November 30.—Sir Walter Scott’s sermons. What twaddle! what logic! what common places given in the commonest pitiful platitudes! Oh, genius! these are the things that bring you into disrespect.
December 4.—Dinners in old times! The joyous,
brilliant tables of the Powers, the
Grattans, the Bryans, &c.,
&c., compared with the sumptuous dulness, and expensive menu of the present
style of dinner, what a difference? I am led to this reflection from the
accident of meeting Harry Bushe, this
morning, in the street, just arrived from the south; and having persuaded him
to come and take la fortune du pot,
at five o’clock, in Kildare Street, and go with us to the play. We sat
down to a little round table, barely within the rule, of not more than the
Graces. Coffee was served, and the carriage at the door before seven, so that
there was not time for much more than a causerie de
dessert, but I was struck by the humour, memory,
reading, and knowledge of past Irish life and Irish manners displayed; yet
Harry Bushe was merely a man of fashion in that
brilliant circle in which we moved twenty years back; well-educated, and
well-bred, full of life and spirit, fun and frolic, as were all the gentlemen
of that day. His brother, Parker Bushe,
the last of the pleasant gentlemen of Ireland, had more wit, tact, and keen
relish of humour than any man I ever knew.
| 270 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
I was in all the prémices of my passion for an antique lamp, which Hamilton, the painter, had got in the tomb of the Cæsars, and I from his daughter, when Mr. Wyse dropped in. I turned his attention to my lamp, which I held in my hand. He observed it was a true antique—a heathen and not a Christian lamp. The heathen lamps, he said, are all of a finer and lighter earth than those made after the Christian era, when all the arts degenerated. They generally bear the impress of a dove, or cross, or olive branch, whilst those of the antique bore the head of a Jupiter or Mercury.
Poor Wyse! with a woman of taste and intelligence and domestic habits, how happy he might live; but I doubt if a woman of feeling would be happy with him; he married one without either, and whose whole existence was une sotte vanité.
