be finished and dispatched. On looking it over, the title of princes and princess so often occur, that I could almost fancy myself at the court of some foreign potentate, basking in the warm sunshine of regal favour, instead of being the chance guest of a poor Irish gentleman, who lives on the produce of a few rented farms, and, infected with a species of pleasant mania, believes himself as much a prince as the heir apparent of boundless empire and exhaustless treasures.