profit by the consternation. In this petulant attack perished the party of the Talbots, one only returning to the castle to tell the story of the eventful day. This one was a stripling youth, Richard, son, heir, and successor of the then Talbot of Malahide. The story he continued to tell down to the middle of the last century, and to one, from whose veracious lips the author of this article first heard its details.1

In 1789, Richard Wogan Talbot, Esq., now of Malahide, succeeded to his father (the heir and nephew of "the old gentleman," 2 the Richard of the Boyne). He was called to represent the honours of his family as heir-male general of Sir Thomas Talbot, summoned to Parliament 1374.

There are illusions, almost poetical, connected with the inheritance of a name so interwoven in the history of a nation, which, though they be not approved by sound philosophy, may be considered as splendid errors, when compared with the dogged pride of unillustrated races, whose blood has " crept through scoundrels ever since the flood," or with the morgue of a sordid ascendancy obtained by creed or party. The Talbots of Malahide had been Catholics and Jacobites, when in Ireland it had been deemed a virtue consecrated by persecution to be either: but the virtues of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries no longer belonged to the eighteenth. Richard Wogan Talbot took his place in the "great council," a representative of the reforming spirit of his age: a Protestant, he voted for Catholic emancipation; and an inheritor of six hundred years' aristocracy, his voice was raised for that great question of Reform, which was eventually to destroy the false prestige of privilege, and to substitute things for sounds, and personal qualifications for the accidents of birth. He did not "blush" that his ancestors "had been fooled so long," because such folly was the wisdom of their times; they had gone successively with their age, he resolved to go with his. For twenty-four years he has struggled for Emancipation and for Parliamentary Reform, and he has obtained his reward,-the only reward of his political consistency-of seeing those long withheld boons of justice granted to his country.

Malahide Castle, or, as it was then called," the Court of Malahide," is thus described by a tourist of the last century :

"It is a large, irregular, building, of unequal height. It is nearly square, and has an area or court within. The entrance is on the east front by a flight of black-marble steps. The hall is spacious, and of most ancient appearance, corresponding with the antiquity of the exterior. There are ten rooms on a floor. The parlour is wainscotted with carved oak in a curious and old-fashioned manner. The lower stories are servants' offices. It is founded on a limestone rock,

The venerable mother of the present representative, and whom the King has recently restored to the ancient honours of the family by the title of Baroness Talbot de Malahide.

2 By this name he is known in the traditions of the family. Of his humour, oddities, and jacobite feelings, many curious anecdotes remain. Entertaining, one day, a large party of his noble neighbours of the Pale, his near relative Lady Alley Talbot seated at the head of the table, he suddenly rose from his place, and hit her a violent slap on the face; then, falling on her neck and kissing her, he exclaimed, "Forgive me; you looked so like William of Orange at that moment that I could not resist it."

the situation lofty, and the whole commanding a fine prospect of the bay and town of Malahide, and of the sea on every side,-the castle standing on a peninsula. It is surrounded by old woods of oak, ash, and beech, of great size: the manor is extensive, and the royalties extend a considerable way along the sea-shore."

Since the epoch of this description, the rebuilding of one of the great towers battered by Cromwell, and other restorations, have considerably increased the beauty of the edifice as a monument of antiquity, and its comfort as a domestic residence. The entrance, now, is by a low-arched door, opening into a vaulted passage or hall, and winding-stairs of black marble coeval with the castle in the time of Edward IV. They terminate abruptly at the entrance of the black-oak chamber, one of the most curious apartments in Ireland. This room is long, low, and narrow, and illumined by a single window of stained glass. The walls and roof are pannelled and rafted with carved oak, so exquisitely worked as to be worthy of the chisel of Gibbons, and so blackened by time that the whole has the air of a large and antique cabinet of ebony. The doors of the buffet, at the further extremity, represent Scripture-stories; and "the chimney corner appears to have been literally the domestic altar; for it is surmounted by a carved representation of the Virgin,— the identical image which disappeared on the arrival of Miles Corbet. The Virgin herself had, in a dream, commanded one of the Sir Richards or Sir Reginalds to build this votive chamber to her honour, with a strict order that it should be "garnished with ivory pillars." This order was a poser! Ivory was not easily to be had in Ireland, and the votarist was driven to a pious fraud. The room was garnished with pillars of the oak of the celebrated sagro bosco of Fingal painted white, and the deceit passed muster for ages. When the old gentleman" succeeded to the honours of Malahide, he declared the proportions of the little white pillars stuck over his oak room gave it the appearance of a chandler's shop. The white paint was scraped off; and if the Virgin took cognizance of the fact in a dream to the old gentleman, he never revealed the circumstance to his friends.

To the right of this chamber is the baronial hall, unchanged in its original edification, and presenting the same imposing appearance as when it served the purpose of a court-leet 1 in the time of Edward III., and received the envoy of Henry VII. It is a spacious and lofty building, with a cathedral roof of black oak, flanked by two towers, and with a gallery at the lower end. It is lighted by three large Gothic casements, with embrasures of immense depth, and is warmed

In the Court of Malahide all manner of pleas, as well real as personal, were entertained before the seneschal, with power to arrest and attach the bodies and chattels of those moved against within the liberties, to commit to prison for ever, and to make due execution. The lords of Malahide were also exempted from serving the office of sheriff, coroner, or escheator, of Dublin, Meath, Kildare, or Louth, and from attendance on juries, &c. They were allowed to receive all fines, &c. arising out of their court, to their own use, without any account to the King. They had cognizance too of all pleas in Chancery, the Exchequer, and Admiralty, of any matter within the manor. The customs and dues granted to them out of the port extended over almost every importable article ;-the whole forming a mass of privilege and power greater than that at present actually possessed by most reigning sovereigns.

by two ample and open hearths, where, on dogs of the time of Louis XIV., blaze the produce of the neighbouring woods.

Among the interesting portraits that partly conceal its rather rude walls are, one of Mary Queen of Scots, by Holbein, or his school; a portrait of the amiable little Queen of Charles II., in the very costume so ridiculed in the "Memoires de Grammont :" this probably came into the family through her protégé and almoner Peter Talbot, who, after being made Archbishop of Dublin by Pope Clement, died a prisoner in Birmingham Tower. There is a charming picture of the little daughter of Tirconnel, not more remarkable for the peculiarity and richness of the dress than for its likeness to the living beauties of the Talbot family,-with portraits of the Duke himself and his spirited Duchess la belle Jennings," and other beaux and belles of the family in the time of Charles II. Opposed to these worldly representations of a courtly age, hangs a fine and very valuable picture by Francis Hals, of his own very ugly and primitive family. It was probably brought to Malahide by Miles Corbet.

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The hall opens into a small antiquated room, in modern parlance called the library, but formerly devoted to the preservation of the records, plate, and other valuables,-the accumulated relics and evidences of successive ages. It is lighted by three Gothic casements, and surrounded by bookcases, with an adjoining iron closet. Here is deposited the grant of Edward IV. to the Talbots, which was designated by the late Lord Chancellor Ponsonby as "the proudest record in the possession of any gentleman of the empire." It is a large sheet of parchment, beautifully engrossed, and curiously illuminated with a sketch of Malahide Castle as it stood in those days, with its keep, the present edifice, with two walls flanked by seven towers, a barbican, and a drawbridge. There is also depicted a stag reposing under a tree, guarded by a lion, the Talbot crest: this intimates a privilege of free warren. Further on are the Talbot dog couchant, the royal leopards, and St. George charging the dragon. The witnesses to this deed are Richard Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III., and the Duke of Clarence of malmsey celebrity. The great seal of England is appended. The next curious document is the instruction of King James II. to the Duke of Tirconnel, with the King's autograph and signet, and the ribbon with which it was tied after the fashion of those times. This evidencechamber was the favourite retreat of "the old gentleman," from which, in his latter years, no human influence could tear him. A few days however, before his death, a superhuman agent contrived to dislodge him. The chamber for centuries had been the haunt of "Puck," who had accompanied the family from Eccleswell, and continued to torment the objects of his mischievous predilection down to the arrival of Cromwell, when, like the Virgin, he departed. After the battle of the Boyne he again took his place in the chimneycorner. There are many anecdotes in the family which prove that Puck was a bore, but the old gentleman bore with him till he took to playing certain midnight pranks to the great annoyance of the inhabitants. It was his wont to roll a little wheelbarrow, filled with bones from the neighbouring churchyard, across the hall and into the old gentleman's room. After enduring this intrusion for some time,

the old gentleman arose one night, took his clothes, fled to one of the distant bed-rooms, and died, as he declared, of the persecution he had endured from Puck.

To the left of the great hall is the drawing-room. But for the dark recesses of its window-cases, it might pass for a modern apartment. It is flanked by a round tower, fitted up with appropriate decorations by the present lady of Malahide; to whose judicious exertions and good taste in consulting the "genius of the place in all," the castle of her husband's ancestors stands deeply indebted. This room is most remarkable for the valuable pictures it contains. Among these is a fine altar-piece by Albert Durer, on three folding pannels. This belonged to Mary Queen of Scots, and stood in her oratory at Holyrood House. Her son James brought it to England; and Charles II. gave it to the Duchess of Portsmouth. On her return to France, having retired pour faire ses pacques to a convent of English nuns,-she was struck with the beauty and grace of the grandniece of her old friend" Dick Talbot," who had been sent there for her education; and, conceiving an affection for her, presented her with this valuable picture, with other curious and rare objects of art now decorating the castle of Malahide. Here also are some portraits by Hals, a line landscape by Hobbima, the Temptations of St. Anthony by Calot, and a very curious representation of the Ball at the Spanish Court during the Visit of Charles I. and Buckingham.

The second drawing-room, modernized in the last century with a bad taste that destroyed the harmony of the suite, contains some of the best pictures in the castle. Of these by far the most valuable is a portrait of Charles I. by Vandyke, one of the finest pictures by that eminent and prolific master. The portrait of Charles's mischievous and intriguing Queen forms its pendant, but is much inferior in execution. Here also is the portrait of the Duchess of Portsmouth, missing from the collection at Windsor, and given by her either to the Duke of Tirconnel or to his niece: there is also a portrait of the little Duke of Richmond, her son: both by Sir Peter Lely. The portraits of the Duke of York and Anne Hyde, and of the Duke of Tirconnel in his robes and order of the Garter, if not by the same master, are from the same school, and are highly finished. There is a noble picture in this collection ascribed to Holbein, which might be taken for Henry. VIII. if it were not inscribed as the portrait of John Talbot the great Earl of Shrewsbury.

This handsome and comfortable room is flanked by a round tower corresponding to that in the adjoining drawing-room. On the left, it opens by a narrow passage cut from the depth of the wall into the black-oak room, and thus continues the suite. The upper part of the castle, in spite of its towers and passages, and nests of closets, has been so modernized into comfort, and reformed into every species of accommodation, that the guest who leaves the hospitable board in Edward the Fourth's hall, or the sombre gloom of the oak chamber, to retire to rest, seems to have made a transition from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century: and if the spirit of antiquarianism regrets the change, the philosophy of enjoyment finds full compensation for the discounts of the imagination.

The castle stands a short mile, or less, from its feudal appendage "the town, or creek of Mullaghide in our land of Ireland," as it is styled in King Edward's grant to his dearly beloved and faithful Thomas Talbot. The beautiful village of Malahide (for it is now no more) is almost as curious a monument as its castle, presenting at the end of six hundred years the results of its first colonization, so praised by Hollingshed. It is a solecism among Irish villages, having neither pigs, paupers, dunghills, nor dirty children: its neat white houses, looking on the little bay, command a view of the woods of Portran on the opposite shore, the island of Lambay, Howth, and Ireland's Eye, terminated in the remote distance by the sugar-loaf mountains of Wicklow. Its extreme cleanliness, quietude, and sobriety, form a strong contrast with its flourishing rival on the other side the bay of Dublin-the Black Rock, that great metropolis of jingles and jingle-men, badeaux and whisky. Situated within seven miles of Dublin, Malahide abounds in all the accommodations of life: it is principally inhabited by small annuitants, who occasionally let their neat domiciles for the bathingseason to lodgers as quiet as themselves, who, eschewing the noise and bustle of Kingstown, feast on the delicious Malahide oysters gathered from the beds in view of their windows.

Of the ancient town, as it stood up to the time of Oliver Cromwell, nothing now remains, but a dilapidated building by the water's edge, called the Old House. It is memorable as the retreat of "the old gentleman," when, under the infliction of family feuds with "Madame Frances" his mother, he was driven from the castle; for the sister of Tirconnel is by no means a popular subject in the traditions of Malahide.

OLD ENGLISH MUSIC.

THOUGH Music, considered merely as matter of history, is known to us from the earliest ages, yet our knowledge of its practice, as an art, extends a very short way back. Indeed we hardly know any thing of the music that existed prior to the sixteenth century. During the great efforts that were made for the improvement of music prior to that era, harmony alone was the object of attention, to the utter neglect of melody. The object in view then was the discovery of new combinations and ingenious contrivances for putting together a number of parts to be sung at the same time; but it was never considered necessary that any of these parts should form a graceful or expressive song. In those days melody, of course, existed, as it must have done at all times; but, being despised by the great and learned, it took refuge among the humble and ignorant. Melody, in short, then consisted entirely of the national airs which the ploughman "whistled o'er the furrow'd land," or with which the shepherd beguiled the hours on the lonely mountain.

The oldest specimens of melody which seem to be preserved are some of the songs of the Provençal minstrels, or troubadours, among these are the songs of Thibaut, King of Navarre, who lived in the thirteenth century. The chroniclers tell us that this prince, having conceived a hopeless passion for Queen Blanche, sought a solace for his pains in the pursuit of music and poetry. A number of these old French melodies are to be found in Laborde's great historical work. They are very curious, and some of them approach nearly to the French popular airs of the present time. One or two of them might pass for the vaudevilles of a modern French petite pièce.

March, 1832.-VOL. III. NO. XI.

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