The Duke and Duchess having attentively perused this brief inscription, fondly and affectionately embraced their lovely and much beloved child, no less pleased with the religious feeling which had called forth their warm approbation, and which they distinctly expressed, than delighted as they were with the poetic feeling (for thus their partial fondness adjudged) with which it was written; considering it as no unfavourable specimen of the expanding powers of a youthful mind. Adelaide was infinitely far more delighted by this praise of her parents, an incense so grateful to her heart, than any aspirant to fame in these our degenerate days could receive from the partial praise and prejudiced columns of any literary critick.
Time rapidly moved onward, the winter had passed over with an uncommon mildness; but the spring, which had now succeeded, proved unusually harsh, tardy, and severe. The cold north-east wind had incessantly blown, and vegetation had consequently been chillingly repelled; while the usual flowers that form the chaplet of spring were chained in their petals, or wholly destroyed by the frost. And when the merry month of June arrived, it was indeed unusual and extraordinary to behold the blossoms of the wild rose, hawthorn, and the laburnum, all mingling their beauties and their perfumes amid the numerous hedge-rows, and presenting a diversified mass of colours and foliage, like to the bloom of a Russian spring, when, melted by a genial vernal sun, trees, plants, and flowers bud, and immediately burst forth into luxuriant and varied vegetation; the annual resurrection of nature vigorously springing forth in renovated youth from the tomb of winter!
One morning while Lady Adelaide was seated in the library reading some interesting work with that deep attention and wrapt enthusiasm with which she always dwelt upon a book of merit, she was suddenly interrupted in her studies by the approach of that important person, (as in her own estimation she considered herself;) we here speak of the redoubtable Mrs. Judith Braingwain, who, rushing incontinently into the library, and quite out of breath, exclaimed, "Oh, my Lady, who would have thought it? But however marvellous it is, see, yonder they come; see, there they are, Bishop Rocket along with his tall wife, who, by the bye, is hardy as a seagull; and, moreover, a whole flock, aye, a beautiful bevy of dainty damozels besides! See, my Lady, there—there they are; they are now just entering the porch; aye, there they come, sure enough!"
"How strange!" replied Lady Adelaide, "we left them at Tyrconnel; what unaccountable anomaly brings the bishop and family from his palace to this retired spot?"
Here Mrs. Judith catching at the word anomaly, and wholly uncomprehending it, while she thought proper to confound its meaning, thus rejoined:—"Anne O'Mally! Oh yes, my dear young Lady, just as if now before my eyes, I ken that sweet and charming creature, worth a whole fleet and cargo of such like ladies as Dame Rocket. I remember, ay faith do I, she was the finest——Oh no, not the finest—that belongs to another; but as fine a girl as a body might see on a fair May-day in ould Connaught, any how! And beside, and moreover, she was right loyally discended [lineally descended] from the great bould pirate princess, Grace O'Malley, in troth, and sure enough, far and near, and abroad and at home, far better known, mavourneen, by the famous name of Grana Uile, who (it is a storical fact) visited Elizabeth,[18] the grand and conquering queen of all England, in her gallipot [galliot,] afar across the salt water seas. Oh, Lady Adelaide! Anne O'Malley was indeed a promising young lady—the finest——"
"Nay, nay, nurse," said Lady Adelaide, "be not so flippant in thy praise, else I shall grow positively jealous. I therefore must stop you just now, for it seems your tongue runs riot quite with your discretion; and has bounced off at a tangent in full gallop, jumping pell-mell, hop and step, from the young and lovely Anne O'Malley to grey-head old Grana Uile, (of neither of whom, by the bye, did I speak,) until in most crab-like motion you pounce upon the majestic Elizabeth; and all this in most manifest and notable contempt of time, place, and circumstance. This really is not to be endured. Besides, I pray you to remember, that once, however, there was a time when no one was so handsome, so good, and all so angelic and so forth, as your own Adelaide! And, in undisguised truth, I was in a very fair and hopeful way of being utterly spoiled, but that happily I turned a deaf and obdurate ear to all your too partial praise, as well I knew that your commendations all sprung from overweening kindness. However, just now I am happy to find that you are converted from your former heresies, and that at length you behold your poor idol in its mortal shape, imbued with all its natural and perverse imperfections; and that you are now free to confess that, in sooth, I am not, as I never was, that angel of excellence, and that paragon of beauty, which your early devotions conceived me to be. You have broken your idol, and it has fallen from the pedestal upon which you had proudly placed it, shivered into atoms on the earth!"