where, a character for some eccentricity, but one uniformly irreproachable.

Mrs. Dogherty, to whom allusion is made in the letters of Lady Blessington, was a relative of Mr. Edward Quinlan, of Clonmel, an old gentleman of considerable means, who had been connected by marriage with Lady Blessington's mother (vide genealogical account of the Sheehy family). Mr. Quinlan died in November, 1836, leaving large fortunes to his daughters. On the occasion of the trial of Edmond Power for the murder of the boy Lonergan, till Mr. Quinlan came forward with a sum of fifty pounds as a loan to Power, the latter was actually unable at the time to engage counsel for his defence.

The Countess St. Marsault went to reside with her father on her arrival in Ireland, first at Arklow, afterwards in lodgings at No. 18, Camden Street, Dublin, and next at 5, Lower Dorset Street, where, in the latter part of October, 1836, Mr. Power was reduced to such a helpless state of bodily debility and suffering, that he was unable to make the slightest movement without the greatest agony. He was attended in Dublin by a relative of his, a Dr. Kirwan, a firstcousin. He appears to have died in the early part of 1837. On the 30th of January, 1837, the Countess of St. Marsault was no longer residing in Dublin, but was then domesticated at the abode of an old lady of the name of Dogherty, a relative of hers, at Mont Bruis, near Cashel, in the county of Tipperary. There she remained for nearly a year. "After an absence of thirty years, she visited Clonmel." The date of this visit was April, 1837. She must then have quitted Clonmel in 1807, in very early childhood. In 1839, she returned to England, and as she had previously done, declined, on more than one occasion, pressing invitations to take up her abode again with her sister, Lady Blessington.

Mr. Power, at the time of his decease, was seventy years

of age. A youth passed without the benefit of experience, had merged into manhood without the restraints of religion or the influences of kindly home affections, and terminated in age without wisdom or respect, and death without solemnity, or the semblance of much becoming fitness for its encounter.

This brief outline brings us to the period of the marriage of Lord and Lady Blessington, at which it will be my province to commence the history of the literary career of her Ladyship.

Of Lockhart's "Life of Scott," it has been observed, "there we have the author and the man in every stage of his career, and in every capacity of his existence,-Scott in his study and in court-in his family and in society-in his favourite haunts and lightest amusements. There he is to be seen in the exact relation in which he stood to his children, his intimates, his acquaintances, and dependants,-the central figure, and the circle which surrounded it (Constable, the Ballantynes, Erskine, Terry, and a score or two besides), all drawn with such individuality of feature, and all painted in such vivid colours, that we seem not to be moving among the shadows of the dead, but to live with the men themselves."*

I hope, at least in one particular, it will be found I have endeavoured to follow, even at an humble distance, the example of Scott's biographer, in placing before my readers the subject of my work in a life-like truthful manner, as she was before the public, in her works and in her saloons, and also in her private relations towards her friends and relatives.

* Literary Gazette, February 15, 1851.

44.

CHAPTER I.

NOTICE OF THE EARL OF BLESSINGTON-HIS ORIGIN, EARLY CAREER, FIRST AND SECOND MARRIAGE, ETC.

*

THE first Earl of Blessington was a descendant of the Walter Stewart, or Steward, who, "on account of his high descent, and being the nearest branch of the royal family of Scotland," we are told by Lodge, "was created Seneschal, or Lord High Stuart of Scotland, or Receiver of the Royal Revenues, from which office his family afterwards took and retained their surname of Stewart." This office and dignity were created by Malcolm the Third, of Scotland, after the death of Macduffe, in 1057. The descendants of the Lord High Constable became the founders of the house of Lenox, and one of them, by intermarriage with the daughter of King Robert Bruce, the founder of many noble families in England and Ireland. The first Stewart of this race who settled in Ireland, was Sir William Stewart, of Aughentean and of Newtown Stewart, in the county of Tyrone, and his brother, Sir Robert Stewart, of Culmore, knights, "both very active and able gentlemen, in the distracted times of King Charles the First." Sir Robert came into Ireland in the reign of James the First. He received from that monarch, for his Irish services, various grants of rectories and other church property in Leitrim, Cavan, and Fermanagh, and subsequently a large tract of country of the confiscated lands of Ulster were obtained by his brother William. In 1641, he raised and com

* Irish Peerage, vol. ii. p. 196, ed. 8vo. 1754.

manded a troop of horse and a regiment of foot of one thousand men. He was made Governor of Derry in 1643, and in that year totally routed the Irish under Owen O'Neill, at Clones. He and his brother having refused to take the covenant, were deprived of their command, and sent by Monck's orders prisoners to London. After many vicissitudes, Sir Robert returned to Ireland, and was appointed Governor of the city and county of Derry in 1660. Sir William "being in great favour with James the First, became an undertaker for the plantation of escheated lands in Ulster." He was created a baronet in 1623. He assisted largely in the plantation of Ulster, and profited extensively by it. He was a member of the Privy Council in the time of King James the First and Charles the First. At the head of his regiment, he, with his brother's aid, routed Sir Phelim O'Neill at Strabane. He left many children; his eldest son, Sir Alexander Stewart, sided with the Covenanters, in 1648. He was killed at the battle of Dunbar, in Scotland, in 1653. By his marriage with a daughter of Sir Robert Newcomen, he had issue Sir William Stewart, who was made Custos Rotulorum of the county of Donegal, in 1678, and was advanced to the dignity of Baron Stewart of Ramaltan, and Viscount Mountjoy, in 1682, being constituted at the same time Master-General of the Ordnance, and Colonel of a regiment of horse.

William Stewart, first Viscount Mountjoy, was slain at the battle of Steinkirk, in Flanders, in 1692. He was succeeded by his son, William, Viscount Mountjoy, who died in Bourdeaux, without issue.*

Alexander, brother of the preceding William, died during the lifetime of his brother, leaving an only daughter.

The Right Honourable Luke Gardiner, Member of Parliament and Privy Councillor, married, in 1711, Anne, sole

Exshaw's London Magazine, 1754, p. 259.

daughter and heiress of the Honourable Alexander Stewart, second son of William, first Viscount Mountjoy.

Lord Primate Boulter recommended Mr. Luke Gardiner as a fit and proper person to be made a Privy Councillor. His views of fitness for that high office led him to look out for a sturdy parvenu of Irish descent, without regard to ancestry, who was capable of curbing the degenerate lords of the English pale, and gentlemen in Parliament descended from English undertakers, too influential to be easily managed, who had become "Hiberniores quam Hibernis Ipsis;" in a few words, "such a one as Mr. Gardiner, to help to keep others in order," in the Privy Council.

Primate Boulter, in a communication to the English minister, recommending Mr. Gardiner, said:

"There is another affair which I troubled the Duke of Dorset about, and which I beg leave to lay before your Grace which is the making Mr. Gardiner a Privy Councillor. He is deputy to the Vice-Treasurer of this kingdom, and one of the most useful of his Majesty's servants here, as your Grace, will be fully satisfied when you do us the honour to be with us. There is nobody here more against increasing the number of Privy Councillors than I am, who think they are by much. too numerous; but it is because many have been brought in without any knowledge of business, or particular attachment

* Luke Gardiner's generally supposed origin and rise in the world from a menial station in the service of Mr. White, of Leixlip Castle, a descendant of Sir Nicholas White, the owner and occupier of the castle in 1666, were subjects of some satirical pasquinades and witticisms in the early part of the last century. In reference to his alleged former servile situation, it was said that a noble friend of his in embarrassed circumstances, once observed to him, on seeing him enter his carriage, "How does it happen, Gardiner, you never make a mis. take, and get up behind?" To which Gardiner replied, "Some people, my lord, who have been long accustomed to going in, remain at last on the outside, and can neither get in, nor up again."