towards the two infant sons of Desmond. These orphan boys received the royal pardon for their outbreak, and may then have been taken over to be educated in England, away from peril of the Milesian daughters of their native land;-an ineffectual precaution, as this scion of the race-Sir Thomas-(ultimately 12th Earl of Desmond)-actually wedded a Mac-Carty for his first wife. He may, indeed, have afterwards dispossessed himself of her, more patrio, and taken another; yet, born in 1454, he might possibly have married a second within the days of Edward IV. without any incorrect disposal of the first. Yet how is the early presence of the lady, his cousin, in England, to be accounted for? A young knight of the Emerald Isle might well be found there, either in the ranks of death,' or carrying off an heiress or a wealthy dowager, like Lord Killeen's son, who married a Duchess of Clarence. Let us conjecture, with retrospective clairvoyance, that she came over-young and fair-to grace the court as a mediæval maid of honour: or, like another fair Geraldine,' her kinswoman, who was educated with her cousins, Queens Mary and Elizabeth, that she was brought up with the royal princesses, who were of her own age. The luxurious Edward IV. gathered round him a court circle the most beautiful in the world; so that the eyes of foreign ambassadors were positively dazzled by the 'superabundantly lovely young ladies' they saw at a state-ball in the palace of Westminster.* This agrees Upon the engraving (1806) of the (so called) Portrait of the Countess in the possession of the chief of another branch of the Geraldines, the Knight of Kerry, we read that this illustrious lady was born about the 1464.' year with her age of 140, if she died in 1604. She would then be nineteen in the year of the accession of Richard III., when she may have been espoused, (under a Papal dispensation,) by her cousin Sir Thomas, and have soon returned with him to their own land, where they lived together for half a century. One daughter only was the offspring of the marriage. Sir Thomas became Earl late in life, as has been mentioned before, but he was five years in possession of the coronet; long enough to entitle his relict to her jointure, which she enjoyed for seventy years-surpassing the ordinary pertinacity of annuitants. When, in 1575, Garrett, the 16th earl, was meditating a revolt, he induced the aged widow to surrender her dowry, Inchiquin Castle and lands, to him, by a deed in which the ladye Kathrin, late wief to Thomas, late Earle of Desmond,' acknowledges 'good considerations;'-and for reasons of the same sort, Garrett immediately leased the property to a friendly lawyer, to whom she gave seisin, by delivery of a peace of earthe in the house.' But Garrett ere long, as we know, Bohemian Embassage, A.D. 1466, vide p. 429. did did revolt, whereupon all deeds dated subsequent to one that proved his intent to rebel were pronounced void, and the dowager recovered her holding.* Her right was again disturbed by his attainder and the grant to Raleigh; but Sir Walter generously left her in occupation of the property, until compelled to place an English settler in possession: and, indeed, even after he leased away the manor (in 1591) it would appear, by the Mucross inscription, that the aged lady remained in her accustomed residence. From this asylum she may have been ousted by Richard Boyle, the rapacious Earl of Cork, after he had acquired Raleigh's Irish estates:—which were passed to him in January 1604-the period at which (it would seem) the Countess travelled over to seek relief. Sidney, Earl of Leicester, among others, has recorded in a 'table-book' the traditionary small-talk of his day as to this olde lady:'-who, he was told, 'came to petition the Queen, and, landing at Bristol, came on foot to London, being then so olde that her daughter was decrepit, and not able to come with her, but was brought in a little cart, their poverty not allowing better means.' The ruin of her ancient house was now complete. She who in her youth had led off the revel with princes, in the days of her decrepitude had to walke on foot weekly' to market! And now, in the last year of her life, when its wondrous protraction had become proverbial, this venerable peeress crossed the sea and performed a weary journey-compelled to petition a Court, once the scene of her beauty and triumph, as a suitor for her very subsistence! With so full an experience of the woes that wait on age,' would she have joined in the prayer― • Enlarge my life with multitude of days!' The decease of the Countess is ascribed to an accident, which, if it really befel her, proves a surprising degree of senile agility, and is a vexatiously ignominious cause of death for a heroine. Lord Leicester declares-Shee might have lived much longer, had shee not mett with a kind of violent death: for she must needs climb a nutt- tree, to gather nutts, soe, falling down, she hurt her thigh, which brought a fever, and that brought death.' Local tradition and merry poets, however, agree that she fell from a cherry-tree, which Sir Walter Raleigh was the first to plant in Ireland, having been tempted to gather the rare and ripe fruit. 6 Ay, as old As that Countess of Desmond of whom I've been told What a frisky old girl!' We are not cognizant of any other portrait of the fair Geraldine, * Exchequer MS. Records, Dublin, bright 6 bright object of Surrey's vow,' than that at Woburn; while of her clanswoman-this antique dame-there are innumerable 'presentments,' true and counterfeit-all provokingly taken at a time when her wrinkles, and not her dimples, made her a study for the painter. At Dromana, her birthplace, Lord Stuart de Decies' fine seat, there is a remarkable head- an ἐνδωλοποιία οι the Roman matron, Metella, with the silver gray on her long tresses.' The picture at Chatsworth is understood to have descended to the Cavendish family from their ancestor Lord Cork. The head in the gallery at Knowle is questionable; devoid of tiring, and bristling with elf-locks, it is rather the effigy of a Dutch witch than the similitude of a lady of rank. The painting in the collection of Windsor Castle is now believed to be a likeness of the mother of Rembrandt:-and it would seem that this is not the only case of that particular confusion. Pennant obtained an engraving of the picture at Dupplin, for his Tour:'-anent this the author of Anecdotes of Painting (whose literary mission seems to have been to raise doubts) writes to Cole-'Mr. Pennant has given a new edition of his former tour, with more cuts: among others is the vulgar head called the Countess of Desmond. I told him I had discovered, and proved past contradiction, that it is Rembrandt's mother. He owned it, and said he would correct it by a note; but he has not. This is a brave way of being an antiquary--as if there could be any merit in giving for genuine what one knows to be spurious.' The Knight of Kerry's, a painting of merit, and well engraved, represents extreme old age, with an extraordinary degree of still remaining vigour ; but the features are dissimilar to those of the veritable portraiture. Gerard Douw's name appears on the panel, and it is impossible our subject could have sat to that great artist. The vraisemblance is at Mucross. We have lately done homage to it, and it is engraved-on our memory. Shades of veteran beauties, Diane de Poitiers and Ninon de l'Enclos! brilliant as were your earthly attractions after sixty summers, a nobler grace lingered in this doubly-septuagenarian original! Forfend that her stern shade ever resent a comparison with such frail creatures! She carries the historic prowde countenance of the Geraldines' of her day. Aristocratic, matrician, and placid, though deeply traced with sorrow; eyes hazel, features regular and handsome, a complexion yet fresh and healthy! Why-cette Comtesse, dans sa première jeunesse, fair and vivacious as the daughters of the Antediluvians, ere the term of vitality was diminished to six score years-must have been more lovely than the widowed Lady Anne, whose 'heav'nly face provoked,' and 'haunted the sleep' of, our and all the world's Glo'ster! Such 'divine perfection, fection' in an Irish maid of honour may well have led the sus ceptible Royal Duke to ask her hand for the galliard! Her testimony, taken in connexion with coins, has been accepted by the calm and judicious historian of Europe during the middle ages' as sufficient proof of the handsomeness of the Usurper's face. As to his figure we can have no numismatic evidencesinewy and vigorous at all events it must have been; but very possibly the Irishwoman's gratified pride and warm native imagination influenced her flattering reminiscence when she extolled to Lady Dacre, as the model of symmetry, a Prince of the Blood who, straight or crooked, had taste enough to appreciate and do homage to her own early charms. ART. III.-1. Mein Leben und Wirken in Ungarn in den Jahren 1848 und 1849. Von Arthur Görgei. Leipzig. 1852.-My Life and Acts in Hungary, &c. By A. Görgei. From the German. London. 1852. 2. Der Winter-Feldzug 1848-49 in Ungarn unter dem Obercom‐ mando des Feld-Marshall's Fürsten zu Windisch - Grütz. (Nach officiellen Quellen.) Wien. 1851. 3. Der Feldzug in Ungarn und Siebenbürgen in Sommer des Jahre 1849. 4. Bericht über die Kriegs-Operationen der Russischen Trupper im Jahre 1849. Nach officiellen Quellen zusammengestellt von H. v. N. Berlin. 1851. THE HE literary records of the late campaigns in Hungary are already so numerous that, before we had perused the declamatory statements of the revolutionary leaders on the one side and examined the official reports on the other, the contents of a well-filled shelf passed before our eyes. To spare our readers the tedium of such researches, and yet to place before them a connected view of the Hungarian contest, we shall follow the more unpretending path of personal narrative; and we select the volume that heads our list as by far the most authentic and interesting memoir which has yet reached Arthur Görgei was, with one exception, the most con spicuous personage in Hungary throughout the military operations of 1849; and he was, without any exception, the man best qualified by military skill, by political insight, and, we think, by integrity of purpose, to save the honour and the constitution of his country. His present situation allows him to speak with independence of his former comrades, and his sense of obligation to the Imperial government has not prevented him from dealing very openly with its faults. Accord us. ingly, his book is on one hand violently assailed by the Magyar emigration, on the other severely prohibited by the Austrian police. As a general history of the contest it is far from complete, probably from the absence of documentary and written evidence in the place of the author's detention. But upon the whole, after an attentive comparison of this statement with other accounts of these events, we give General Görgei credit for as much truth and impartiality as can be expected from a man in his position. The other works before us, and of which we shall make considerable use, are the official narratives of the campaign drawn up by officers on the staff of the two Imperial armies, and published under the sanction of those governments respectively. They lay claim to none of the higher qualities of historical composition, except that first condition of all, official accuracy: and, though the Austrians complain of some of the Russian representations, we see no reason to question the fidelity of these Reports on either side. We learn from a French biographer that Görgei was born in January, 1818, at Topportz, an estate of his family, in the country of Zips, in the north of Hungary. His ancestors had for centuries distinguished themselves in the Imperial armies. He was educated at Eperies, and afterwards at the military college of Tuln, whence he entered the Hungarian Noble Guard at Vienna. He had been promoted within five years to a Lieutenancy in the Palatine Hussars: but then, having married a French governess whom he met at Prague, he suddenly resolved to quit the service, and withdrew into the country, to devote himself to the study of chemistry, in which he is said to have attained uncommon proficiency. Nothing certainly indicated the fiery ambition of a soldier of fortune or a revolutionary chief in this apparent termination of his early military career. It was in the retired situation above described that the 30th year of his age found him:-and in the first stage of the disturbances of that year, 1848, the only use he made of his acquirements was, that he offered to superintend a manufactory of detonators. He was in fact too obscure a person to be reckoned amongst the protagonists of the revolutionary movement then fast gaining strength, and threatening to overthrow the national ministry which had been hailed with rapture by the liberal party a few months before. He had, however, joined the militia, and when the month of September arrived, which witnessed the murder of Count Lamberg and the commencement of open war, Görgei filled the post of a major n the 5th battalion of Honveds, in which capacity he was employed VOL. XCII, NO. CLXXXIV. 2 B |