is unremitting industry with profitless returns.
The natural disposition of this good man presented a medley of those
attractive qualities which secure for their fortunate possessor an
immediate share of the sympathetic good-will alike of the friend and
the stranger. He had a kind heart and a winning manner. He could enjoy
and exchange a good joke, and to the end of his life was a sterling and
an uncompromising patriot. Yet his admiration for valor and virtue was
circumscribed by no political limits, by no narrow-minded prejudices. An
ultra-volunteer in '82, and an O'Connellite in '29, he was enthusiastic
over the victory at Waterloo, and wept at the melancholy fate of Sir
Samuel Romilly. Gerald's mother was a gentle and accomplished lady,
whose affection for her child was tempered and regulated by the
treasures of a refined and cultured mind, and by a sensitively religious
disposition. When he was in his third year, Mrs. Griffin, with her
family, removed to a country district, which, from local association
with the escapades of lepracauns and phookas, had inherited the
significative title of Fairy Lawn. The new home was romantically
situated amid the umbrageous woods and pastoral meadow-lands through
which the Shannon flows at its confluence with the little Ovaan River.
His infancy thus cradled in a landscape rich in the diversified
picturesqueness of storied ruin and historic tradition, what wonder that
Gerald at a very early age should feel the inspiration of his poetic
surroundings as he looked towards the winding river, the green fields,
the islands mirrored in the tributary Fergus, and the solemn shade and
cloistered loneliness of ruined abbeys and gray cathedrals. To the
careful training of his good mother he was indebted for the exquisite
taste and truthfulness with which he interpreted nature; for the nice
sense of honor which distinguished him through life, and which often
rose to a weakness; for the delicate reserve which made absence from
home a self-imposed hermitage; and for the deep, devotional feeling and
healthy habit of moral reflection which ever shaped and inwove the pure
current of his thoughts and writings.

A visiting tutor gave Gerald an elementary knowledge of English until
the year 1814, when he was sent to Limerick. He remained in the city
attending a classical school till he had acquired a familiarity with the
works of the great Latin authors. At an age when it is scarcely
customary to emanci