PARENTAGE AND EARLY LIFE 7 



Rev. Francis Orpen, Vicar of Kilgarvan, in the 

 county of Kerry. To them were born a large 

 family of sons and daughters. Of the former, the 

 eldest is the subject of this memoir. He was born 

 in the house purchased by his father near the Cove 

 of Cork, opposite the harbour-mouth. This situa- 

 tion was a very beautiful one. The charm of the 

 scene, the constant coming and going of men-of-war 

 and other ships, the brilliant verdure of the trees 

 and meadows that seemed to touch the very waters 

 of the lovely estuary that reached its limits at the 

 city of Cork, the song of the birds on land, the 

 graceful sailing of the sea-gulls through the air, or 

 their light buoyancy as they rested on the top of 

 the waves sights and sounds such as these made 

 a deep and a lifelong impression upon his active 

 mind and retentive memory, and perhaps first 

 kindled, or at least fanned, the flame of that strong 

 passion and admiration for the wonders and beauties 

 of nature which from those early days up to the 

 very end of his long life never left him. As an 

 infant, he seemed so delicate that it was thought 

 there was but little chance of his living ; but in 

 reality his constitution was a remarkably good one. 

 When reading with a tutor for Oxford as a young 

 man, he had successively scarlet fever, ague, 

 jaundice, and inflammation of the lungs, and when 

 about eight-and-twenty he nearly lost his life with 

 an attack of small-pox. But these ailments in no 

 way injured his constitution ; indeed, after the last 

 dangerous illness was over, he was, as he used to 



