The Miss Mac Taafs were both on the ground, and both standing enough in profile, to give Lord Arranmore a full and perfect view of their figure, without being seen by them. His first opinion was, that they were utterly unchanged; and that like the dried specimens of natural history, they had bidden defiance to time. Tall, stately, and erect, their weather-beaten countenance and strongly marked features were neither faded nor fallen in. The deep red hue of a frosty and vigorous senility still coloured their unwrinkled faces. Their hair, well powdered and pomatumed, was drawn up by the roots from their high foreheads, over their lofty "systems;" and their long, lank necks rose like towers above their projecting busts; which, with their straight, sticky, tight-laced waists, terminating in the artificial rotundity of a half-dress bell-hoop, gave them the proportions of an hour-glass. They wore grey camlet riding habits, with large black Birmingham buttons (to mark the slight mourning for their deceased brother-in-law): while petticoats, fastened as pins did or did not their office, shewed more of the quilted marseilles and stuff beneath, than the precision of the toilet required: both of which, from their contact with the water of the bog, merited the epithet of "Slappersallagh," bestowed on their wearers by Terence O'Brien. Their habit-shirts, chitterlings, and cravats, though trimmed with Trawlee lace, seemed by their colour to evince that yellow starch, put out of fashion by the ruff of the murderous Mrs. Turner in England, was still to be had in Ireland. Their large, broad silver watches, pendant from their girdle by massy steel chains, showed that their owners took as little account of time as time had taken of them. "Worn for show, not use," they were still without those hands, which it had been in the contemplation of the Miss Mac Taafs to have replaced by the first opportunity, for the last five years. High-crowned black-beaver hats, with two stiff, upright, black feathers, that seemed to bridle like their wearers, and a large buckle and band, completed the costume of these venerable specimens of human architecture: the _tout ensemble_ recalling to the nephew the very figures and dresses which had struck him with admiration and awe when first brought in from the Isles of Arran by his foster mother, to pay his duty to his aunts, and ask their blessing, eighteen years before. The Miss Mac Taafs, in their sixty-first year, (for they were twins,) might have sunk with safety ten or twelve years of their age. Their minds and persons were composed of that fibre which constitutes nature's veriest huckaback. Impressions fell lightly on both; and years and feelings alike left them unworn and uninjured.--_The O'Briens, and the O'Flahertys, by Lady Morgan_. * * * * * AUTUMN. BY JOHN CLARE.