health. He wrote from Italy to many of his friends—the first men of the day, both in France and England. Then came the home-sickness, which so often precedes dissolution. In the summer of 1784 he set out on his journey to England, hoping to reach it by short and easy stages. He reached Paris with difficulty: the fatigue brought on a low fever he had not the strength to support. He died on the 10th of August, at Dover, in the 71st year of his age.
“Poor Ramsay:” so Johnson wrote touchingly to Reynolds. “On which side soever I turn, mortality presents its formidable frown. I left three old friends at Lichfield when I was last there, and now I found them all dead. I no sooner lost sight of dear Allan than I am told that I shall see him no more! That we must all die, we all know. I wish I had sooner remembered it. Do not think me intrusive or importunate if I now call, dear sir, on you, to remember it!”
A handsome, acute, accomplished gentleman, outstripping all the painters of his age in the extent of his learning and the variety of his knowledge—an artist of delicacy and taste, rather than of energy and vigour—pale in colour and placid in expression, yet always graceful and refined—there was a charm about his works that his contemporaries thoroughly understood, though they could not always themselves attain it. Northcote gave a close and clever criticism on the king’s painter in this wise:—“Sir Joshua used to say that he was the most sensible among all the painters of his time; but he has left little to show it. His manner was dry and timid. He stopped short in the middle of his work because he knew exactly how much it wanted. Now and then we find hints and sketches, which show what he might have done if his hand had been equal to his conceptions. I have seen a picture of his of the Queen soon after she was married—a profile, and slightly done: but it was a paragon of elegance. She had a fan in her hand. Lord, how she held that fan! It was weak in execution and ordinary in features—all I can say of it is, that it was the farthest possible removed from everything like vulgarity. A professor might despise it, but in the mental part I have never seen anything of Vandyke’s equal to it. I could have looked at it for ever. I don’t know where it is now: but I saw enough in it to convince me that Sir Joshua was right in what he said of Ramsay’s great superiority. I should find it difficult to produce anything of Sir Joshua’s that conveys an idea of more grace and delicacy. Reynolds would have finished it better; the other was afraid of spoiling what he had done, and so left it a mere outline. He was frightened before he was hurt.” This was high praise of the king’s painter, coming from his rival’s pupil.
THE CITY OF THE TRIBES.
Can there be anybody not yet tolerably familiar with the Galway subsidy? During the time that the discussion lasted, no one could take up a newspaper without seeing the unfortunate subject, “toujours perdrix,” in some shape or other, whether debate, letter, or article, though the interest that Galway affairs excited in English news was nothing to the prominence that they received in the Irish papers. There the difficulty was to find a column in which anything but the subsidy was mentioned, or the systematic injustice of the English government descanted upon.
As I happened to be staying in Galway during the fever-heat of the affair, it may well be imagined that I heard enough of it to last my natural life; but apart from the politics, I found in the town so much to interest, that I cannot refrain from writing about it, in the hopes that some of my readers may be induced to visit it en route to Connemara. There are two points of view from which to examine Galway;—the present, upon which the success or ill-success of its future will hang; and the past, which is still visible in an uncommon degree in the style and architecture of its streets, as well as the dress and features of its inhabitants.
Hundreds of years ago, when Ireland was all but a terra ignota to the rest of the world—when the natives of Connaught passed their rude lives little better than did the beasts of the field—when to be an Irish king was synonymous with every species of dissension and turbulence, there was yet one bright spot amidst the gloominess of those uncivilised times. A pleasant, busy little town had sprung up on the shores of one of the many lovely bays that indent the west coast of Ireland,—so ancient was its first foundation, that even Ptolemy mentions it in his writings; and although in subsequent times it had been destroyed over and over again by the Danes, or by the people of Munster, who regarded the colony with a jealous eye, the little town of Dune-pun-na-Gaillve, or the Fortification at the mouth of the Galway, rose up after every attack with renewed vigour to fulfil its destiny. Of its early inhabitants, previous to the invasion of Connaught by Henry II., tradition says little or nothing; but after that event a few families settled in Galway to such good purpose, and with such tenacity, that their descendants, even at this period, are found high and low, and indeed make up the bulk of the leading citizens. These colonists are known to this day by the name of the Tribes of Galway—an expression first invented by Cromwell’s forces, as a term of reproach, to denote their attachment to each other during the troubles, but afterwards adopted by them as an honourable mark of distinction between them and their oppressors.
Amongst these fourteen so-called Tribes, the names of Blake, D’Arcy, Bodkin, French, Joyce, Lynch, and Martin are as household words in the annals of the town; and were a stranger required to hazard the name of any given Galway inhabitant, he might pretty safely pronounce it to be either Blake or Lynch.
If their Connaught or Munster neighbours regarded them with no loving eyes, it must, on the other hand, be allowed that the Tribes were particularly careful in keeping themselves to themselves, and scarcely ever permitted the natives to enter their strongly-walled property. Many amusing anecdotes are still extant, showing