Produced by David Widger THE BRAMLEIGHS OF BISHOP'S FOLLY By Charles James Lever With Illustrations By W. Cubitt Cooke, And E. J. Wheeler. Boston: Little, Brown, And Company. 1904. TO ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE, Esq. M.P., ETC., ETC. My Dear Kinglake,--If you should ever turn over these pages, I have no greater wish than that they might afford you a tithe of the pleasure I have derived from your own writings. But I will not ask you to read me, but to believe that I am, in all sincerity your devoted admirer, for both your genius and your courage, and your attached friend, CHARLES LEVER. Trieste, August 31, 1868. THE BRAMLEIGHS OF BISHOP'S FOLLY. CHAPTER I. THE BISHOP'S FOLLY Towards the close of the last century there was a very remarkable man, Bishop of Down, in Ireland: a Liberal in politics, in an age when Liberalism lay close on the confines of disloyalty; splendidly hospitable, at a period when hospitality verged on utter recklessness; he carried all his opinions to extremes. He had great taste, which had been cultivated by foreign travel, and having an ample fortune, was able to indulge in many whims and caprices, by which some were led to doubt of his sanity; but others, who judged him better, ascribed them to the self-indulgence of a man out of harmony with his time, and comtemptuously indifferent to what the world might say of him. He had passed many years in Italy, and had formed a great attachment to that country. He liked the people and their mode of life; he liked the old cities, so rich in art treasures and so teeming with associations of a picturesque past; and he especially liked their villa architecture, which seemed so essentially suited to a grand and costly style of living. The great reception-rooms, spacious and lofty; the ample antechambers, made for crowds of attendants; and the stairs wide enough for even equipages to ascend them. No more striking illustration of his capricious turn of mind need be given than the fact that it was his pleasure to build one of these magnificent edifices in an Irish county!--a costly whim, obliging him to bring over from Italy a whole troop of stucco-men and painters, men skilled in fresco-work and carving,--an extravagance on which he spent thousands. Nor did he live to witness the completion of his splendid mansion.