embarrass subsequent discussion. He had procured a copy of the Windsor picture, and condemned it from that copy.* * On Pennant's coming to Strawberry Hill, he communicated to him his "discovery" that it was Rembrandt's mother; and the picture at Dupplin Castle having also been attributed to Rembrandt, in his hasty conclusions that likewise became "Rembrandt's mother." Pennant, when Walpole's visitor, listened with due courtesy and deference, and probably was inclined to acquiesce in the judgment of the self-sufficient virtuoso of Strawberry Hill; but, having been at the expense of engraving the Dupplin portrait, he naturally sought for further satisfaction, and this he fairly obtained, according to Cole's reply to Mr. Walpole, which was in the following words (June 2, 1774):

"Mr. Lort, some two months ago, wrotet to me that Mr. Pennant was come to town to print his new Tour: he informed me of your doubts relating to the Countess of Desmond, and of your dissertation in the Fugitive Pieces concerning her, on which account he got an introduction to you and came back very blank, as Mr. Lort expressed it, on his being convinced that your information destroyed the originality and authenticity of his print taken from a picture he met with in Scotland. But this damp lasted but a short time; for Mr. Lort, who is keeper of the Duke of Devonshire's medals, carried him in a day or two after to Devonshire House, where in a garret he showed him an old picture, exactly resembling his print and on it the Countess's name. This I suppose determined him to publish it in his book, which I have not yet seen; but I rather wonder that, after the civilities received from you, on the

Being at Strawberry Hill in April, 1773, I saw there a copy of the picture commonly attributed to the old Countess of Desmond; but Mr. Walpole told me that there is sufficient proof that it is a painter's mother, I think Rembrandt's." Memorandum by Cole in Mr. Markland's copy of the Fugitive Pieces (the Strawberry Hill edition presented by Walpole to Cole), and communicated by Mr. Markland to Notes and Queries, I. iv. 426. In the Catalogue of Strawberry Hill will be found this "Drawing of Rembrandt's mother, from the picture at Windsor, called the Countess of Desmond: by Muntz." It hung in Mr. Walpole's own bedchamber.-The Works of Horatio Walpole, Earl of Orford, 4to. 1798, vol. ii. p. 453.

On the 15th April, 1774, as appears by the continuation of Cole's Memorandum quoted in the preceding note.

occasion, he did not acquaint you with the motives that induced him to alter his plan."

On the 21st October following Mr. Pennant writes to Granger:*

"I have examined the Countess of Desmond's picture at Windsor. Not a word is there on the back of its being Rembrandt's mother, whose print I have now seen, and am convinced that you and I are right, malgré Mr. Walpole."

And two years later (June 30, 1776,) we find Cole thus writing to Pennant, in answer to a letter apparently not preserved :

"From the proofs you bring of its authenticity, I make no doubt but the inscription on the back of that at Windsor is a mistake."

All parties continued to be wrong, in treating the question of the two pictures as inseparable, as Walpole heedlessly, if not wilfully, had led the way. It is now clear that the picture at Windsor Castle is by Rembrandtwhether of his mother or another old woman-but it is a different head to that at Dupplin Castle.f On the other hand, Cole's letter of the 2nd June, 1774, appears to afford satisfactory evidence of the similarity of the Chatsworth picture to those at Dupplin Castle and Muckross. It is desirable, however, that the picture at Chatsworth should be examined, and its age, if possible, ascertained; if it has descended with the Burlington estates, we may suppose that it was painted for one of the Earls of Cork, as a memorial of their memorable predecessor at the castle of Inchiquin.

According to Mr. Sainthill a portrait was a thing almost unknown in Ireland in the time of the Countess of Desmond.

"Judging from what I have seen, and from my inquiries, addressed to the present representatives of old and estated families, I am strongly impressed with the conviction that Family Portrai ture in Ireland was diffused by the Cromwellians. Settling down

*Letters between the Rev. James Granger and eminent Literary Men edited by J. P. Malcolm, 1805, 8vo. p. 157.

The latest writers will not make this distinction. Sir Bernard Burke, in his book of last year, even states that Pennant engraved from the Windsor picture.

upon the lands which their swords had transferred to them, they seem to have placed a picture of their chief in their castles and mansions as the penates, or protecting power, of their acquired possessions. At the mansion of a Cromwellian family in the county of Tipperary I saw the great Lord Protector, the only portrait in the house. Another came under my ken, from a county of Cork family; and I have a third, a very fine painting, the features much softened down, but the characteristic likeness preserved. It descended to the gentleman who sold it to me from Colonel Barachia Wallis, who wrested the castle and lands of Carrigrohane, county of Cork, from the Philistine Barrett.

"At the expulsion of James II. the victors set up their idol, King William, in rivalry of the Protector, and family portraits seem from this period, though very slowly, to make their appearance. In private families I have seen few authenticated before the close of George the Second's reign, nor did the taste seem to have had much existence among the nobility. At Portumna Castle there was a portrait of the great Marquess of Clanricarde of the time of Charles I. and the only other was that of the late Earl. Both must have perished when the castle was burned. At Rostellan Castle the oldest portrait, and in my estimation the only family painting of merit, was that of the celebrated Morrough O'Bryen, sixth Baron of Inchiquin, created Earl by Charles II. So, at length, I come to the conclusion that at the period of our Old Countess, portrait painting was an art not practised in Ireland."

These observations of Mr. Sainthill are remarkable and worthy of attention. He has, however, omitted the further reflection that if there were no portrait-painters in Ireland in the reign of James the First, and it is improbable (as he argues) that any foreign artist should have travelled to the county of Cork in order to paint the aged Countess, then such circumstances are actually confirmatory of the statement of the inscription-that the Countess came to England, and that opportunity was taken to preserve her "veritable portraiture" whilst she was within a painter's reach.

In that case, Dr. Rowan's question, Is there a portrait of her? is answered in the affirmative. Her real portraiture is at Muckross, at Dupplin Castle, and, if we are not misinformed, also at Chatsworth. The second of these, which was published by Pennant, is, "malgré Mr. Walpole," no vulgar head;" whilst the photograph given by Archdeacon Rowan presents the same features, regular and handsome, the historic proud countenance of the Geraldines."

66

ART. IV.-The Holy Communion, its Philosophy, Theology, and Practice. By John Bernard Dalgairns, Priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. Dublin and London: James Duffy, 1861.

It is almost tits piger, ur toword attentively T is almost impossible to take up this work, to glance, any portion of it, however small, without thinking of the wondrous and blessed contrast, which has ever existed, and must always continue to be developed in everything between our holy faith and the "legal" Protestantism by which we are surrounded. How different is this book from another literary production that has brought so much scandal, and schism, and shame, to the Establishment! Different in the spirit which suggested its conception and presided over its execution, in the end proposed to be obtained, in the principles out of which its conclusions were developed. Different, above all, how very different! in the standard by which its orthodoxy will be tested, in the feelings with which it will be received by the public to which it is addressed, in the manner in which the author would seek to defend its positions or explain its ambiguities, in the authority and legislation by which it will be judged. Can the same name of "religion" be applied to designate systems which lead to such opposite results?

In the one case we have a work, consisting of a series of essays on themes selected, one might believe, for the points which they present favourable for an attack on the whole economy of revelation, under cover of the modern discoveries of science. It is the production of men holding high preferment in the Church "as by law established," or charged with grave educational duties embracing within their sphere even the special training for their future vocation of candidates for a professedly Christian ministry. Its authors disown, indeed, any solidarity of intention, or common responsibility, but they acknowledge a "co-operation" in execution and design, like that of several corps d'armée which move forward independently, yet simultaneously, to secure the one grand object of the campaign. In its publication every circumstance which could increase its notoriety, or enlarge its circulation, was eagerly pressed into service; impediments to its favour

able reception were softened down, even obstacles were dexterously converted into means of success. When it appeared, it was at once recognized as an attack, sometimes open and undisguised, sometimes covert and insidious, not on Christianity alone, but on the whole system. of revelation, and on the very notion of a supernatural Providence. This attack is conducted with all the ingenuity and ability of great and varied talents, long and successfully trained, and laboriously cultivated; it is supported by an erudition which every one must admire, were it not for the shameless uses to which it is prostituted; it is sustained by a logic which has been styled "remorseless," but is only reckless; it is carried on in a spirit of hostility, occasionally active, but sometimes simply contemptuous, calmly ignoring the existence of the Christian Faith, and laying down propositions irreconcileable with revealed truth, with a coolness which almost amounts to audacity. The inspired volume which chronicles the fortunes of the chosen people, preserves the teachings by which Providence sought to rescue them from the universal moral shipwreck of their fellow-men, and records that marvellous series of prophecies which, becoming clearer and fuller as the tide of time rolled on, like the wakening brightness of the dawn expanding into day, were designed to arouse and fortify fallen humanity in the belief that its redemption was nigh-this sacred treasure, kept of old, by God's command in the very Ark of the Covenant itself, and received from the Fathers of the Old Testament as the most precious gift which they could hand over to their successors of the New; this most venerable book of God's Written Word, guarded by the Church in her days of persecution with the most jealous care from even the bodily touch of the heathen, shielded by her most dread decrees and terrible anathemas from the vain glosses and false interpretations of the unfaithful or the presumptuous, and borne aloft in her (councils, and assemblies, and solemn rites, surrounded by lights and swinging censers, and venerating ministers-this most ancient and hallowed monument of God's ineffable communications to man is compared by those writers, styling themselves christian, with the epic of the pagan and the discourse of the rene gade, nay, is not considered by them to come victorious out of the comparison. The great miraculous facts of the Old Testament are altogether denied, or explained away,