When an old woman makes up her mind to be young, she invariably overdoes
it. The gypsy horse-dealers, when they have a particularly ancient horse
to dispose of administer a nostrum to the animal, which has the effect
of keeping him continually in motion, and bestowing on him a temporary
vivacity which a colt would hardly exhibit. Lady Morgan is unnecessarily
frisky. The gypsy's horse, when the effect of the medicine has passed
off, becomes more aged and infirm than ever. What a terrible reaction
must have been the lot of this old lady, after all the capers she had
cut in these passages from her autobiography!
A great, great, great, long time ago, as the story-tellers say, when
novels were few and far between, and an Irish novel was a thing almost
unheard of, a smart, self-educated Irish girl, of, we believe, rather
humble origin, discovered that she had a knack at writing, and, having
published a cleverish novel, called "The Wild Irish Girl," was taken
up by great people, exploited, made the fashion, and had Sir Charles
Morgan, a physician of some standing, given her for a husband. She
continued to write. Her work on France made some noise, on account of
its having been prohibited by the French government; and her subsequent
book on Italy, if not profound, was at least sprightly.
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