Last Colonel Of The Irish Brigade PDF Download

Excerpt from The Last Colonel of the Irish Brigade, Vol. 1 of 2: Count O'connell, and Old Irish Life at Home and Abroad; 1745-1833 He may fairly claim to represent the best type of the refined, scholarly, and scientific officer of the old time. His brother Maurice, witty, wealthy, and wise, was a remarkable man in his own way. He lived in seeming seclusion and voluntary obscurity, yet amassed a great fortune in spite of the anti-Popery laws, and carried on a most interesting political correspondence with the leading Protestants of his county. We find him about to be tried for his life in 1782, and appointed a Deputy-Governor for Kerry a few years later. Their many-childed mother, with her weird gift of Irish improvisation, her practical shrewdness and good housewifery, and the extraordinary influence she wielded in her family until her death at near ninety years of age, seems to me a figure of no common interest. In the letters of ninety years, dry and formal indeed for the most part, we see the real life of the old Irish people at home and abroad. I confess these old letters upset most of our preconceived notions. Here we find Irish-folk abhorring drink and debt, and living on the best terms with their heretical neighbours. Some of them are fighting against England abroad, others defying English laws at home; yet they share one sentiment, and in these pages they show a most curious desire to be suffered to be loyal. These neatly traced letters are written by all sorts and conditions of men-generals and schoolboys, bishops and priests, lawyers, merchants, and politicians. My dear husband remembered his grand-uncle, Count O'Connell; and I have met many other old people who had a lively recollection of a tall, straight, handsome old man, who was kindness personified. The vicissitudes of Count O'Connell's long life seem to me worthy of a careful record. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.