The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 284, November 24, 1827 by Various
page 34 of 49 (69%)
page 34 of 49 (69%)
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"Scarf loosely flowing, hair as free,"
gave an air of sylph-like simplicity to one, whose features, though beautiful, were marked by an expression foreign to simplicity, evincing that taste, not sentiment, presided over her toilet, and that, "_chez elle, un beau desordre fut l'effet de l'art_." This triumphal car was followed, or surrounded, by a host of beaux; some in military uniform, and with true English faces and figures; but the greater number in the civil, though uncivilized, dress of the day, and with forms and physiognomies as Irish as ever were exhibited in Pale or Palatine, to the dread of English settlers and Scotch undertakers. Ponderous powdered clubs, hanging from heads of dishevelled hair--shoulders raised or stuffed to an Atlas height and breadth--the stoop of paviers, and the lounge of chairmen--broad beavers, tight buckskins, the striped vest of a groom, and the loose coat of a coachman, gave something ruffianly to the air of even the finest figures, which assorted but too well with the daring, dashing manner, that just then had succeeded, among a _particular set_, to the courtly polish for which the travelled nobility of Ireland were once so distinguished. Such, in exterior, were many of the members of the famous _Cherokee Club_, and such the future legislators of that great national indignity, which had procured them a contemptible pre-eminence in the black book of public opinion, by the style and title of the "_Union Lords_." As they now crowded round the cynosures of the day, there was something too ardent and unrestrained in their homage, something too emphatic in their expressions and gestures, for true breeding; while in their handsome, but "light, revelling, and protesting faces," traces of the night's orgies were still visible, which gave their fine features a licentious cast, and deprived their open and very manly countenances of |
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