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| DRAWING ROOM, CARTON HOUSE, CO. KILDARE. -The picture presents a view of the splendid Drawing Room at Carton House, county Kildare, the Irish seat of the Duke of Leinster, head of the illustrious family of the Geraldines, or Fitzgeralds, who have an ancestry, in the words of Curran, "nobler than the royalty that first ennobled them; that, like a rich river, rose and ran until it hid its fountain!" But it is not because the royal blood of the O'Neills and the Plantagenets flows in their veins that Ireland reveres the Geraldines. It is because of the bloodshed by them in her cause- "Since Silken Thomas flung King Henry's sword on council board the English Thanes among!" But since Lord Edward "fell to earth" in the red days of 1798, the Fitzgeralds of Kildare have made no sign. Unlike their warlike ancestors, they have sought wives in the aristocratic families of England, so that the ancient, gallant spirit, which once mad them "more Irish than the Irish," is materialy subdued. They are no longer "by Irish mother nursed," and more's the pity. Carton House was built toward the latter part of the 18th century, in the Grecian style of architecture, after the design of Richard Cassell. It is considered very elegant in all its details. The Dukedom of Leinster stands first in the peerage of Ireland, bu, owing to the confiscations in the reign of Henry VIII, its wealth is hardly on a par with its renown. |
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