“He! with his means of acquiring information!” exclaimed Lady Geraldine. “Posting from one great man’s house to another, what can he see or know of the manners of any rank of people but of the class of gentry, which in England and Ireland is much the same? As to the lower classes, I don’t think he ever speaks to them; or, if he does, what good can it do him? for he can’t understand their modes of expression, nor they his: if he inquire about a matter of fact, I defy him to get the truth out of them, if they don’t wish to tell it; and, for some reason or other, they will, nine times in ten, not wish to tell it to an Englishman. There is not a man, woman, or child, in any cabin in Ireland, who would not have wit and _‘cuteness_ enough to make _my lard_ believe just what they please. So, after posting from Dublin to Cork, and from the Giants’ Causeway to Killarney; after travelling east, west, north, and south, my wise cousin Craiglethorpe will know just as much of the lower Irish as the cockney who has never been out of London, and who has never, _in all his born days_, seen an Irishman but on the English stage; where the representations are usually as like the originals, as the Chinese pictures of lions, drawn from description, are to the real animal.” “Now! now! look at his lordship!” cried Miss Bland; “he has his note-book out again.” “Mercy on us!” said Miss Callwell, “how he is writing!” “Yes, yes, write on, my good cousin Craiglethorpe,” pursued Lady Geraldine, “and nil the little note-book, which will soon turn to a ponderous quarto. I shall have a copy, bound in morocco, no doubt, _from the author_, if I behave myself prettily; and I will earn it, by supplying valuable information. You shall see, my friends, how I’ll deserve well of my country, if you’ll only keep my counsel and your own countenances.” Presently Lord Craiglethorpe entered the room, walking very pompously, and putting his note-book up as he advanced. “Oh, my dear lord, open the book again; I have a bull for you.” Lady Geraldine, after putting his lordship in good humour by this propitiatory offering of a bull, continued to supply him, either directly or indirectly, by some of her confederates, with the most absurd anecdotes, incredible _facts_, stale jests, and blunders, such as were never made by true-born Irishmen; all which my Lord Craiglethorpe took down with an industrious sobriety, at which the spectators could scarcely refrain from laughing. Sometimes he would pause, and exclaim, “A capital anecdote! a curious fact! May I give my authority? may I quote your ladyship?” “Yes, if you’ll pay me a compliment in the preface,” whispered Lady Geraldine: “and now, dear cousin, do go up stairs _and put it all in ink._” When she had despatched the noble author, her ladyship indulged her laughter. “But now,” cried she, “only imagine a set of sober English readers studying my cousin Craiglethorpe’s New View of Ireland, and swallowing all the nonsense it will contain!”