But, here and there, a string of the harp
that has hung, mute, on Tara's walls for so many centuries, utters a
sigh of sweet sound, and at Number 6, The Mall, Cluhir, the soul of
music had still some power of inspiration.
This is, perhaps, a rather elaborate method of intimating that Dr.
Mangan played the violin, moderately as to technique, but soundly as
to intonation, and that he and his family sang, as a quartet, not only
at charity concerts, but also for their own pleasure, in their own
home. Music, more than the other arts, demands sympathy, and an
audience. In Larry, the Mangan Quartet recognised that both
requirements were supplied, together with a glorifying enthusiasm of
appreciation--though this they scarcely recognised--that gilded for
him their achievements, as the firelight had edged the profile of
Nurse Brennan with pure gold. Larry, it has already been said, had the
artistic temperament; he had also a generous heart, and he was of an
age when appreciation is spontaneous, and criticism is either unborn,
or is only an echo of some maturer mind. Therefore, as he lay on the
Mangan blue rep-covered drawing-room sofa, with a satin cushion
adorned with Tishy's conception of roses, in water-colour, under his
head, while pretty Nurse Brennan gently massaged his wrist, and the
Mangan Quartet warbled: "O, believe me if all those endearing young
charms," or "When thro' life unblest we rove," Larry passed into
ecstasy, that, had he been one degree less of a schoolboy, might have
been exhaled in tears; even as the sun draws water from the sea, in a
mist of glory, and returns it to the world again in rain.
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