The Duke was one of those plain, quiet, well-bred persons so frequently met with in the upper classes of England, and whose strongest characteristic is, probably, the excessive simplicity of their manners, and the total absence of everything bordering on pretension. This very quietude, however, is frequently misinterpreted, and, in Ireland especially, often taken for the very excess of pride and haughtiness. Such did it seem on the present occasion; for now that the restraint of a great position was removed, and that he suffered himself to unbend from the cumbrous requirements of a state existence, the ease of his deportment was suspected to be indifference, and the absence of all effort was deemed a contemptuous disregard for the company. The moment, too, was not happily chosen to bring men of extreme and opposite opinions into contact. They met with coldness and distrust; they were even suspectful of the motives which had led to their meeting,--in fact, a party whose elements were less suited to each other rarely assembled in an Irish country-house; and by ill luck the weather took one of those wintry turns which are not unfrequent in our so-called summers, and set in to rain with that determined perseverance so common to a July in Ireland. Nearly all the resources by which the company were to have been amused were of an outdoor kind, and depended greatly on weather. The shooting, the driving, the picnicing, the visits to remarkable scenes in the neighborhood, which Dan MacNaghten had “programmed” with such care and zeal, must now be abandoned, and supplied by occupation beneath the roof.