Thus encouraged, I devoted the rest of the day to copying out this sketch: and I have finished the picture in that light tinting, so effective in this kind of characteristic drawings. That beautifully pensive expression which touches the countenance of Glorvina, when breathing her native strains, I have most happily caught; and her costume, attitude, and harp, form as happy a combination of traits, as a single portrait perhaps ever presented. When it was shown to the Prince, he gazed on it in silence, till tears obscured his glance; then laying it down he embraced me, but said nothing. Had he detailed the merits of the picture in all the technical farago of _cognoscenti_ phrase, his comments would not have been half so eloquent as this simple action, and the silence which accompanied it. Adieu, H. M. LETTER XI. TO J. D. ESQ., M. P. Here is a _bonne bouche_ for your antiquarian taste, and _Ossianic_ palate! Almost every evening after vesper, we all assemble in a spacious hall, * which had been shut up for near a century and first opened by the present prince when he was driven for shelter to his paternal ruins. * “Amidst the ruins of Buan Ratha, near Limerick, is a princely hall and spacious chambers; the fine stucco in many of which is yet visible, though uninhabitable for near a century.”--O’Halloran’s Introduction to the Study of the History and Antiquities of Ireland, p 8. In every town, every village, every considerable tract of land, the spacious ruins of princely residence or religious edifices, the palace, the castle, or the abbey, are to be seen. This _Vengolf_, this _Valkhalla_, where the very spirit of Woden seems to preside, runs the full length of the castle as it now stands (for the centre of the building only, has escaped the delapidations of time,) and its beautifully arched roof is enriched with numerous devices which mark the spirit of that day in which it was erected. This very curious roof is supported by two rows of pillars of that elegant spiral lightness which characterises the Gothic order in a certain stage of its progress. The floor is a finely tessellated pavement; and the ample but ungrated hearths which terminate it at either extremity, blaze every evening with the cheering contributions of a neighbouring bog. The windows which are high, narrow, and arched, command on one side a noble view of the ocean, on the other they are closed up. When I enquired of Father John the cause of this singular exclusion of a very beautiful landview, he replied, “that from those windows were to be seen the greater part of that rich tract of land which once formed the territory of the Princes of Inismore; * and since,” said he, “the possessions of the present Prince are limited to a few hereditary acres and a few rented farms, he cannot bear to look on the domains of his ancestors nor ever goes beyond the confines of this little peninsula.”