Loftus, moreover, was a good Irish scholar, and from Celtic MSS. had elicited some cross-lights upon his subject—­not very bright or steady, I allow—­but enough to delight the rector, and inspire him with a tender reverence for the indefatigable and versatile youth, who was devoting to the successful equitation of their hobby so many of his hours, and so much of his languages, labour, and brains.

Lord Castlemallard was accustomed to be listened to, and was not aware how confoundedly dull his talk sometimes was.  It was measured, and dreamy, and every way slow.  He was entertaining the courteous old general at the head of the table, with an oration in praise of Paul Dangerfield—­a wonderful man—­immensely wealthy—­the cleverest man of his age—­he might have been anything he pleased.  His lordship really believed his English property would drop to pieces if Dangerfield retired from its management, and he was vastly obliged to him inwardly, for retaining the agency even for a little time longer.  He was coming over to visit the Irish estates—­perhaps to give Nutter a wrinkle or two.  He was a bachelor, and his lordship averred would be a prodigious great match for some of our Irish ladies.  Chapelizod would be his headquarters while in Ireland.  No, he was not sure—­he rather thought he was not of the Thorley family; and so on for a mighty long time.  But though he tired them prodigiously, he contrived to evoke before their minds’ eyes a very gigantic, though somewhat hazy figure, and a good deal stimulated the interest with which a new arrival was commonly looked for in that pleasant suburban village.  There is no knowing how long Lord Castlemallard might have prosed upon this theme, had he not been accidentally cut short, and himself laid fast asleep in his chair, without his or anybody else’s intending it.  For overhearing, during a short pause, in which he sipped some claret, Surgeon Sturk applying some very strong, and indeed, frightful language to a little pamphlet upon magnetism, a subject then making a stir—­as from a much earlier date it has periodically done down to the present day—­he languidly asked Dr. Walsingham his opinion upon the subject.

Now, Dr. Walsingham was a great reader of out-of-the-way lore, and retained it with a sometimes painful accuracy; and he forthwith began—­

’There is, my Lord Castlemallard, a curious old tract of the learned Van Helmont, in which he says, as near as I can remember his words, that magnetism is a magical faculty, which lieth dormant in us by the opiate of primitive sin, and, therefore, stands in need of an excitator, which excitator may be either good or evil; but is more frequently Satan himself, by reason of some previous oppignoration or compact with witches.  The power, indeed, is in the witch, and not conferred by him; but this versipellous or Protean impostor—­these are his words—­will not suffer her to know that it is of her own natural endowment, though for the present charmed into somnolent inactivity by the narcotic of primitive sin.’