Mangan played the violin, moderately as to technique, but soundly as
to intonation, and that he and his family sang, as a quartet, not only
at charity concerts, but also for their own pleasure, in their own
home. Music, more than the other arts, demands sympathy, and an
audience. In Larry, the Mangan Quartet recognised that both
requirements were supplied, together with a glorifying enthusiasm of
appreciation--though this they scarcely recognised--that gilded for
him their achievements, as the firelight had edged the profile of
Nurse Brennan with pure gold. Larry, it has already been said, had the
artistic temperament; he had also a generous heart, and he was of an
age when appreciation is spontaneous, and criticism is either unborn,
or is only an echo of some maturer mind. Therefore, as he lay on the
Mangan blue rep-covered drawing-room sofa, with a satin cushion
adorned with Tishy's conception of roses, in water-colour, under his
head, while pretty Nurse Brennan gently massaged his wrist, and the
Mangan Quartet warbled: "O, believe me if all those endearing young
charms," or "When thro' life unblest we rove," Larry passed into
ecstasy, that, had he been one degree less of a schoolboy, might have
been exhaled in tears; even as the sun draws water from the sea, in a
mist of glory, and returns it to the world again in rain.

Tishy was accompanist, and sang alto; her mother, who knew nothing of
notation, and sang by ear, sang treble; Barty had a supple and
pleasing tenor, and the Doctor possessed a solemn bass, deep and dark
as a thundercloud, yet mellow as the hum of a hive of honey-bees on a
summer morning; a rare voice and a beautiful one, that had its
counterpart in the contralto that already, at sixteen and a half, had
given Tishy power and distinction among her fellows.

At this time, Miss Letitia Mangan's views, and those of her parents,