Maria Edgeworth

“ I should have taken to my bed to avoid seeing any human creature; but I knew that if I declared myself ill, no power would keep my old nurse Ellinor from coming to moan over me; and I was not in a humour to listen to stories of the Irish Black Beard, or the ghost of King O’Donoghoe; nor could I, however troublesome, have repulsed the simplicity of her affection. Instead of going to bed, therefore, I continued to lie stretched upon a sofa, ruminating sweet and bitter thoughts, after giving absolute orders that I should not be disturbed on any account whatever. ”

“ Education, sir! Lord bless your soul, sir! they have a great deal too much; they know too much already, which makes them so refractory to the laws, and so idle. I will go no farther than New-town-Hardcastle, to prove all this. So, my good sir,” concluded he, triumphantly, “education, I grant you, is necessary for the rich; but tell me, if you can, what’s the use of education to the poor?”
“Much the same, I apprehend, as to the rich,” answered M’Leod. “The use of education, as I understand it, is to teach men to see clearly, and to follow steadily, their real interests. ”

“ M’Leod? What would you have me do? Now, don’t give me one of your dry answers, but let me have your notions as a friend: you know, M’Leod, I cannot help having the most perfect confidence in you.”
He bowed, but rather stiffly.
“I am proud to hear you cannot help that, my lord,” said he. “As to a friend, I never considered myself upon that footing till now: but, as you at present honour me so far as to ask my counsel, I am free to give it. Part with Joe Kelly to-night; and whether you go or stay, you are safer without him. Joe’s a rogue: he can do no good, and may do harm.” ”

“ It was my duty, I said, to visit my Irish estate, and to encourage my tenantry, by residing some time among them. Duties often spring up to our view at a convenient opportunity. Then my promise to poor Ellinor; it was impossible for a man of honour to break a promise, even to an old woman: in short, when people are determined upon any action, they seldom fail to find arguments capable of convincing them that their resolution is reasonable. Mixed motives govern the conduct of half mankind; so I set out upon my journey to Ireland. ”

“ We laugh at these mistakes, and forget them; but who can forget the blunder of the Cork almanack-maker, who informs the world that the principal republics in Europe, are Venice, Holland, and America?
The blunders of men of all countries, except Ireland, do not affix an indelible stigma upon individual or national character. A free pardon is, and ought to be, granted by every Englishman to the vernacular and literary errors of those who have the happiness to be born subjects of Great Britain. What enviable privileges are annexed to the birth of an Englishman! ”

“ No; her ladyship was afraid of the cold in the music-room. “Do, my Lord Glenthorn, go and tell the dear capricious creature, that we are very warm here.”
Very reluctantly I obeyed. The Lady Geraldine, with her circle round her, heard and answered me with the air of a princess.
“Do you the honour to play for you, my lord! Excuse me: I am no professor—I play so ill, that I make it a rule never to play but for my own amusement. If you wish for music, there is Miss Bland; she plays incomparably, and I dare say will think herself happy to oblige your lordship.” ”

“ For who can forbear to laugh at the bare idea of an Irish bull?
Nor let any one apprehend that this subject can ever become trite and vulgar. Custom cannot stale its infinite variety. It is in the main obvious, and palpable enough for every common understanding; yet it leads to disquisitions of exquisite subtlety, it branches into innumerable ramifications, and involves consequences of surprising importance; it may exercise the ingenuity of the subtlest wit, the fancy of the oddest humourist, the imagination of the finest poet, and the judgment of the most profound metaphysician. ”

“ This bold figure of rhetoric in an Irish advertisement of an estate may lead us to expect that Hibernian advertisers may, in time, emulate the fame of Christie, the prince of auctioneers, whose fine descriptive powers can make more of an estate on paper than ever was made of it in any other shape, except in the form of an ejectment. The fictions of law, indeed, surpass even the auctioneer’s imagination; and a man may be said never to know the extent of his own possessions until he is served with a process of ejectment. ”

“ The partiality which blinds a biographer to the defects of his hero, in proportion as it is gross, ceases to be dangerous; but if it be concealed by the appearance of candour, which men of great abilities best know how to assume, it endangers our judgment sometimes, and sometimes our morals. If her grace the Duchess of Newcastle, instead of penning her lord’s elaborate eulogium, had undertaken to write the life of Savage, we should not have been in any danger of mistaking an idle, ungrateful libertine, for a man of genius and virtue. The talents of a biographer are often fatal to his reader. ”

“ What little knowledge I have of Ireland has been drawn more from observation than from books. I remember when I first went over there, I did not expect to see twenty trees in the whole island: I imagined that I should have nothing to drink but whiskey, that I should have nothing to eat but potatoes, that I should sleep in mud-walled cabins; that I should, when awake, hear nothing but the Irish howl, the Irish brogue, Irish answers, and Irish bulls ”

“ This resolution of mine to leave Ireland threw Ellinor into despair, and she used all her eloquence to dissuade me from the journey. I was quite surprised by the agony of grief into which she was thrown by the dread of my departure. I felt astonished that one human being could be so attached to another, and I really envied her sensibility. My new man, Joe Kelly, also displayed much reluctance at the thoughts of leaving his native country; and this sentiment inclined Ellinor to think more favourably of him, though she could not quite forgive him for being a Kelly of Ballymuddy. ”

“ He frequently spoke to me of her ladyship in terms of the warmest approbation. He said, that all the world saw and admired her talents and beauty, but that he had had opportunities, as a relation, of studying her domestic life. “With all her vivacity, she has a heart formed for tenderness,” said he; “a high sense of duty, the best security for a woman’s conduct; and in generosity and magnanimity, I never found her superior in either sex. In short, I never saw any woman whose temper and disposition were more likely to make a man of sense and feeling supremely happy.” ”

“ I had in my ignorance believed that I was never to see a tree in Ireland, and that the roads were almost impassable. With the promptitude of credulity, I now went from one extreme to the other: I concluded that we should travel with the same celerity as upon the Bath road; and I expected, that a journey for which four days had been allotted might be performed in two. Like all those who have nothing to do any where, I was always in a prodigious hurry to get from place to place; and I ever had a noble ambition to go over as much ground as possible in a given space of time. ”

“ Should not you like to be able to live without working any more, and to have horses and servants of your own?”
“What would I do with them, plase your honour, I that have never been used to them? sure they’d all laugh at me, and I’d not be the better o’ that, no more than of having nothing to do; I that have been always used to the work, what should I do all the day without it? But sure, my lord,” continued he, changing his voice to a more serious tone, “the horse that I shod yesterday for your honour did not go lame, did he?” ”

“ Afterwards, as if he felt that some apology was necessary to me for the pleasure in which he had indulged himself, “Perhaps, my lord,” said he, “another man in my situation, and with my feelings, would think it necessary to retreat, and prudent to secure his safety by flight; but flight is unworthy of him who can combat and conquer: the man who is sure of himself does not skulk away to avoid danger, but advances to meet it, armed secure in honesty.”
This proud and rash security in his own courage, strength of mind, and integrity, was the only fault of Cecil Devereux. ”

“ In the midst of his own disappointment, our good-natured Hibernian really pitied this poor currier.
The next morning Sir John went early to Blackheath. All was confusion at Miss Sharperson’s house; the steps covered with grates and furniture of all sorts; porters carrying out looking-glasses, Egyptian tables, and candelabras; the noise of workmen was heard in every apartment; and louder than all the rest, O’Mooney heard the curses that were denounced against his rich heiress—curses such as are bestowed on a swindler in the moment of detection by the tradesmen whom she has ruined. ”

“ Would you but speak three words to my landlord, to let my cow out of pound, and give me a fortnight’s time, that I might see and fatten her to sell against the fair, I could pay him then all honestly, and not be racked entirely, and he would be ashamed to refuse your honour, and afraid to disoblige the like of you, or get your ill-will. May the blessing of Heaven be upon you, if you’ll just send and speak to him three words for the poor woman and widow, that has none other to speak for her in the wide world! ”

“ Who is there amongst you who cannot or who will not justify when they are accused? Vulgar talent! the sublime of our science is to justify before we are accused. There is no reptile so vile but what will turn when it is trodden on; but of a nicer sense and nobler species are those whom nature has endowed with antennas, which perceive and withdraw at the distant approach of danger. Allow me another allusion: similes cannot be crowded too close for a female taste; and analogy, I have heard, my fair pupils, is your favourite mode of reasoning. ”

“ Fortunately, Phelim had not made it any part of his bet that he should not speak to himself an Irish idiom, or that he should not think a bull. Resolved to be as obstinately silent as a monk of La Trappe, he once more shut himself up in his cell, and fell fast asleep—dreamed that fat bulls of Basan encompassed him round about—that he ran down a steep bill to escape them—that his foot slipped—he rolled to the bottom—felt the bull’s horns in his side—heard the bull bellowing in his—ears—wakened—and found Terence M’Dermod bellowing at his room door.
“Sir John Bull! Sir John Bull! murder! ”

“ Our hero, with his usual good-humour, acknowledged himself to be fairly detected.
“Well, sir,” said the stranger, “if I had not found you out before by the blunder, I should be sure now you were my countryman by your good-humour. An Irishman can take what’s said to him, provided no affront’s meant, with more good-humour than any man on earth.”
“Ay, that he can,” cried O’Mooney: “he lends himself, like the whale, to be tickled even by the fellow with the harpoon, till he finds what he is about, and then he pays away, and pitches the fellow, boat and all, to the devil. ”

“ I, with equal politeness, recurred to the Irish great world: we fastened together upon Lord O’Toole, who took us to Dublin Castle; and I began to express my regret that I had not yet been at the Irish court, and that I had not earlier in life made myself of political consequence.
“Ambition,” said I, “might help to keep a man awake and alive; all common pleasures have long since ceased to interest me—they really cannot make me stir.” ”

“ I felt my nascent ambition die away within me. I acknowledged it was better to spend an easy life. My determination was confirmed at this instant by the appearance of Lady Geraldine. Ambition and love, it is said, are incompatible passions. Neither of them had yet possession of my heart; but love and Lady Geraldine had perhaps a better chance than ambition and Lord O’Toole. Lady Geraldine appeared in high spirits; and, though I was not a vain man, I could not help fancying that my return to Ormsby Villa contributed to her charming vivacity. ”

“ In the impatience of my zeal for improvement, I expected to do the work of two hundred years in a few months: and because I could not accelerate the progress of refinement in this miraculous manner, I was out of humour with myself and with a whole nation. So easily is the humanity of the rich and great disgusted and discouraged! as if any people could be civilized in a moment, and at the word of command of ignorant pride or despotic benevolence! ”

“ Unfortunately for me, the rebellion in Ireland was soon quelled; the nightly scouring of our county ceased; the poor people returned to their duty and their homes; the occupation of upstart and ignorant associators ceased, and their consequence sunk at once. Things and persons settled to their natural level. The influence of men of property, and birth, and education, and character, once more prevailed. The spirit of party ceased to operate: my neighbours wakened, as if from a dream, and wondered at the strange injustice with which I had been treated. ”