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* * * * *
SOCIETY OF UNITED IRISHMEN.
At the head of the table, which occupied the centre of the apartment,
and in an arm-chair raised by a few steps from the floor, sat the
president of the society of United Irishmen. He alone was covered, and
though plainly dressed, there was an air of high breeding and
distinction about him; while in his bland smile were exhibited, the open
physiognomy of pleasantness, and love-winning mildness, which still mark
the descendants of the great Anglo-Norman Lords of the Pale, the Lords
of Ormond, Orrery, and Arran, the Mount Garrets, and Kilkennys,--in
former times, the great oligarchs of Ireland, and in times more recent,
the grace and ornament of the British court.
The president was the Honourable Simon Butler: beside him, on a lower
seat, sat the secretary. His uncovered head, and unshaded temples
received the full light of the suspended lamp. It was one of those
finely chiselled heads, which arrest the imagination, and seem to bear
incontrovertible evidence of the certainty of physiognomical science.
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