ABSTRACT
As I was not, as formerly, asleep in my carriage on deck, when we came within sight of the Irish shore, I saw, and hailed with delight, the beautiful Bay of Dublin. The moment we landed, instead of putting myself out of humour, as before, with every thing at the Marine Hotel, 281 I went directly to my friend lord Y—’s. I made my sortie from the hotel with so / much extraordinary promptitude, that a slip-shod waiter was forced to pursue me, running or shuffling after me the whole length of the street, before he could overtake me with a letter, which had been ‘waiting for my honour, at the hotel, since yesterday’s Holyhead packet.’ This was a mistake, as the letter had never come or gone by any Holyhead packet; it was only a letter from Mr M’Leod, to welcome me to Ireland again; and to tell me, that he had taken care to secure good well-aired lodgings for me: he added an account of what was going on at Glenthorn Castle. The extravagance of my lady had, by this time, reduced the family to great difficulties for ready money, as they could neither sell nor mortgage any part of the Glenthorn estate, which was settled on the son. My poor foster-brother had, it seems, in vain attempted to restrain the wasteful folly of his wife, and to persuade Johnny, the young heir apparent, to lam to be a jantleman: in vain Christy tried to prevail on his lordship to ‘refrain drinking whisky preferably to claret:’ the youth pleaded both his father’s and mother’s examples; and said, that as he was an only son, and his father had but a life-interest in the estate, he expected to be indulged; he repeated continually ‘a short life and a merry one for me.’ Mr M’Leod concluded this letter by observing, ‘that far from its being a merry life, he never saw any thing more sad than the life this foolish boy led; and that Glenthorn Castle was so melancholy and disgusting a scene of waste, riot, and intemperance, that he could not bear to go / there.’ I was grieved by this account, for the sake of my poor foster-brother; but it would have made a deeper impression upon me at any other time. I must own that I forgot the letter, and all that it contained, as I knocked at lord Y—’s door.
