may well vie with that of the Lee in rich and varied beauty.

Not long after his return from Spain, Mr. Sheil married Miss Catherine McCarthy, of Spring House, in the county of Tipperary, whose sister was the wife of General D'Alton, an officer who served with distinction in the Austrian army. These ladies were nearly related to Count McCarthy, who had formerly possessed large estates in Ireland; but who, having disposed of them, settled at Toulouse, where his family subsequently resided. By this marriage, Mr. Sheil had several children. The eldest son, Richard, was born on the 17th of August, 1791, at Drumdowney, a small country house occupied by his father previous to the completion of Bellevue. Of his childhood, few traits have been preserved. He is said, indeed, to have early evinced that quickness of apprehension, and impulsive readiness to be excited or depressed, by which the whole tenour of his after-life was strongly marked. In boyish pastimes, he does not seem to have taken any great interest, choosing, in preference, to listen to tales of wonder, or the stories so full of capricious humour with which, in Ireland, every fire-side abounds. An old man, named James Hincks, who was born in the neighbourhood, and who for many years was en

gaged in their service, speaks with the warmest affection of the whole family. The old gentleman was, he says, hasty and hot-tempered, but the best hearted man in the world, and always looking after the comforts of his workpeople and dependents. When any of the cottagers in the neighbourhood happened to be ill, not only were their wants provided for "from the big house," but one of the young ladies would generally administer relief from her own basket. As young Richard grew up, Hincks distinctly recollects the peculiarities of manner, which sometimes made people who did not know him fancy that he was out of his mind. "I have often seen him walking about with his book in his hand, and talking to himself, and then, all of a sudden, he would put his book on the stump of a tree, and he would throw and fling his arms about, and he would scold at it as if it was a man he was in a passion with."

On the susceptible mind of the moody and imaginative boy, the scenery in the midst of which his early home was situated was well calculated to make a deep and lasting impression. The house, which is finely situated, stands about three hundred yards from the river, on a gentle slope, rising gradually from the water's edge, along which the park extends for a

considerable distance. From different points there are beautiful views, of great variety, both up and down the Suir (which is here nearly half-a-mile broad), and over many miles of the barony of Gaultier, in the county of Waterford. Immediately opposite are the woods of Faithleg, behind which rise the rocky summits of Minaun Hin.

The traffic on the river has at all times been considerable between Waterford and many English and foreign ports. So early as the time of Spencer the intercourse with the continent was so frequent that, next to Cork, Waterford, he says, most needed to have a garrison, as being the chief “in-gate of the Spaniards."* At the beginning of the present century its commerce bore the same proportion to that of other places in the southern part of the kingdom; and then, as now, the constant passing to and fro of vessels of large tonnage rendered the scene in front of Bellevue a very animated one. From the memory of the youthful wanderer by the river side, the dreamlike pleasure he derived from the scenes and objects that surrounded him does not seem to have ever passed away. In long after years he thus recalled

* View of the State of Ireland in 1596, by Edmund Spencer. 217.

his last look, ere leaving home for school, at the woods and hills with which his boyhood had been familiar.

"How often have I stood upon its banks, when the bells in the city, the smoke of which was turned into a cloud of gold by a Claude Lorraine sun-set, tolled the death of the departing day! How often have I fixed my gaze upon the glittering expanse of the full and overflowing water, crowded with ships whose white sails were filled with just wind enough to carry them on to the sea, by the slowness of their equable and majestic movements giving leave to the eye to contemplate at its leisure their tall and stately beauty, and to watch them long in their progress amidst the calm through which they made their gentle and forbearing way! The murmurs of the city were heard upon the right, and the lofty spire of its church rose up straight and arrowy into the sky. The sullen and dull roar of the ocean used to come over the opposite hills from the bay of Tramore. Immediately before me were the fine woods of Faithleg, the noble seat of the Bolton family (Protestants, who have since that time made way for the Catholic wealthy Powers); on the left was the seat of another branch of the same opulent family, Snow Hill; and in the distance, where the three rivers, the Suir, the Nore, and the Barrow, meet

in a deep and splendid conflux, the ruins of the old abbey of Dunbrody threw the solemnity of religion and of antiquity over the whole prospect, and by the exquisite beauty of the site, afforded a proof that the old Francisians who had made a selection of this lovely spot for their monastery, and who have lain for centuries in the mould of its green and luxuriant church-yards, were the lovers of nature; and that when they left the noise and turmoil of the world, they had not relinquished those enjoyments which are not only innocent but may be accounted holy. I had many a time looked with admiration upon the noble landscape in the midst of which I was born, but I never felt and appreciated its beauty so well as when the consciousness that I was leaving it, not to return for years to it again, endeared to me the spot of my birth, and set off the beauty of the romantic place in which my infancy was passed, and in which I once hoped (I have since abandoned the expectation) that my old age should decline. It is not in the midst of its woods that I shall fall into the sear and yellow leaf !"*

His first instruction in the rudiments of French

Schoolboy Recollections, &c. New Monthly Magazine, August, 1829.