The Romance of the Aristocracy
by John Bernard Burke (9780217635936)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE HOUSE OF OEMONDE. A Stranger visiting the Castle of Kilkenny, and wandering through the splendid collection of paintings that adorn this ancient mansion of the noble race of Ormonde, may well fall into meditation on times long passed, and memories almost faded away. The belles, the wits, the courtiers, and the courtezans of the Merry Monarch are here congregated, and the sight is dazzled by the gorgeous blaze of beauty and dress, depicted by Sir Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey Kneller, until the weariness of excess of glare is relieved by the sober colouring of Vandyke, or the religious tenderness of Carlo Dolci. Here are kings and queens in all their pomp: King Charles I. and his unhappy queen; King Charles II., King James II., Queen Mary, Queen Anne, the Royal Family, by Vandyke; the Duchess of Richmond, by Sir Godfrey Kneller; with portraits of various members of the Ormonde family; Scripture - pieces; landscapes, flowers, mingled with saints and sinners; gay knights and grave senators; a motley and distinguished array. What food for thought is here for the imaginative mind What tales these silent beings could tell were the canvas animated Here are kings who, during their career on earth, experienced all the vicissitudes of fortune, the privations that afflict the meanest subject?hunger and poverty,and terror of enemies, and loss of friends and fortune. One was exiled, another dethroned, another beheaded. Here are youthful beauties, radiant in smiles and charms, who lived till those smiles ceased to captivate, and those charms to win admiration. What feelings are aroused by the sad fate of many a proud noble here standing clad in his peer's robes. The battle-field witnessed the death-throes of some, the sod of a foreign land covered the bones of others. And now their f...

USD $27.55

   Dispatch: 3 to 7 business days, stock levels permitting