The group that followed was grotesque beyond all powers of description. The ancient bard, whose long white beard “Descending, swept his aged breast,” the incongruous costume--half modern, half antique, of the bare footed domestics, the ostensible steward, who closed the procession--and above all, the dignified importance of the _nurse_, who took the lead in it immediately after her young lady; her air, form, countenance, and dress, were indeed so singularly fantastic and _outre_, that the genius of masquerade might have adopted her figure as the finest model of grotesque caricature. Conceive for a moment a form whose longitude bore no degree of proportion to her latitude; dressed in a short jacket of brown cloth, with loose sleeves from the elbow to the wrist, made of red camblet striped with green, and turned up with a broad cuff--a petticoat of scarlet frieze, covered by an apron of green serge, longitudinally striped with scarlet tape, and sufficiently short to betray an ancle that sanctioned all the libels ever uttered against the ancles of the Irish fair--true national brogues set off her blue worsted stockings, and her yellow hair, dragged over a high roll, was covered on the summit with a little coiff, over which was flung a scarlet handkerchief, which fastened in a large bow under her rubicund chin. As this singular and interesting group advanced up the central aisle of the chapel, reverence and affection were evidently blended in the looks of the multitude which hung upon their steps; and though the Prince and his daughter seeked to lose in the meekness of true religion all sense of temporal inequality, and promiscuously mingled with the congregation, yet that distinction they humbly avoided, was reverently forced on them by the affectionate crowd, which drew back on either side as they advanced, until the chieftain and his child stood alone in the centre of the ruined choir, the winds of heaven playing freely amidst their garments, the sun’s setting beam enriching their beautiful figures with its orient tints, while he, like Milton’s ruined angel, “Above the rest, In shape and feature proudly eminent, Stood like a tower;” and she, like the personified spirit of Mercy hovered round him, or supported more by tenderness than her strength, him from whom she could no longer claim support. Those gray headed domestics, too, those faith ful though but nominal vassals, who offered that voluntary reverence with their looks, which his repaid with fatherly affection, while the anguish of a suffering heart hung on his pensive smile, sustained by the firmness of that indignant pride which lowered on his ample brow! What a picture!