Colonel Pembroke went to the prison; and he was so much struck by the scene, that he not only relieved the misery of this family, but in two months afterwards his debts were paid, his race-horses sold, and all his expenses regulated, so as to render him ever afterwards truly independent. He no longer spent his days, like many young men of fashion, either in DREADING or in DAMNING DUNS.
Edgeworthstown, 1802.
FOOTNOTES:
1 ([return])
[ “The cloak, or mantle, as described by Thady, is of high antiquity. Spenser, in his ‘View of the State of Ireland,’ proves that it is not, as some have imagined, peculiarly derived from the Scythians, but that most nations of the world anciently used the mantle; for the Jews used it, as you may read of Elias’s mantle, &c.; the Chaldees also used it, as you may read in Diodorus; the Egyptians likewise used it, as you may read in Herodotus, and may be gathered by the description of Berenice in the Greek Commentary upon Callimachus; the Greeks also used it anciently, as appeared by Venus’s mantle lined with stars, though afterward they changed the form thereof into their cloaks, called Pallai, as some of the Irish also use: and the ancient Latins and Romans used it, as you may read in Virgil, who was a great antiquary, that Evander when Aeneas came to him at his feast, did entertain and feast him sitting on the ground, and lying on mantles: insomuch that he useth the very word mantile for a mantle,
‘———Humi mantilia sternunt:’
so that it seemeth that the mantle was a general habit to most nations, and not proper to the Scythians only.”
Spenser knew the convenience of the said mantle, as housing, bedding, and clothing.