* I understand that it is only a few years back, since the present respectable representatives of the M’Dermot family opened those windows which the Prince of Coolavin closed up, upon a principle similar to that by which the Prince of Inismore was actuated. This very curious apartment is still called the banquetting hall--where “Stately the feast, and high the cheer. Girt with many a valiant peer,” was once celebrated in all the boundless extravagance and convivial spirit of ancient Irish hospitality. But it now serves as an armory, a museum, a cabinet of national antiquities and national curiosities. In short, it is the receptacle of all those precious relics, which the Prince has been able to rescue from the wreck of his family splendour. Here, when he is seated by a blazing hearth in an immense arm-chair, made, as he assured me, of the famous wood of _Shilelah_, his daughter by his side, his harper behind him, and his _domestic altar_ not destitute of that national libation which is no disparagement to princely taste, since it has received the sanction of imperial approbation; * his gratified eye wandering over the scattered insignia of the former prowess of his family; his gratified heart expanding to the reception of life’s sweetest ties--domestic joys and social endearments;--he forgets the derangement of his circumstances--he forgets that he is the ruined possessor of a visionary title; he feels only that he is a man--and an Irishman! While the transient happiness that lights up the vehement feelings of his benevolent breast, effuses its warmth over all who come within its sphere. * Peter the Great, of Russia was fond of whiskey, and used to say, “Of all wine, Irish wine is the best.” Nothing can be more delightful than the evenings passed in this _vengolf_---this hall of Woden; where my sweet Glorvina hovers round us, like one of the beautiful _valkyries_ of the Gothic paradise, who bestow on the spirit of the departed warrior that heaven he eagerly rushes on death to obtain. Sometimes she accompanies the old bard on her harp, or with her voice; and frequently as she sits at her wheel (for she is often engaged in this simple and primitive avocation,) endeavours to lure, her father to speak on those subjects most interesting to him or to me; or, joining the general conversation, by the playfulness of her humour, or the original whimsicality of her sallies, materially contributes to the “_molle at que facetum!_” of the moment. On the evening of the day of the picture-scene, the absence of Glorvina (for she was attending a sick servant) threw a gloom over our little circle. The Prince, for the first time, dismissed the harper, and taking me by the arm, walked up and down the hall in silence, while the priest yawned over a book.