The Greeks, with their usual subtilty in reading Nature, and interpreting her in their works of Art, have distinguished their gods by the variations of this excrescence. Thus the hair of the Phidian Jove in the Vatican, which rises in spouts as it were from the forehead, and then falls in wavy curls, is like the mane of the lion, most majestic and imperial in appearance. The crisp curls of Hercules again remind us of the short locks between the horns of the indomitable bull; whilst the hair of Neptune falls down wet and dank like his own seaweed. The beautiful flowing locks of Apollo, full and free, represent perpetual youth; and the gentle, vagrant, bewitching tresses of Venus denote most clearly her peculiar characteristics and claims as a divinity of Olympus. What gives the loose and wanton air to the portraits in Charles II.'s bedchamber at Hampton Court? Duchess and Countess sweep along the canvas with all the dignity that Lely could flatter them with; but on the disordered curls and the forehead fringed with love-locks Cyprian is plainly written. Even Nell Gwyn, retired into the deep shade of the alcove, beckons us with her sweet soft redundance of ringlets. But too well woman knows the Venus has endowed her with in this silken lasso:power 'Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare, And beauty draws us with a single hair.'

In the rougher sex the temper and disposition are more apparent from the set of the hair than in woman, because, as already observed, they allow it to follow more the arrangement of nature. Curly hair bespeaks the sanguine temperament, lank hair the phlegmatic. Poets for the most part, we believe, have had curly hair-though our own age has exhibited some notable exceptions to the rule. Physiology has not yet decided upon what the curl is dependent, but we feel satisfied it arises from a flattening of one side of the hair more than the other.

So well do people understand the character as expressed by the hair and its management, that it is used as a kind of index. Commercial ideas are very (exact respecting it. What chance would a gentleman with a moustache have of getting a situation in a bank? Even too much whisker is looked upon with suspicion. A clean shave is usually, as the world goes, expected in persons aspiring to any post of serious trust. We confess that few montrosities in this line affect us more dismally than the combination of dandy favoris with the, however reduced, perúke of Brother Briefless or Brother Hardup. It is needless to add that anything like hirsute luxuriance about a sacerdotal physiognomy is offensive to every orthodox admirer of the via mediato all the Anglican community, it is probable, excepting some inveterate embroideresses of red and blue altar-cloths and tall curates' slippers.

ART.

ART. III.-1. An Inquiry into the Person and Age of the long-lived Countess of Desmond. By Hon. Horace Walpole. Strawberry Hill, 1758.

2. Historic Doubts as to the Character and Person of Richard III. 1767.

3. Letter from Mr. Meyrick. MS. 1775.

4. Notes and Queries. Vols. iv.—v. 1851-2.

[ORACE WALPOLE, while engaged in investigating the documents concerning Richard the Third, preparatory to his Historic Doubts, found that one important fragment of evidence depended solely on the traditional testimony of an apocryphal witness. He had often heard that the aged Lady Desmond lived to 162 or 163 years' and a story was current in some noble families that she had danced with Richard III., and always affirmed he was the handsomest man in the room, except his brother Edward, and was very well made.' A certain Sir Walter St. John and a certain 'old Lady Dacre' were said to have conversed with our ultra-venerable Countess, and, from her oral declaration, to have handed down this judicium-in refutation of the spretæ injuria forma of the calumniated prince-through 'old Lord St. John, his sister, Mrs. Cholmondeley, and a host of their posterity. Such a description of evidence, though inadmissible at the bar of a legal tribunal, might be brought forward in a High Court of Literature, before which the ingenious advocate was about to plead for the defendant in the cause of Lancastrian Historians v. Richard Plantagenet. Yet the learned counsel saw that, before he could expect the hearsay of these witnesses to be received, it would be requisite to identify the principal one. Little credit was likely to be attached to the garrulities of such elderly ladies and gentlemen, the remotest of whom was an almost fabulous personage, a myth, a 'Mrs. Harris' of the middle ages. The longevity ascribed to her was not less open to scepticism than the singular opinion she was quoted for as to the symmetry of a prince known in nursery tales as Crook-backed Richard. Did this Irish phenomenon-who lived so longever exist at all? And how came she at a court ball in London under Edward IV.? Accordingly, the lord of Strawberry Hill commenced an Inquiry into the Person and Age of the long-lived Countess of Desmond;' and, although he at first confounded another who bore that title with the veritable object of his investigation, he arrived at a correct conclusion as to her identity and in short ought to have for ever set at rest the controversial question, still agitated in that occasionally useful resuscitant of dead knowledge yclept Notes and Queries-the

antiquary's

antiquary's news-paper. Walpole's starting mistake is hardly worth adverting to now, further than that it is amusing to see the gay manner in which so agreeable a writer unravels a somewhat dull antiquarian entanglement. He says:

'Having a few years ago had a curiosity to inform myself of the particulars of the life of the very aged Countess of Desmond, I was much surprised to find no certain account of so extraordinary a person: neither exactly how long she lived, nor even who she was; the few circumstances related of her depending on mere tradition.'

By and bye he received a distinct statement that she was buried at Sligo; and, on further inquiry, an inscription in that Irish Abbey certainly indicated that a lady of the designation had been interred there. Walpole applied to a friend in the neighbourhood to proeure a copy of it. The gentleman written to was the O'Conor Don,' already supposed to be well versed in the antiquities of his nation, and still mentioned with general respect as the venerable Charles O'Conor.' A chieftain of that regal race had been the second husband of the entombed Countess, and the monument, which set forth his titles and emblazonments, was commonly called O'Conor's tomb.' The representative of the Kings of Connaught eagerly deciphered the almost obliterated epitaph, acting the part of Old Mortality for, as he declares, many hours on a high ladder, it costing much time to clear the letters.' He also traced the figures sculptured on the tablets-the effigies of O'Conor, clad in armour, with his helmet by his side, and of Eleanora, Comitissa Desmonic, with her coronet and coat of arms-those of Butler impaled with Fitzgerald and O'Conor. But, by the inscription, the memorial had been erected by the lady herself, in 1624, on the death of her second husband; and, on referring to a recent Peerage-book, it appeared that, having bequeathed the sum of 3007. for the building of a chapel and the completion of this monument, she died so late as 1636. Could she be identical with a dame whose dancing days were so remote as to imply an interval in life of more than a century and a half? After due reflexion, Walpole, in an elaborate letter, declared he doubted whether Eleanor of Sligo could be the Desmonian Countess reported to have reached such an immense age.

Before entering into these doubts, a sketch may be given of the fortunes of this Sligo claimant, in illustration of the downfal of the house of Desmond, and of the history of its dowagers.

Eleanor Butler, the Sligo lady, was second wife to Garrett, the 16th Earl of Desmond-head of that great second branch of the Irish Geraldines which for a long period fully equalled the renown and influence of the elder line of Offally, Kildare, and

Leinster.

Leinster. The death of his father, James 15th Earl, known in pedigrees as the traitor, occurred in 1558. The earldom extended over 110 miles, and contained more than half a million acres, with many strong castles and walled towns; its revenues were computed by a Baron of the Exchequer, anno 1515, at 10,000., and, in Garrett's own time, at 40,000 gold pieces. In Kerry he exercised royal authority as Count Palatine;-he boasted higher privileges and immunities than any other peer in Ireland, and his ancestors having for centuries assumed the rude sway of a Celtic dynasty over many inferior lords-domineered with the combined powers of feudality and chieftainry, the ruling systems of the Norman and Celtic races. On raising his banner he was at once leader of 600 horse and 2000 foot-but this force he could readily double by an unlimited custom of quartering mercenary auxiliaries upon his vassals. The extensive forests and mountain fastnesses of his remote principality inspired a confidence that he might not only revenge an hereditary quarrel, but even defy the hostility of the Crown. Such dominion proved fatal to a man of haughty and intractable character, at a time when the growing authority of monarchy and law was opposed to the barbarous rule of clanship and he became the ingens rebellibus exemplar of Irish history. The black Earl of Ormond-between whose house and the Geraldines there was ancient and deadly feud-laid claim to the Desmond estates in right of his mother, who was the heiress of a deceased Palatine-(viz. James 11th Earl of Desmond, ob. 1529)—and moreover was the first wife of this Garrett ;-and there is reason to believe that the vindictive enmity of that great nobleman to his stepfather-together with the unrelenting policy pursued towards Earl Garrett-(whose vast possessions were an inducement to make, or proclaim, him a rebel)-were the actual causes of the sixteenth Desmond's destruction-and that, to use his own expressive phrase, he was 'wrung into undutifulness.' His life was one of contradiction and vicissitude. Born a younger son, the bequest of his traitor father (who had divorced a former wife on pretence of consanguinity) was his weak title to peerage and estates-until confirmed by the Queen, on condition of his furthering the Protestant interest: yet, in after times, his power was employed in advancing Romanism. When at the head of 5000 men, confronting a superior force under Ormond, he was only restrained from falling upon him by the entreaties of his own wife -the mother of his enemy; and, one short month after her death, was attacked by that same Ormond-when attended only by his usual retinue, some nine score men, and carried off in a wounded condition. At one time, he feasted the chiefs of a province in the great hall of Askeaton; at another, starved with a few wretched kerne'

kerne' in a hollow tree: and gave chase to the red deer and the wolf on his own wild mountains; or was immured for many years in Leeds Castle, Kent, or in the Tower of London.

*

his

During Earl Garrett's incarceration, James Fitz-Maurice, a near relative, acted as seneschal, or lieutenant, over estates. The patrimony of this man, a fertile barony south of the city of Cork, called Kerrycurrihy, had passed by mortgage to a Kentish knight, who had the custody of the Earl's person. The captive secretly sent an intimation to his seneschal to assume the leadership of the clan; on this hint FitzMaurice raised, with some difficulty, a sanguinary insurrection -ravaged the lost paradise of Kerrycurrihy-aroused, for the first time, the war-cry of religion-and carried on for several years a guerilla warfare, only to be appeased by the liberation of his politic chief. In reward of this exploit, the Palatine of Desmond granted him the manor of Carrickfoyle; but, on the Countess remonstrating at such an alienation of the domains of the earldom, the gift was revoked. The enraged desperado fled to the continent, ostensibly in quest of 'aid for the persecuted Catholics; but intent on recovering his paternal estate, and, perhaps, supplanting his chief, whose title he assumed when abroad. At Madrid he fell in with a ruined Sassenach adventurer, Tom Stukely, and the congenial pair proceeded to Rome, where they were 'prince-like entertained, and succeeded in imposing upon Gregory XIII. with a plan for invading the Green Isle. The infatuated pontiff had promised to confer all the British dominions upon Philip II., provided that monarch could conquer them!-but, on Stukely's representing to his holiness that he could with facility raise his own nephew,' Giacomo Buoncompagno, to the Irish throne, Gregory embraced the suggestion-assembled an army of 800 banditti, culled from the jails and galleys of the Ecclesiastical States-appointed Stukely to be vice-admiral of the fleet, and created him Baron of Idrone, Earl of Wexford and Carlow, and Marquis of Leinster. The career of this lord of lavish and spurious titles was brief and inglorious. On his invasive voyage he landed at Lisbon, where he was persuaded by Sebastian of Portugal to engage himself and

*Fitz-Maurice was apparently adopted very generally as a surname among the wide-spread descendants of Maurice Fitzgerald, first Earl of Desmond. Another great branch of the Geraldines, that of which the Marquis of Lansdowne is chief, seems also to have favoured the same patronymic, which is still retained, in memory of an earlier Maurice, common ancestor of all the Irish lines. We need hardly observe that the use of surnames, in our sense of that term, was extremely lax and irregular among the Anglo-Irish, long after it had been pretty well settled in England. Many Geraldines, it is plain, were designated merely as Fitz-John or Fitz-William, according to the baptismal name of their own immediate progenitors.