Having thus early established for herself an interest in the esteem and admiration of “the fashionables,” it is not to be wondered at that Sydney Owenson’s after-career should have been brilliant. She went with her father to Kilkenny, where he built “a beautiful little theatre,” and mortgaged it, before it was roofed in, “to a wealthy and fashionable attorney.” The usual results followed—Mr Welch, the wealthy and fashionable attorney, “foreclosed his mortgage suddenly” (we have heard that he never could get a farthing of interest), “and bills to an enormous amount were presented.” They were accepted as a notice to quit. Mr Owenson carried his daughters back to Dublin, where he placed them in lodgings under the care of their faithful maid Molly, and then bolted. The truth seems to be, that everybody came down upon him. The players were clamorous for their salaries; the workpeople insisted upon having their accounts settled; the attorney claimed the amount of his mortgage; and the Ffrenches required that some portion at least of the value of the wine which Mr Owenson had undertaken to sell for them should be accounted for. What could the poor manager do under such circumstances? He hid himself till a commission of bankruptcy could be taken out, and then, like many a wiser if not better man, walked at large again, as if nothing particular had happened. From this date, about 1794, Mr Owenson ceases to be the prominent figure in the family tableau. His daughter Sydney assumes her proper place. Though barely eighteen, she has already had lovers without end at her feet. The first is a poor scholar called Dermody (a thorough scamp, by the by, who abused everybody’s patience, and died at last of _delirium tremens_ in the purlieus of Westminster), to whom her father had been kind. It is by no means certain that he ever seriously proposed, but he wrote many letters full of nonsense, most of which are printed in this collection. Then came the officers of the garrison of Kilkenny, two of whom at least fairly died because beautiful Sydney was cruel. “Captain White Benson and Captain Earl” (says Miss Jewsbury, writing from Lady Morgan’s memoranda) “were two young officers quartered in Kilkenny during the period when Mr Owenson had his daughters with him, while his theatre was being built. She refers to the young men in one of her Dublin letters to her father, telling him that they had called....