text:  By what strange love of contrast is it that the human mind is never more open to the dazzling effects of beauty splendour and gaiety than when it has been wrapt in the profoundest sorrow? Are the confines of joy and anguish so close? Is there but a hair's-breadth intervention of some invisible nerve some slender web of imagination between mirth and melancholy? The Irish are a handsome race and none more enjoy or are more fitted by nature or temper for all the ornamental displays of society; a Castle ball was always a glittering exhilaration of lustre and beauty