Glorvina ran and shook hands with him, as though she had not seen him in an age, and flew out of the room; while I effacing the quotation but not the honoured inscription, asked Father John’s opinion of my effort at portrait painting. He acknowledged it was a most striking resemblance, and added, “Now you will indeed give a coup de grace to the partiality of the Prince in your favour, and you will rank so much the higher in his estimation, in proportion as his daughter is dearer to him than his ruins.”
Thus encouraged, I devoted the rest of the day to copying out this sketch: and I have finished the picture in that light tinting, so effective in this kind of characteristic drawings. That beautifully pensive expression which touches the countenance of Glorvina, when breathing her native strains, I have most happily caught; and her costume, attitude, and harp, form as happy a combination of traits, as a single portrait perhaps ever presented.
When it was shown to the Prince, he gazed on it in silence, till tears obscured his glance; then laying it down he embraced me, but said nothing. Had he detailed the merits of the picture in all the technical farago of cognoscenti phrase, his comments would not have been half so eloquent as this simple action, and the silence which accompanied it. Adieu,
H. M.
LETTER XI.
TO J. D. ESQ., M. P.
Here is a bonne bouche for your antiquarian taste, and Ossianic palate! Almost every evening after vesper, we all assemble in a spacious hall, * which had been shut up for near a century and first opened by the present prince when he was driven for shelter to his paternal ruins.
* “Amidst the ruins of Buan Ratha, near Limerick, is a
princely hall and spacious chambers; the fine stucco in many
of which is yet visible, though uninhabitable for near a
century.”—O’Halloran’s Introduction to the Study of the
History and Antiquities of Ireland, p 8.
In every town, every village, every considerable tract of
land, the spacious ruins of princely residence or religious
edifices, the palace, the castle, or the abbey, are to be
seen.
This Vengolf, this Valkhalla, where the very spirit of Woden seems to preside, runs the full length of the castle as it now stands (for the centre of the building only, has escaped the delapidations of time,) and its beautifully arched roof is enriched with numerous devices which mark the spirit of that day in which it was erected. This very curious roof is supported by two rows of pillars of that elegant spiral lightness which characterises the Gothic order in a certain stage of its progress. The floor is a finely tessellated pavement; and the ample but ungrated hearths which terminate it at either extremity, blaze every evening with the cheering contributions of a neighbouring bog. The windows which are high, narrow, and arched, command on one side a noble view of the ocean, on the other they are closed up.