We must pass lightly over what remains to be told of the family history of the Owensons. It is rather confusedly narrated, and seems to imply that the circumstances of the household were generally straitened, and that they either shifted their habitat very frequently, or were often in two places at the same time. We have just ascertained, for example, that on the arrival of Mrs Owenson in Ireland, “my father took a pretty villa for her at Drumcondra.” Yet the authority for this fact relates: “I was born on Christmas Day, in that land where all holy days are religiously celebrated, as testimonials to faith, and are excuses for festivity in ancient ould Dublin.” And here again there is a blank, which we are left to fill up as we please. On the Christmas Day of what year might this memorable event occur? Taking collateral circumstances into account, it might not unfairly be assumed that some Christmas Day about the middle of the last century witnessed the remarkable occurrence. But the inference, we suspect, would be erroneous. Having taken a good deal of pains to settle the matter, we are glad that it is in our power to save Lady Morgan from the reproach of having lived many years beyond eighty. She was born in 1776. “Bells tolled, carols were intoned—the streets resounded with joyous sounds; an uproarious party sat about the board of as fine a type of the Irish gentleman as Ireland ever set forth, when another birth” (another than what?) “was announced by a joyous gossip to the happy father, who instantly disappeared.” We cannot too much commend the taste, not to say the piety, of this whole sentence. No wonder that the guests, waiting, “not with empty glasses,” till the happy father’s return, should have considered the event a “reason fair to fill their glass again,” or that they were with difficulty dispersed on the assurance “that they should all meet again that day month, to be present at the christening of the young heathen.”