THE MANSION OF THE SHERIDANS. BY I. E. O'REILLY, M.B., &c. Delicia Sheridan, Musarum dulcis amice. SWIFT AD THOM. SHERIDAN. ge QUILCA, the residence of Doctor Thomas Sheridan, the friend of Swift, the father of Thomas Sheridan, the grandfather of Richard Brinsley-why should I go on ?—were I to enumerate all those of nius who have sprung from that source, I should at once publish the genealogical tree of the Sheridan family-is situated in the county of Čavan, about forty Irish miles from Dublin, and four from the small but thriving town of Virginia. The house stands on the banks of a handsome lake; on the opposite shore is a Serbonian bog; low and picturesque hills terminate the distant prospect. The house faces the north east, and originally consisted of three sides of a parallelogram, the fourth being occupied by a brewhouse and other offices. It is but one story high, though, so far from being as described by Swift, a cottage dripping rain, it appears much better to suit the description of Mrs. Lefanu, who says it was a house comprising every comfort which the times could afford. Quilca is approached by a long and straight avenue, planted, in the fashion of the day, with oak and elm trees, which are still in great beauty. The house is fast falling to decay, although some care is taken for its preservation. One side (the longest) of the quadrangle consisted entirely of reception rooms. The room styled by Mrs. Lefanu "the painted chamber," is still in a tolerable state of preservation; it was finished in 1746, by the celebrated Lewis, scene painter to Thomas Sheridan, M.A., then manager of the Dublin threatre. Mr. Sheridan had previously married the lovely authoress of Nourjahad, and with his bride retired hither, to pass that season which Mrs. Lefanu says formed the happiest period of their existence. The apartment is spacious, and the walls are, according to the fashion of the times, wainscotted. Opposite the entrance is a medallion, surrounded by shamrocks and oak leaves, bearing a likeness of Swift, over which the figure of a lady weeping is represented; another female figure is receiving him into her arms. The design is said to be intended as an allegorical illustration of the story of Vanessa and Stella, Britannia and Hibernia being the characters. Stella, who receives the bust, leans on a harp; but Vanessa has not any of those emblems which are usually given to the Genius of our sister Isle. Unhappy Vanessa, and really unfortunate Stella! Swift, as an author, I really admire your memory- -as a Christian I revere it—as an Irishman I would worship it--but as a lover, I despise it! On the right ceiling there is a bust of Virgil, crowned by Apollo and Minerva; opposite to which there is another of Milton, two angels from the Paradise Regained encircling his brow with a wreath. Opposite to the bust of Swift there is one of Shakspeare, the tragic and comic muses giving him similar honours, as Virgil and Milton are receiving the portrait of Mrs. Woffington representing the comic muse. Shakspeare's portrait has suffered from damp; but whose countenance think you, reader, now looks on Swift in the paternal mansion of Richard Brinsley Sheridan ?-Nay, start not!-that of George IV. Oh, Swift for thy pen!-oh, Harry Brooke, thou who passed many days in this house, would that I had the energetic genius which dictated Gustavus Vasa, or the satiric spirit which gave the world your"Fool of Quality," then might I in becoming style interrogate the intruder. Many other relics of past days are thickly scattered at Quilca. There is a painting in the drawing-room, representing a view of Passage, the living which Dr. Sheridan enjoyed before his promotion to the mastership of Cavan School. There is a mound (a Danish one I think) on which the Dean is said to have composed his Gulliver's Travels-a grove called the bower of Stella-and the canal, which forms the subject of the following anecdotes related in Dr. Sheridan's Life of Swift. When the Dean was at Quilca, during the Doctor's absence, who could only pass his school vacations there, he acted as bailiff, in superintending the works then carrying on. He had a mind to surprise the Doctor in his visit, with some improvements made at his own expence; accordingly, he had a canal cut of some extent, and at the end of it, by transplanting some young trees, formed an arbour, which he called Stella's bower, and surrounded some acres of land about it with a dry stone-wall, (for the country afforded no lime,) the materials of which were taken from the surface of the ground, which was very stony. The Dean had given strict charge to all about him to keep this secret in order to surprise the Doctor on his arrival, but he had in the meantime received intelligence of all that was going forward. On his coming to Quilca, the Dean took an early opportunity of walking with him carelessly towards this new scene: the Doctor seemed not to take the least notice of any alteration, and with a most inflexible countenance continued to talk of indifferent matters. "Confound your stupidity," said Swift, in a rage; "why, you blockhead, don't you see the great improvements I have been making here!" "Improvements, Mr. Dean! why I see a long bog-hole, out of which, I suppose, you have cut some turf; you have removed some of the young trees, I think, to a worse situation; as to taking the stones from the surface of the ground, I allow that is a useful work, as the grass will grow the better for it; and placing them about the field in that form will make it more easy to carry them off." Plague on your Irish taste!" says Swift, "this is just what I ought to have expected; but neither your nor your forefathers ever made such an improvoment, nor will you be able while you live to do any thing like it." The Doctor was resolved to retaliate on the Dean the first opportunity. It happened when he was down there in one of his vacations, that the Dean was absent for a few days on a visit elsewhere; he took this opportunity of employing a great number of hands to make an island in the middle of the lake, where the water was twenty feet deep; an arduous work in appearance, but not hard to be executed in a place abounding with large stones upon the surface of the ground, and where long heath grew everywhere in great plenty; for by placing quantities of those stones in large bundles of heath, the space was soon filled up, and a large island formed; to cover this a sufficient quantity of earth and green sods were brought, and several wellgrown osiers and other aquatics, were removed to it; the Doctor's secret was better kept than Swift's, who, on his return, walked towards the lake, and seeing the new island, cried out in astonishment, "Heigh! how the water of the lake is sunk in this short time, to discover that island of which there was no trace before." "Greatly sunk, indeed," observed the Doctor with a sneer, "if it covered the tops of those osiers." Swift then saw he had been fairly taken in, and acknowledged the Doctor had got the better of him, both in his stratagem and the beauty of the improvement. REMINISCENCES OF A SILENT AGITATOR.-No. IV. "He thinks too much such men are dangerous.” THE interval which was occupied by the discussion of the veto was the most interesting period during the long " eloquent war" of agitation. Although it did not afford any of those grand and spirit-stirring incidents, which rendered the reign of the unexampled "Association" so remarkable, still it tended to place the Catholic people of Ireland in a position, which will ever entitle them to the panegyric of the historian. There unanimous opposition to that wily project did not arise so much from the apprehension that their faith would be contaminated by a connexion with the head of the rival creed, as much as it was chiefly aroused from the well-grounded fear, that by commencing with the pastors of their religion, the insidious ministers of government intended to corrupt, when they could no longer coerce, the flocks committed to their charge. Whatever genius of mischief may be entitled to the merit of having invented this measure, the credit of its introduction is due to the perfidious Whigs. It was first promulgated in the debate_upon the Catholic claims in the year 1808, by Messrs. Grattan and Ponsonby, who stated that they were instructed to inform the house that the appointment of every Irish Catholic prelate should in future rest with the king, in the event of the repeal of the remaining popery statutes. When they were pressed to state upon what authority they made this declaration, they said they were empowered to do so by Dr. Milner, who was an English Catholic bishop, and the authorised agent of the Catholic Hierarchy of Ireland. Dr. Milner, however, repudiated the assertion, and printed a protest against the use which had been made of his name, with respect to the proposition. Although thus disowned at its birth, still this offspring of discord soon grew strong enough, not to require any affiliation, and for the space of eight years continued to occupy the public mind with the fiercest controversy, both polemical and political. During the contest which ensued, several secrets of the closet were discovered; the most important of which was the fact, that a concordat was entered into in the year 1799, between the clerical trustees of Maynooth College and the Ministers, in which a system of veto was agreed upon as one of the conditions for the final emancipation of the Catholic body. All particulars relative to this secret treaty were mysteriously withheld until the year 1810, when the crimination and recrimination of the different parties caused an exposé, of the whole affair. When the respectable prelates, who were the contracting parties with the diplomatists of Pitt, found that they had been duped into acquiescence with his project in order to favour his manoeuvres relative to the union, a sense of shame induced them to conceal from their friends their participation in the movements which contributed to the accomplishment of that fatal measure; they felt that they had been betrayed into an unguarded connexion with the statesman swindler-that he had duped them in order to ruin the liberties of the country to which they belonged; and having consummated his nefarious desires, he 64 -Left his false vows with them, Lord Castlereagh had the hardihood to deny, that any pledge was given to the Catholics—that their full emancipation was to be the immediate consequence of their acquiescence in the union, in consideration of their support; but Mr. Elliott, who acted as his under-secretary in the Irish government, replied, that it was certainly true no bond was given to the Catholics, but that there were expectations and something like promises held out to them, which, in his mind, ought to have been more binding than any bond. Such is the history of the mysterious concordat between the Maynooth trustees and Mr. Pitt; it affords a strong example of the evils resulting from intrigue, and proves that those who degrade a principle by entering into a secret negociation for its advancement, can expect nothing but betrayal from the other contracting powers. It would have required the duplicity and sagacity of even a Talleyrand to treat with Pitt-the confiding integrity of an amiable Catholic peer (Earl Fingall,) and the unsuspicious characters of the pious prelates, totally unfitted them to be the members of such a congress. That Catholic emancipation, accompanied with the veto and a state-stipend for the clergy, was one of Pitt's measures for the colonial subordination of Ireland, is, I believe, no longer doubted by any informed or reflective mind; and that his diplomatic disciples made a clumsy effort to put both in operation, subsequent times have fully proved. At the time when the project was in contemplation, the disabilities under which the Catholics laboured were purely secular and political, but the veto, however exercised, would have been a perpetual interference in their ecclesiastical affairs. The exercise of a veto or any negative power, is, strictly speaking, from its nature, one of which can only exist where the two parties are well disposed towards each other. Recent events prove that if the crown were to exercise the negative upon popular legislative acts, in a moment of excitement, the power would either be rendered nominal, or anarchy would be the consequence of its exercise. Such would also have been the result of investing the Protestant government with a negative upon Catholic nominations in some moment of mutual jealousy and political contention. One of the proudest and most gratifying recollections of the agitators is connected with the dignified resistance which the Irish Catholic church gave to the interference of the papal throne. Sooner than tamely acquiesce in the imperative permission which the rescript of the Propaganda conveyed, they, one and all, recorded their fixed determination to sever all connexion with the pontiff in ecclesiastical matters, and maintain the government of their church by a domestic synod, which would have left them equally exempted from his authority, as that portion of Christian community which is under the spiritual protection of the Greek establishment. The mistaken Irishman who still clings to the disastrous union, rather than aid in its dissolution, from the apprehension that a Catholic supremacy would be the consequence, ought to look back to those times for the means of liberating his mind from so mischievous a delusion; he would be soon convinced that no such ambition is to be found amonst the men who are dedicated to objects, compared with which the temporalities of this world appear so worthless in their estimation; he would soon be informed how spontaneously they have at all times objected to receive their subsistence from other sources, than from the hands of those whom they guided through the stormy paths of this world, and how they spurned at a proffered connexion with the state, preferring their own "free and unhoused condition" to the benefits of such an alliance. Those who imagine that the question of the Repeal of the Union took its birth in very recent times, are under a great misconception. There is scarcely an Agitator, who, like myself, can remember times prior to the Association era, but knows that it was ever the ultimate object of all who co-operated in the work of political contention, save the Catholic nobility and some of the patrician gentry. I have often heard O'Connell declare, in the days when the prospect of emancipation appeared most distant, that he would consent to forego the accomplishment of that measure for the restoration of our national independence. The ardour with which the repeal of the penal laws was sought by the general body, never could have been produced or sustained by the consideration of that object alone. The Irish mind is too ambitious to be contented with a benefit so circumscribed-its enthusiasm never could have been awakened as it was by the contemplation of an achievement which left so much more to be done. In the triumph of the cause there was little else to be gained but the glory of success-the barren requital of the laurel, which is so often the only reward of victory. The abrogation of the penal code was the inductive object for the repeal of the Union, and the dazzling prospect of a restored nationality infused an energy into those who perceived it, which, in the eyes of others, appeared to arise from feel |