BOOKS.

A BOUQUET OF IRISH BEAUTY.•

THERE seems to be no limit to the field thrown open to the explorer in the regions of Irish wit and beauty. The famous

Gunnings, whom we presume to have figured in Miss Gerard's previous volume, were but a prelude to their kind ; who cover all aspects of life from the theatrical to the social, and in the book before us vary from Mrs. Chenevix Trench, the diarist, to the adventuress, Lola Montez. We believe that it will be news to most to be told that the famous Lola was an Irishwoman at all. No less than twenty-four people wrote her life, and among them she claimed as many nationalities as Homer himself, having been born promiscuously in Spain, Turkey, India, Geneva, and Cuba, and been likewise the child of a Spanish gipsy, of a Scotch washerwoman, and of Lord Byron. Miss Gerard traces her to the high family of Gilbert. The son of Sir Edward Gilbert, an officer on leave, married a Creole dancer, Lola Oliver by name, who preferred to call herself Oliverres de Montalva, and so became the father of the curious phenomenon whose erratic adven- tures furnish an amusing chapter of romance to Miss Gerard's book. For the book is really a collection of romances in plan and execution, knit for the most part by a kind of literary thread, as the majority of Miss Gerard's heroines either pro- fessed letters or dabbled in them. Lady Morgan and Mrs. Norton, Mrs. Trench and Lady Blessington, were all among the strange and envied tribe cf authoresses, who wrote their best, we fear, rather because their titles and other dis- tinctions proved strong seductions to the wicked publisher and the gullible reader, than from any strong native gift for the pen which Nature may have imparted to them. Albums and books of beauty were their fitting armour, and verses of the mildest order flowed freely from their store :—

" Your daughter's charming, on my word ! While you—I vow I heard Lord Lyster Say—you looked like her elder sister.

My son has just come from the East,

But has not suffered in the least.

Well, Lady Mary's quite a belle,

And dressed, I must say d merve(lle. Any attachment, entre nous ?

Too young—ha ha ! that's so like you.

Au revoir, there amie. Adieu."

These lines are from the "Belle of the Season," a poem of Lady Blessington's, which had an extraordinary success in its day. To contrast it with the style in favour with the lady- novelist of the present is to suggest the extraordinary change which has taken place in woman and her life. At the same time, it is in itself a refutation of Miss Corelli's favourite theory, that the literary woman is a person to be looked down upon by the average man. We should say that the reverse was always the case, and that the repute of letters has at

• Sores Fair Hibernian*: being a Supplementary Volume to " Some Celebrated "'KA Beauties of the Last Century." By Franoes A. Gerard. London ; Ward and Dowfrey. all times been accepted as a great feminine attraction. Lady Morgan and Mrs. Norton and Mrs. Trench were all famous

in their day from the blue tinge which distinguished them, and to this hour an interest lingers round them which other and less lettered memories fail to attract. Actresses like Mrs. Jordan and Miss O'Neill, of course, who are amongst Miss Gerard's characters, are still familiar names, for theirs, too, are amongst the fames which linger. But the beautiful Miss Birminghams, the Ladies Fitzpatrick, and even Sarah Curran P—are not the niches which our authoress has found for them almost rescued by her from the temple of oblivion P

Yet it is Sarah Curran's which is the saddest and the most interesting, the most dramatic and the most attractive, of the romances which make up the volume. John Curran'e daughter and Robert Emmet's sweetheart was the heroine of as real a tragedy as life has often recorded on its list, though probably the authoress's comment is true enough, that it was partly the personal attraction of the man, and partly the pathos of his love-story, which has kept his memory greener in the Irish mind than that of many later idols :— " Men who have done far more for their country than Emmet's visionary schemes would (if brought to fruition) have accom- plished, are consigned to undeserved oblivion, while a tender interest still centres in Emmet, whose story has been handed down from generation to generation, and is still told by the fire- side or a winter's evening. Had Emmet's sentence been commuted to expatriation, and had he married Sarah Curran, his place as a. hero would have been beneath that of even Smith O'Brien."

And in his graceful prose Washington Irving tells her story after Emmet's death ; how she strolled through a crowded masquerade in utter abstraction, and seated on the steps of an orchestra, began with a vacant air to warble a plaintive song, which melted all the witnesses of the scene into tears. It is perhaps a little disappointing to be told that her story so completely won the heart of a gallant English officer that he paid her his addresses, and finally persuaded her to become Mrs. Sturgeon. As he was well off and of good family the persuasion may have been a little easier, but the poor little wife died after two years' marriage. The whole affair was exceedingly painful to her family, and was even the cause of Curran being involved in some suspicion of being connected with the planned insurrection which resulted only in Lord Kilwarden's murder and in Emmet's death.

The story of Mary and Anne Birmingham is interesting from the fact that Miss Gerard makes it the text for an account of the forcible abductions which were the curious fashions of the day in parts of Ireland, and tells in connection with it the story of Willy O'Reilly and the Lily of Longford, otherwise the beautiful Helen Folliot of Westmeath, which

was made the subject both of the ballad of " Willy O'Reilly," sung at all the village gatherings, and of one of Carleton's novels. Notwithstanding that the Lily was abducted with her own consent, in order to escape an unwelcome marriage, and came herself into Court to save her lover, be was con- demned to death and the sentence commuted to trans- portation. More faithful than Sarah Curran, she pined away and died unmarried and clouded in mind, asking the strangers whom she met, " Where is Willy O'Reilly P He is gone away and I cannot find him." Another kind of heroine was the heiress Miss Macdermott, neither tall nor handsome, but courageous enough to fight for her liberty when carried off by masked villains in her uncle's indifferent presence, and to fight with such effect, though stabbed in the arm and plunged into a bog shoulder high, that she escaped, and was brought to Dublin, where she too found her consola- tion in a comfortable marriage. Miss Gerard is a true novelist by vocation, for her only plea for introducing these romances into the lives of the Birminghams is that the father of those two ladies was fully alive to the dangers of abduction, and therefore took them away to Italy, where they lived brilliantly enough to become respectively Lady Leitrim and Lady Charlemont. The latter, too, wanted to become a

poetess and a blue, but appears to have left a Partingtonian reputation instead, acquired by such sayings as, " Oh, Charle- mont, do let us have a bacon," when she heard somebody praising Lord Bacon's writings. The Birminghams, with their aggressively English name, will probably be new

to most readers, and we have referred to them and to the romance of Sarah Curran rather than to the very

oft told tales of Lady Morgan and Lady Blessington. Indeed Miss Gerard has laid Mr. Molloy, the gorgeous lady's latest and very interesting biographer, rather too much and too openly under contribution. There is not much that is very new to tell of her more than of the famous wild Irish girl, whose name and story are familiar to everybody. Mrs. Norton's stately personality once more introduces us to the Sheridans, whose very name seems synonymous with beauty and with wit, but is almost too recent a reality to lend itself to the biographer's hand in the shape of these studies in little. We turn with more attraction to the history of Miss O'Neill, the one rival whom tradition pits against the famous Siddons, with the difference that she excelled in the more tender parts of tragedy and her English predecessor in its sterner fields. In comedy neither of them could mate with poor Dorothea Jordan, whose matchless excellence was matter for one of Charles Lamb's most exquisite and characteristic pieces of writing. But Elia was so imaginative a critic that we are always inclined to fear that half the charm he lends his favourites may have sprung rather from the perfection of his expression of appreciation, than from inherent virtues of their own. It must be confessed, however, that in these cold prosaic days the combined poetry of Ireland and the stage lends quite another colour to the Jordan and O'Neill. Nothing can be more amusing than the difficulty that the latter found in securing her first leading engagements, from her determined stipulation that the whole of a large O'Neill family should be engaged too. Kemble compromised for one brother, as he gave the lady sufficient salary to keep all the rest if she wanted. We linger pleasantly with Miss Gerard over her chatty pages, and part from her with a placid and appropriate regret.