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                      MANNERS:

                      A NOVEL.


            ----Dicas hic forsitan unde
    Ingenium par materiae.

                                     JUVENAL.

    Je sais qu'un sot trouve toujours un plus sot pour le lire.

                                     FRED. LE GRAND.


    IN THREE VOLUMES.
    VOL. III.

    LONDON:
    PRINTED FOR BALDWIN, CRADOCK, AND JOY,
    PATERNOSTER ROW.

    1817.




MANNERS.




CHAPTER I.

    ----Whose birth beyond all question springs
    From great and glorious, though forgotten, kings.

    oeCHURCHILL.oe


The lady who did the honours of Mr. O'Sullivan's house to our English
travellers, on the night of their arrival at Ballinamoyle, Miss
Fitzcarril by name, was in person extremely tall; and a carriage of
extraordinary uprightness gave her, with a stiffness, a dignity also of
appearance. Her face, though good natured in expression, was, at that
period, rather plain; but yet sufficient evidence remained to
corroborate her own frequent assertion, that "she had once been a fine
woman;" in making which she flattered herself her auditors would imply,
that she took the same license which the structure of a venerable
language sometimes permits, of understanding, at pleasure, different
tenses by the same word; and that they would from the past infer the
present. In dress and manner she was old fashioned, but stately,
generally wearing garments made of the antique tabinets and satins she
inherited from her grandmother, and which, from the unbending nature of
the material, would have stood alone, nearly in as erect a posture as
that they maintained when encompassing her perpendicular figure; a
double clear starched handkerchief, which Mr. Desmond wickedly called
her transparency, enveloped her neck; and the costume of her person was
completed by a fine muslin apron of curious work, derived from her own,
or her progenitors' industry. Her headdress was the only part of her
attire which was ever varied, and in this she was fantastic in the
extreme, composing it of the most showy materials, and wearing in her
caps and turbans colours only fit for the young and beautiful. Every
acquaintance who visited Galway, Limerick, or Clare, was sure to have a
commission to buy a cap or bonnet for Miss Fitzcarril; and the more
_outre_ in form and colour, the better pleased she was with their
purchase. She was, in mind, the most singular mixture of pride and
parsimony that was perhaps ever compounded; the one she derived from her
highly valued ancestry, the other from her own peculiar fate, and a
mistaken idea of principle; and she reconciled her frugality and her
dignity, by declaring that "the Fitzcarrils and O'Sullivans needn't
trouble their heads about what any one said of them; _every body_ knew
they were come of the kings of Connaught, and had a good right to do as
they pleased." In early life she had lived in extreme poverty, and then
had learned the ideas of management she afterwards laboured to enforce
at Ballinamoyle. Mr. O'Sullivan had been deprived of his wife a few
years before he had also the misfortune to lose his only child; and on
the death of this beloved daughter, he chose Theresa Fitzcarril from
amongst his female relatives, to superintend his establishment, at the
same time settling a comfortable provision on her, in case she should
survive himself; which he considered a mere act of justice, for he
foresaw that the retirement of his residence would condemn her to a life
of solitude and celibacy, the two precise circumstances which least
accorded with her own wishes. Theresa, on her part, actuated by an
excess of pride, resolved she would cancel her pecuniary obligations,
not only to her original benefactor, but to his heir, by saving for the
family a sum more than equivalent to all she should ever receive from
it. She therefore endeavoured (though without much success) to introduce
a system of penury at Ballinamoyle, that, had its owner been aware of
her proceedings, he would not have suffered, as it was diametrically
opposite to his wishes; he seldom however inquired into the _minutiae_
of his household; and indifferent to every thing, after the loss of his
daughter, he permitted Theresa to do nearly as she pleased; and when he
did object to any of her practices, she was so obstinate, that he found
he must, to get rid of them, get rid of herself also with them, and this
he never could resolve on; but consoled himself with the usual
reflection of his countrymen, when trouble is necessary to avoid any
thing unpleasant, "It will do well enough, my time won't be long." Miss
Fitzcarril sought to relieve the monotony of her life by indulging in
constant speculation. In every lottery she had a sixteenth share of a
ticket; and to ascertain what she might possess in the _matrimonial
lottery_, had frequent and protracted conferences with all the tribes of
cup-tossers, card-cutters, and deaf and dumb men and women, who infested
the country as fortune-tellers,--"Who blind could every thing
foresee"--"Who dumb could every thing foretell." This pleasure however
Miss Fitzcarril was obliged to indulge in secret, as Mr. O'Sullivan and
the worthy priest, who was his domestic pastor, used their best
endeavours to banish this race of vagabonds from every place they had
influence in; so that when she consulted any of these oracles, she was
obliged to conceal herself and them in some remote cabin; but perhaps
the impediment thus thrown in the way of this favourite indulgence made
her but the more keenly enjoy and still more pertinaciously persist in
the practice, notwithstanding the reiterated penances imposed for this
offence by the good father Dermoody, which, though she ventured to
commit, she did not dare to suppress at confessional. A family of the
name of Stewart wandered about the country, presenting papers signed by
respectable names, setting forth, that "their progenitors had been
shipwrecked on the coast of Ireland, about a century ago--that the whole
race were deaf and dumb--but that Providence, in compensation, had
bestowed on them the gift of second sight." To the predictions of a dumb
woman, who claimed this name, and proved she was deaf, by showing that
nature had left her unprovided with ears[1], Theresa gave the most
implicit credit. This Pythoness had learned to write the printed
character, and to draw rude representations of ships, trees, men, and
animals, which she described on a board with a piece of white chalk; and
of these hieroglyphics those who consulted her made what sense best
pleased them. A sharp boy, who had all his senses in full activity,
never failed to accompany her; apparently to assist in expounding her
text, but, in reality, to collect information, which, by the language of
signs, he certainly conveyed to his fellow conjuror, at the most
_a-propos_ moment, as no body concealed from him the information she was
supposed to be (humanly speaking) ignorant of;

    "Tout cela bien souvent faisoit crier miracle!
    Enfin quoique ignorant a vingt et trois carats,
    Elle passoit pour un oracle!"

[Footnote 1: This account of the Stewart family is not fictitious,
either as to name or circumstance.]

In their last conference Judy Stewart had given Miss Fitzcarril the
following enigma:--A rose rudely drawn, followed by the words "of
vargins,"--then, a ship in full sail--then, three suns--and lastly, a
man, four times as big as the ship, holding a candle in one hand, and a
ring in the other. The exposition Barny and the curious spinster gave of
this was as follows:--"The flower of virgins," that is, the eldest
daughter of the direct branch of the O'Sullivan family, was coming from
beyond sea, and would arrive at Ballinamoyle, as soon as the sun had
risen three times, bringing in her train a great personage (expressed by
his extraordinary size,) who would, in winter, designated by the candle,
bestow the wedding ring on the fair Theresa Fitzcarril. Judy Stewart's
credit was luckily saved by the horses, which our travellers so
unexpectedly procured at Tuberdonny, fulfilling the first part of the
prediction; and in Mr. Webberly the credulous maiden saw the hero, who
was to accomplish that part which related to herself.

Extremes are popularly said to meet, which, we suppose, may naturally
account for the Connaught sibyls' most zealous friend and powerful enemy
residing at Ballinamoyle. The latter was the reverend father Dermoody,
who filled the office of spiritual guide to its owner. He was well
informed in mind, and gentlemanly in manners; two circumstances but
rarely united in the Irish priests, who are generally taken from a low
order in society, and do not usually carry an appearance impressive of
the respect, to which most of them are entitled by their real worth. Mr.
Dermoody was a relation of the late Mrs. O'Sullivan, and had embraced
the priesthood from the influence