Before leaving Dublin for Liverpool, I had the pleasure of visiting my friend Miss S——­ in her home, where I returned several times, and was always welcomed with cordial kindness.  My last visit there took place during the Crimean war.  My friend Mrs. T——­ had become a widow, and her second son, now General T——­, was with his regiment in the very front of the danger, and also surrounded by the first deadly outbreak of the cholera, which swooped with such fatal fury upon our troops at the opening of the campaign.  I can never forget the pathetic earnestness and solemnity of the prayers read aloud by that poor mother for the safety of our army, nor the accent with which she implored God’s protection upon those exposed to such imminent peril in the noble discharge of their duty.  That son was preserved to that mother, having manfully done his part in the face of the twofold death that threatened him.

There was a slight circumstance attending Mrs. T——­’s household devotions that charmed me greatly, and that I have never seen repeated anywhere else where I have assisted at family prayers.  The servants, as they left the hall, bowed and courtesied to their mistress, who returned their salutation with a fine, old-fashioned courtesy, full of a sweet, kindly grace, that was delightful.  This act of civility to her dependents was to me a perfect expression of Mrs. T——­’s real antique toryism, as well as of her warm-hearted, motherly kindness of nature.

Ardgillan Castle (I think by courtesy, for it was eminently, peaceful in character, in spite of the turret inhabited by my dear “moping owl,” H——­) was finely situated on an eminence from which the sea, with the picturesque fishing village of Skerries stretching into it on one side, and the Morne Mountains fading in purple distance beyond its blue waters on the other, formed a beautiful prospect.  A pine wood on one side of the grounds led down to the foot of the grassy hill upon which the house stood, and to a charming wilderness called the Dell:  a sylvan recess behind the rocky margin of the sea, from which it was completely sheltered, whose hollow depth, carpeted with grass and curtained with various growth of trees, was the especial domain of my dear H——.  A crystal spring of water rose in this “bosky dell,” and answered with its tiny tinkle the muffled voice of the ocean breaking on the shore beyond.  The place was perfectly lovely, and here we sat together and devised, as the old word was, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things above heaven, and things below earth, and things quite beyond ourselves, till we were well-nigh beside ourselves; and it was not the fault of my metaphysical friend, but of my utter inability to keep pace with her mental processes, if our argument did not include every point of that which Milton has assigned to the forlorn disputants of his infernal regions.  My departure from Dublin ended these happy hours of companionship, and I exchanged that academe and my beloved Plato in petticoats for my play-house work at Liverpool.  The following letter was in answer to one Mrs. Jameson wrote me upon the subject of a lady whom she had recommended to my mother as a governess for my sister, who was now in her sixteenth year.