e Dublin society of the day. One of the verses ran
thus:

We're swarming alive,
Like bees in a hive,
With talent and janius and beautiful ladies:
We've a duke in Kildare,
And a Donnybrook Fair;
And if that wouldn't plaze, why nothing would plaze yez.
We've poets in plenty,
But not one in twenty
Will stay in ould Ireland to keep her from sinking:
They say they can't live
Where there's nothing to give.
Och, what business have poets with ating or dhrinking?"

Justly proud of her sister, Lady Morgan was in the habit of addressing
every new-comer with, "I must make you acquainted with my Livy." She once
used this form of words to a gentleman who had just been worsted in a
fierce encounter of wit with the fascinating lady. "Yes, madam," he
replied, "I happen to know your Livy, and I only wish 'your Livy' was
_Tacitus_."

Few of Lady Morgan's bon-mots have been preserved, but one is given which
shows that she occasionally indulged in a pun. Some one, speaking of a
certain bishop who was rather lax in his observance of Lent, said he
believed he would eat a horse on Ash-Wednesday. "Very suitable diet,"
remarked her ladyship, "if it were a _fast_ horse."

The _Diary_ progresses slowly by fitful jerks. Here is a characteristic
entry: "_April 3, 1834._ My journal is gone to the dogs. I am so fussed
and fidgeted by my dear, charming world that I cannot write: I forget days
and dates. Ouf! Last night, at Lady Stepney's, met the Milmans, Mrs.
Norton, Rogers, Sydney Smith and others--among them poor, dear Jane
Porter. She told me she was taken for me the other night, and talked to as
such by a party of Americans! _She_ is tall, lank and lean and
lackadaisical, dressed in the deepest black, with rather a battered black
gauze hat and the air of a regular Melpomene. _I_ am the reverse of all
this, and without vanity the best-dressed woman wherever I go. Last night
I wore a blue satin trimmed fully with magnificent point lace--light-blue
velvet hat and feather, with an aigrette of sapphires and diamonds. Voila!
Lord Jeffrey came up to me, and we had _such_ a flirtation! When he comes
to Ireland we are to go to Donnybrook Fair together: in short, having cut
me down with his tomahawk as a reviewer, he smothers me with roses as a
man. I always say of my enemies before we meet, 'Let me at them!'" Of the
same soiree she writes again: "There was Miss Jane Porter, looking like a
shabby