Breakfast was scarcely finished when Mrs. Sullivan's servant entered the room, to know if she was at home to Colonel Desmond and Mr. Donolan? An answer being given in the affirmative, they quickly made their appearance. Mr. Donolan was nephew by marriage to Colonel Desmond's elder brother; but though this connection made them sometimes associate together, they were as completely dissimilar in mind as they were in person. Mr. Donolan was, as Cecilia called him, "a very pretty man." His hand rivalled her own in whiteness; his hair was not less carefully cut, combed, and curled in the most becoming manner; and the fair Cecilia might have worn his delicate pink waistcoat and worked shirt collar, as elegant and suitable accompaniments to her riding-habit, without the most scrutinizing eye discovering they had ever formed a part of male attire. This Hibernian Jessamy was the only child of a wealthy Catholic merchant of Dublin: the youth being too precious to be exposed to the hardships of a school, was nurtured at home by an obsequious tutor and a doting mother, in the most inordinate vanity. That vivacity of mind, with which nature usually endows his countrymen, fell to his lot also; and had it been properly directed, might have procured him well-earned fame; but unfortunately it only served as an impetus to his self-love, in a never-ceasing career of egotism, which made him prefer the casual "_succËs de sociÈtÈ_," to the lasting benefit to be derived from solitary study. The reward of scholarship was of too tedious attainment for this impatient genius, who, without ceremony, dubbed himself a "_dilettante_," a title universally conceded to him by his Irish acquaintance, who took the liberty of quizzing him most unmercifully. Young Donolan did not fail to take advantage of the opportunity the general peace afforded for visiting the continent; he had there acquired a knowledge of the fine arts, which was just sufficient to enable him to interlard his conversation with those technical terms of connoisseurship, which, as "The Diversions of Purley" observe, commonly serve but as a veil to cover the ignorance of those who use them, and to privilege him to treat with sovereign contempt all the 'Aborigines of West Barbary,' as he most patriotically termed such of his countrymen and women, as had not redeemed the original sin of their birth, by at least a six week's visit to England or France. Mr. Donolan's manners corresponded to the double refined tone of his mind, (we are bound to apologize to him for using this term, as it betrays his father's _ci-devant_ trade of sugar-baking): he stood on the threshold of fashion, and finding he could never be admitted into the sanctuary of the _bona dea_, was content to copy from a distance those more conspicuous embellishments of the object of his adoration, which, being singled from the finer web on which they are originally engrafted by the mystery of art, become deformities when deprived of their connecting,