455 
Treland, this present A. D. 1860’—can any one bring himself to believe 
that the painter could imscribe 1870? A portrait painter, who has to 
remark and to record every line and variation in his sitter, cannot be an 
absent man. <A man in a state of intoxication could not paint letters of 
any size, and I suppose those on the Muckross painting are of small di- 
mensions. We may at any time make a mistake as to the day of the 
month, but, after the first week in January, we never make a mistake 
in the date of the year; and then it is the past, instead of the present, 
we use, 1859 for 1860. Surely, it would not be ten years hence, 
1870. 
Allowing common sense to give place to good nature, let us try to 
suppose that our artist did paint A. D. 1870, in the absence of mind, or 
in the bewilderment of wine. Yet, is it not passing strange that in this 
haze he could copy the long inscription Mr. Herbert had given him with 
only one mistake, and that the only fact, the every-day matter of 
fact, with which he was perfectly well acquainted, the date of the pre- 
sent year? Well, let that pass. But paint will not dry for some days 
(1 know it would not in 1824, and I infer that it does not in 1860). 
Then, during those days, before the picture could be sent home, did the 
painter continue in this haze, and the mistake of the date remain un- 
noticed? Were there no apprentices, or assistants, who watched and 
scrutinized ‘‘ Master’s doings,’ be he clear or hazy—no curiosity to 
read what was said on the canvas about this lady from the country, a 
circumstance so very unusual? no visitors, no new sitters, all anxious 
to see, and the painter more anxious to show zs portrait of the great 
and beautiful lady from the Kingdom of Kerry, for whom gentle and 
simple had but the same appellation, ‘‘The Kerry Diamond”? And 
were all eyes and intellects as hazy as the painter’s had been, and con- 
tinued to be? Assume all this, and (as Mr. Roebuck remarked to one 
who assumed that the Admiralty had done all that they ought to have 
done), you assume a great deal! Beitso. And now the picture is 
sent to Mr. Herbert. But will he not read the inscription, and will he 
overlook 1870 for 1860? You say at once that he certainly will read, 
and will not overlook the blunder. So, the portrait is returned for cor- 
rection, and comes back to Mr. Herbert with ‘‘this Present A. D.’’ 1860. 
Now, if the Muckross portrait had been painted from the living 
Kathrin, Countess of Desmond, it must have been for some one (like my 
supposed portrait of Mrs. Herbert) interested in having it taken, who 
had furnished the inscription, and who, consequently, would have de- 
tected the erroneous date of ‘‘thys preasant A. D.,” and have had it al- 
tered to the true time. 
Thus we see that, in the anxiety of the composer of this inscription 
to silence doubt, by inserting ‘‘ thys preasant A. D. 1614,” how he has 
thereby defeated himself. 
But his ignorance has led him into a blunder, which alone would 
prove his pretentious statement to be a comparatively modern fabrica- 
tion—the Countess’s Christian name on the canvas commences with C, 
instead of K. I have no doubt that C was the usual mode when the 
