* * * * *


IRISH GRANDEES.


Conspicuous amongst the most conspicuous of the stars; of the ascendant,
was a lady, who took the field with an _éclat_, a brilliancy, and bustle,
which for a time fixed the attention of all upon herself. Although a fine
woman, in the strictest sense of the term, and still handsome, though not
still very young, she was even more distinguished by her air of high
supremacy, than by her beauty. She sat loftily in a lofty phaeton, which
was emblazoned with arms, and covered with coronets; and she played with
her long whip, as ladies of old managed their fans, with grace and
coquetry. She was dressed in a rich habit, whose facings and epaulettes
spoke her the lady of the noble colonel of some provincial corps of
volunteers. A high military cap, surmounted with a plume of black feathers,
well became her bright, bold, black eyes, and her brow that looked as if
accustomed "to threaten and command." The air had deepened her colour
through her rouge, as it had blown from her dark, dishevelled tresses the
mareschal powder, then still worn in Ireland--(the last lingering barbarism
of the British toilette, which France had already abandoned, with other
barbarous modes, and exchanged for the _coiffure d'Arippine_ and the _tête
à la Brutus_.) Her _pose_, her glance, her nod, her smile, all conscious
and careless as they were, proclaimed a privileged autocrat of the Irish
_bon ton_, a "_dasher_," as it was termed, of the first order; for that
species of effrontery called _dashing_ was then in full vogue, as consonant
to a state of society, where all in a certain class went by assumption.

This lady had arrived rather early in the field, for one whose habits were