concessions will, probably, have to be made, and in that case a bill satisfactory to all parties will be the result. One word in conclusion: the Conservative government have proved themselves as ardent reformers in a right direction as can be expected, or, indeed, desired. It has been urged against them that they are more liberal than the Liberals, and ready to carry any measures which will secure their seats; but this argument is as false as it is absurd. False, because an analysis of the measures they have passed and proposed to pass will show that these are perfectly consistent with the doctrines of Conservatism; absurd, because the members of the administration are not men who desire place for their mere emolument. They accepted office from a higher and nobler motive; they saw that the interests of their country at home and abroad were being imperilled by the reckless course of the late administration, and they thought it their duty to disregard all selfish considerations in behalf of our common welfare. Lord Derby was not treated so well in 1852 that he should desire power for itself; he has no self-interests to serve, no family to aggrandise at the expense of the nation, but he has a large stake in the country, and he feels it his bounden duty to keep that country in the right track. This will fully explain the favour which the Liberal party has shown him: they know him as the upright statesman who will fight to the death for what he regards as right, but who is willing to listen to the voice of reason; and, better still, those honest Liberals who believe that their country would be best served by an increased franchise, are willing to accept Lord Derby's government as a guarantee that their rights will not be insidiously invaded. And they, too, behave with perfect frankness; whenever they feel themselves strong enough to try the issue, they will declare hostilities in a manly fashion, and the struggle will be carried on with integrity on both sides. It is the knowledge that the Whigs are equally dangerous as friends or foes, and ready to throw their allies overboard when they can gain any advantage for themselves, which has caused the Liberal party to furnish Lord Derby their support. But no fear need be entertained of Lord Derby sacrificing one of his principles on behalf of place; and, whenever the country evinces a desire for a change, he will acquiesce at once in the wishes of the nation. As any change, however, at the present, can only be for the worse, we are disposed to believe that Lord Derby will have ample time and opportunity to carry out those measures which he honestly believes necessary and desirable for the best interests of his fatherland. THE EARLS OF KILDARE.* THE Marquis of Kildare's brief preface to this carefully compiled account of his ancestors is as follows: "The following notices of the FitzGeralds of Kildare, having been collected from the historical works in the libraries at Carton and Kilka, were printed for private circulation in 1857. The favourable opinions expressed by friends who have read that work have induced me to publish it." The publication of so accurate a summary of the history of the ducal house of Leinster is not without some general interest, since the story of this very ancient and illustrious family is closely interwoven with the history of Ireland, a kingdom principally conquered by their valour, and for centuries governed by them. Moreover, the authorship of the volume, by the accomplished and worthy heir of the dukedom, renders it specially valuable. That the stirring and touching fortunes of the Leinster Geraldines have found an historian in a member of the family, the natural, and therefore the best illustrator of those whose blood animates him, is a circumstance we hail on its own account, and as an exemplar and forerunner of similar labours by similarly interested hands. We may mention that the late Marquis of Ormonde, whose chief pleasure lay in the gratification of his refined literary tastes, was engaged before the time of his death in selecting materials for a history of his house, which does not yield in fame to this now so duly celebrated. "Genus et proavos, et quæ non fecimus ipsæ, vix ea nostra voco," quoth the Roman poet. Yet assuredly our proavi seem to be our own, and we should feel very grateful to them if they had bequeathed us a fine estate and an ancient coronet. Certainly such hereditary considerations would induce us to dwell with pleasure on their memory; and, since delight in the subject is the real stimulus of all excellence in writing, the labour would be so much one of love, that we should expect to endow our composition with a hearty grace, beyond the reach of mere literary art. One of the most diligent and talented elucidators of the domestic life of English royal and noble families, Sir Harris Nicolas, observes in his edition of the Scrope and Grosvenor roll, that "if the literature of this country be compared with that of France and Italy, it will be found extremely defective in memoirs of eminent families." Scotland, poorer in purse, but rich in clan feeling, has produced excellent works of this kind, from the days of Hume of Godscroft's quaint "History of the Douglases" to Lord Lindsay's delightful "Lives of the Lindsays." Ireland, on the other hand, has proved fainéante in recording her races by the instrumentality of printer's ink. Excepting the folio" Memoirs of the Marquis of Clanricarde," and Carte's voluminous "Life of the First Duke of Ormonde," we cannot quote any works of the class in question; and these are biographies rather than family memorials. But it may now follow that the Ormondes, Nugents, Talbots, O'Briens, De Burghs, &c., will show themselves not *The Earls of Kildare and their Ancestors, from 1057 to 1773. By the Marquis of Kildare. Third edition. Dublin: Hodges and Smith. 1858. VOL. XLIV. Q less mindful of their past than many representatives of distinguished houses in the sister kingdoms have, by publications of the latter character, proved themselves to be. With Scottishmen, their inborn zeal in the matter received a strong impulse from Abbotsford, where the rough ore extracted from mines of this nature was elaborated into brilliant and imperishable forms. Indeed, the motives for such labours do not need either explanation or recommendation; but the circumstance that new veins in the old field of Ireland are worthy of labourers is not so generally well known. 'Faith, the only fault we incline to find with the book before us is, that it is somewhat meagre, considering the quantity of unextracted archaic metal, and the numerousness of the nuggets of historic curiosity and value, which we know may be found lying on the surface of Irish archæologic diggings. Perhaps, however, the very mass of material deterred our young and noble author from turning it over; and he may also have been undesirous of increasing the bulk of his already goodly volume, which originally was merely meant for presentation. Nobility of descent has been defined to arise from ancient possession of riches. But this narrow definition leaves out of view all but the mere fact of a long descent, sustained in wealth, to the ignoring of the high nobility conferred by a succession of forefathers illustrious in the history of their country, whose memory creates a sentiment sufficiently strong to serve their descendants with honourably cogent motives. "Stemmata quid faciunt?" was the sneer of another Roman satirist, answered by a pithy sentence from our great dramatist, "The grace of ancestry chalks successors their way." Mere possession of wealth from so far back as the age of Edward the Confessor but slenderly enhances the claims of the Geraldines to fame, since theirs has been no ordinary fortune, during a thousand years, from the day when the Confessor planted their baronial root in English soil. After that day, their great tree flung its lustiest branch over Ireland, a kingdom chiefly gained, as we have said, by their enterprise and bravery; and if lighter memorials may be sought for the Leinster line than that they were for centuries governors and preservers of that kingdom, we may trace them, at the head of their forces, following the Plantagenet monarchs to the wars in Scotland, standing beside them in the trenches of Calais, and battling in England in support of the White Rose. Their own country was, however, naturally the principal scene of their valour and patriotism, the country of their birth and their homes, and loved by them with the full fervency of their spirit. Their characteristics are well painted in the fine verses of a late national poet, in an ode specially addressed to them. Let us take but a single stanza: Ye Geraldines! ye Geraldines! how royally ye reigned O'er Desmond broad and rich Kildare, and English arts disdained; Old hereditary feuds, exasperated by religious dissensions, did indeed suddenly precipitate them into rebellion, in an attempt to crush the Reformation at its birth in Ireland; and then confiscation temporarily over 2 whelmed them. But they rose again, purified, as it were, by adversity, and commenced a safer and more serviceable career; and so added to their riches and dignity as to place their representative at the head of the peerage of their country. Such ancient and accumulated honours well warrant due family pride, which, indeed, is one of the most ennobling incentives to action and improvement. High blood, generally outwardly evident in men and women, sometimes tells in their characteristics, which are, at the least, interesting to trace through a long and distinguished line, whether its uncommon energy was for good or for evil. We are by no means inclined to lay much stress upon all high birth, since some blood may be ignoble though ancient as the Flood, if it stagnates in the veins of sots and cowards. No one will deny the merits of breed when the struggle is for the winning-post on the Curragh of Kildare, all men preferring to back breeding when choosing a favourite. But, among mankind, the race is not always, so far as we can judge, for the best-born, nor is the distinction between the runners, the ruck of the gentle-born, so marked as to entitle any to claim a pre-eminence as owing to their mere extraction. The ranks of our nobility and gentry are happily blended, without any of the offensive assumption which exists among some of the noblesse of the Continent, who arrogate a superiority on the special score of pedigree, but are frequently excelled in what is of real value by men of the class they superficially and superciliously treat as inferior. Those counts and barons of France and Germany are also unable to understand the position of our commoners, men of old and wealthy families, but who, thinking that our peerage houses are the exclusively "noble" families, find themselves classed, when abroad, upon saying that they are not noble, among bourgeois and roturiers, whereas they are quite on a par with the ordinary noblesse, according to Lord Coke, an adequate authority, who lays the law on this point down thus: "Nobiles sunt qui arma gentilicia antecessorum suorum proferre possunt." There is more than meets the eye in the first paragraph of the work under review, setting forth that the Florentine Gherardini were the progenitors of the Geraldines, since the statement, besides being fairly warranted, is a guide towards curiously tracing ethnologic character from generation to generation, and more than mere imagination sanctions our idea that the warm Italian origin of this impulsive Irish race is discernible in their history. "Dominus Otho," one of the Confessor's barons, and ancestor of the English Gerards, as well as of the family in question, is conjectured, with much probability, to have been one of the continental favourites of that Romanised favourer of foreigners, whose growing fortune excited the jealousy of the native Anglo-Saxon nobility. There seems verily to have been a lively dash of southern blood in the hearts of the Giraldida celebrated by Giraldus Cambrensis, their contemporary and kinsman, who ascribes the conquest of Ireland to their intrepidity and policy. And if, as is supposed, this Lord Otho was son of Gherardo, ancestor of the present marchesi of the name in Tuscany, the heat of his Italian extraction frequently displayed itself in his descendants-a haughty and passionate race and showed itself unmistakably in the historically celebrated "Silken Thomas," and in the equally rash and hapless Lord Edward FitzGerald. The silken rebel, an effeminate and fiery young noble, evinced much of the disposition that marked the lawless barons of the Romagna. He obtained his sobriquet from the sumptuous braveries of his train of horsemen, and when he broke, at the dawn of the Reformation, into revolt, the manner in which he, though viceroy, cast away the sword of state and drew his own, slaying his aged enemy, Archbishop Allen, and then heading an insurrection that poured like a stream of lava over the country, argues a nature like that of the fierce princes of climes where rebellion was the public weapon of vengeance, and the poniard the private one. In his time an hereditary feud raged between Geraldine and Butler, the details of which almost equal the ferocities of vendetta revenges. Further inquiry might well be made in verification of the tradition alluded to in one of Surrey's stanzas to the Fair Geraldine, that her family came from Tuscany, and that Florence was their ancient seat. One of the really curious letters in the volume before us is the epistle of 1507, from the eighth Kildare, K.G., and Viceroy of Ireland, to "the family of Gherardini, noble in fame and virtue, our beloved brethren in Florence." Its writer evinces a full measure of his national freehandedness in the concluding paragraph: "If there is anything," writes the generous chief of his mighty name, "that we can procure for you through our labour and industry, or anything that you have not got, such as hawks, falcons, horses, or dogs for the chase, I beg you will inform me of it, as I shall, in every possible way, endeavour to obey your wishes." This was by no means the first, nor last, nor a barren interchange of civilities between these two branches from one stem, which, according to the preface of an old Italian edition of Dante's Divine Comedy, retained the same armorial bearings ;-excepting the Kildare crest and supporters, queer animals, whose adcption as heraldic emblems shall be presently accounted for. During the long exile of the heir of the ninth and attainted peer, this youth, as titular "Signore Gherardo, Conte di Childaria," was joyfully received and supported for many years in Italy, receiving considerable pensions, as the Roman Catholic Pretender to more than the mere feudal earldom he was afterwards restored to. He remained at the court of Florence for three years, as master of the horse to Cosmo de Medici. The following adventure, which happened to him at that time, is related by the chronicler Stanihurst, who lived in 1575 as tutor in Maynooth Castle, and to whom he, then become earl, had evidently related it. Having travelled to Rome "a-shroving," i. e. to shrive, or confess, and, indeed, with another purpose, viz. "to be merry," this young master of the horse to the Duke of Florence was one day hunting with the nephew of the Pope, Cardinal Farnese, when, in the eagerness of pursuing a buck, he became separated from the other huntsmen, and, being unacquainted with "the country," fell into a deep pit; his horse was killed by the fall, but, grasping some roots at the side of the pit, he clung for some time to them, and, when he could hold no longer, slid down upon the body of his horse, and stood upon it for three hours, over his ankles in water. Fortunately for him, his favourite Irish dog, called a "grifhound," missed his master, followed his track, and stood at the edge of the pit, howling. The cardinal and his train, having, |
