The Highland Lady In Ireland. Elizabeth Grant

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The Highland Lady In Ireland - Elizabeth Grant


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essential difference between him, the Duke of Wellington, Lord Stanley, on one side, and Lord Melbourne, Lord John Russell, on the other, nothing to prevent their all acting together to arrest the progress of democracy and impiety, reform progressively what the changes of time and feelings have rendered unsuitable to the age, and redeem the honour of Britain which has been sadly sullied of late. Should this ever happen we shall be once more a great nation, till it does, I fear, there don’t seem to be enough with talent on either side alone to fill the offices of Government.

      5. Children brought arms full of old stuff frocks and shoes and two bonnets which we held a council on and assigned where they would be useful, the best go to a box in my room, the remainder is distributed in turns to the deserving poor. I find the patterns thus given them have been of much use in improving their home-made clothes, they are so clever they can copy anything.

      6. Very fine hunting morning, bright but cold. Had cold luncheon ready in the hall for the hunters, no one called in but the Doctor who made a good dinner and gave Janey and me a Latin lesson, and told us Lady Milltown was not well, complaining of no one ever calling on her, out of spirits. Her Lord complaining that she never dresses till near dinner-time, an idle slovenly habit she learned in France, never stirs out, she that used to be so active, he don’t know on earth what to do with her; so it must be for she has no pursuit. With that beautiful house [Russborough] full of the choicest works of art she has no pleasure in it but to see it now and then dusted, her fine family of children are no resource to her. She is incapable of assisting in their education. No reader, beyond a novel which only wearies the spirits, no worker.

      And here let me remind you, dear little girls, of an old saying of dear Grandmama’s that a woman who had not pleasure in her needle was never happy, and very seldom good, it may sound a little forced but it is nevertheless perfectly true. A woman has so many solitary hours. Reading through all would be very far from profitable to her, a scientifick pursuit or a devotion to some particular art would withdraw her attention too much from these numberless little duties upon which the happiness of all around her depends.

      8. Carpenters getting on well upstairs. Dear Hal mightily offended with me because I do not always approve of his taste. Like most men he understands very little about colours, which contrast well, which suit, which shock, neither has he much eye for form or arrangement. Taste like every other talent requiring more cultivation than his active soldier’s life has given him opportunity for, but I almost got myself into regular disgrace for hinting this. Men, you are very vain. Not much in the papers, good speech of a frequently troublesome man, the Bishop of Exeter on the Abominations of Socialism.

      10. Frightful day, yet the Colonel a good deal out looking after workmen. Disappointed in my laundry maid, but will try her longer, they are all so unneat, so careless, and understand so little what they ought to do, it is really a tiresome business to manage them all, and Hal has worse to complain of outside, real dishonesty, entitled hereabouts cuteness, very sad it is to have so little hope of reforming such errours. Truth is not in the people nor will it over be in them under the Roman Catholic priesthood.

      16. Sunday. Such a beautiful morning, wakened by my three pets all tumbling into bed to me in such glee. Nothing almost raises my spirits so much as a bright Sunday. ‘This is the day that the Lord hath made. We will rejoice and be glad in it’. May you ever keep it thus, dear children, not as a day of gloom, as a day of austerity, as a day of privations. Moroseness is no part of the religion of Christ. The Roman Catholic Sunday is in many respects infinitely nearer the proper method of spending the day to my mind than the Calvinistick. The old Church of England nearest of all, not the methodistical section of it, but the real cheerful old English reformed Church.

      22. Talking over Sir James Mackintosh, I observed how little real value was the greatest genius, the most first-rate talent, compared with the habits of regular industry, how very little the first generally leaves behind it.

      It seems to me that there must be something wrong in the Scotch system of education—so many of her cleverest men having in their after life bewailed that desultory reading results as much from idleness as from a desire for knowledge, getting through books unconnected with each other without any purpose, but amusement. To be deprecated at any age, but positively pernicious to youth, encouraging an appetite for novelty merely, unsettling the mind without much informing it, causing over-excitement followed by lassitude without any one good result.

      SUNDAY, MARCH 1. Much interested in the journals of Sir J. M’s little Tours, knowing most of the places, his idea of Indian politicks so correct, projected improvements affected. Strange that I should never have seen Sir James himself though we were relations after a Highland fashion, and our families intimate and my father and he great friends. I must write you some Highland tales, dear children, or you will not know your mother well.

      


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