of the youngest of the Miss Killpatricks.

"So Ireland is at the bottom of his heart, is it?" repeated Lady
Dashfort to herself: "it shall not be long so."

From this time forward, not a day, scarcely an hour passed, but her
ladyship did or said something to depreciate the country, or its
inhabitants, in our hero's estimation. With treacherous ability,
she knew and followed all the arts of misrepresentation; all those
injurious arts which his friend, Sir James Brooke, had, with such
honest indignation, reprobated. She knew how, not only to seize the
ridiculous points, to make the most respectable people ridiculous,
but she knew how to select the worst instances, the worst exceptions;
and to produce them as examples, as precedents, from which to condemn
whole classes, and establish general false conclusions respecting a
nation.

In the neighbourhood of Killpatrick's-town, Lady Dashfort said,
there were several _squireens_, or little squires; a race of men who
have succeeded to the _buckeens_, described by Young and Crumpe.
_Squireens_ are persons who, with good long leases, or valuable farms,
possess incomes from three to eight hundred a year, who keep a pack
of hounds; _take out_ a commission of the peace, sometimes before
they can spell (as her ladyship said), and almost always before they
know any thing of law or justice. Busy and loud about small matters;
_jobbers at assizes_; combining with one another, and trying upon
every occasion, public or private, to push themselves forward, to the
annoyance of their superiors, and the terror of those below them.

In the usual course of things, these men are not often to be found