positively fixed at 145; so in Mr. Sharon Turner's Sacred History of the World, 1837, iii. 283, and in Mrs. Hale's large volume of female biography entitled "Woman's Record," published in America in 1853. On the print published in 1806 from the Knight of Kerry's picture it is "supposed" that she actually survived the reign of James the First, and died at 162. In the old catalogue of the pictures at Windsor Castle her age was placed at "one hundred and fifty within a few days:" an assertion which, however apparently precise, may probably be attributed to the ipsa dixit of a garrulous housekeeper. As we have not the year of the Countess's birth, nor with absolute certainty that of her death, it is impossible to determine the accurate figures of her longevity; but after having ascertained that she was a bride and a mother late in the reign of Henry the Eighth, instead of that of Edward the Fourth, we must certainly deduct largely from her reputed years. It is more likely that they were a hundred-and-four than a hundred-and-forty.

It is now clear that she can never have danced with Richard Duke of Gloucester. But, after all, her reminiscences of him may have come from her husband: for the Bald old Earl, having been fifty years her senior, may have seen the Prince, either in England, or in Dublin, if Gloucester ever was there.

Of the story which describes the cause of her death there are several variations. Instead of falling from a nut tree, as told to the Earl of Leicester by his cousin Walter Fitz William, Horace Walpole, as his careless humour prompts him, makes her at one time fall from a cherry tree, and at another from a walnut. He writes to the Countess of Ossory, August 22, 1776:

"I propose to conclude my career in a manner worthy of an antiquary, and when I am satiated with years and honours, and arrived at a comfortable old age, to break my neck out of a cherry-tree in

*Easton also varies her dancing partner into the Duke of York instead of Gloucester.

Pote's History and Antiquities of Windsor, 4to. 1749, p. 418. Walter Fitz William was his second cousin, being a younger brother of William first Lord Fitz William of Lifford (created 1620), whose grandmother was Anne daughter of Sir William Sydney.Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, edit. Archdall, ii. 177.

robbing an orchard, like the Countess of Desmond at an hundred and forty."-The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, edit. Cunningham, 1857, vi. 370.

Again to the Countess of Ossory, July 19, 1777 :—

"The Duchess of Queensberry died on Thursday of a surfeit of cherries, as my old Countess of Desmond of robbing a walnut tree, for the Duchess's beauty at seventy-seven was as extraordinary as the other's at an hundred and forty years."-Ibid. p. 461.

Tom Moore, the bard of Erin, adopted one of these perversions

"That she lived to much more than a hundred and ten,
And was killed by a fall from a cherry tree then ;
What a frisky old girl!"-Letters of the Fudge Family.

And this preference of the cherry tree for the story may perhaps be justified by the circumstance that the district of Ireland where the Countess resided had already become famous for a fruit which is said to have been introduced by the great successor of her race, Sir Walter Ralegh. Dromana, the countess's presumed birthplace, in the adjoining county of Waterford, stands in a parish of which the county historian says,

"Affane is famous for the best cherries in this county, or perhaps in Ireland, being first planted here by Sir Walter Rawleigh, who brought them from the Canary Islands."-Dr. Smith's Antient and Present State of the County and City of Waterford, 1774, 8vo. P. 55.

But the author of the Fairy Legends, though, with still further poetic licence, he places the incident in an orchard at Dromana, converts the cherry into an apple tree.

"Drumana, recently the seat of the Earl of Grandison, the reputed birthplace of the long-lived Countess of Desmond, the number of whose years approached so near to those of old Thomas Parr. This wonderful lady, being deprived of her jointure by the attainder of the Earl of Desmond, at the advanced age of one huudred and forty, crossed the Channel to Bristol, and, travelling to London, solicited and obtained relief from James the First. In this part of the country her death is attributed to a fall whilst in the act of picking an apple from a tree in an orchard at Drumana." -Researches in the South of Ireland, by T. Crofton Croker, 4to, 1824, pp. 122-3.

There remains only one more of the anecdotes respecting her unexamined. This is the marvellous statement

that she had three sets of teeth, which some writers have even exaggerated into four. Such is the interpretation put upon the story by Dr. Thomas Fuller, who, in his Worthies of England, (under Northumberland) after commemorating Patrick Macelwain, (a Scot by birth) who in 1657 was the incumbent of Lesbury near Alnwick, and, being then a hundred and ten years of age, had received new hair and two fresh teeth, within three years preceding,*-introduces, in his usual amusing style, the following notice of the Countess of Desmond:

"The nearest that treadeth on his heels is the Countess of Desmond, married in the reign of King Edward the Fourth, and yet alive anno 1589, and many years since, when she was well known to Sir Walter Raleigh and to all the nobles and gentlemen in Munster: but chiefly to the Earls (for there was a succession of them worn out by her vivacity,) of Desmond, from whose expectation she detained her jointer. The Lord Bacon casteth up her age to be an hundred and forty at the least, adding withall Ter per vices dentisse,-that she recovered her teeth, after her casting them three several times."

Another example of dentition in extreme old age is thus noticed by Aubrey :

"One goodwife Mills of Yatton Keynel, a tenant of my father's, did dentiret in the 88 yeare of her age, which was about the yeare 1645. The Lord Chancellour Bacon speakes of the like of the old Countesse of Desmond, in Ireland."-Natural History of Wiltshire, edit. Britton, 4to. 1847, p. 70.

We have corrected these particulars of Maclwain from a letter written by himself to a citizen at Antwerp, published by an author named Plempius, and inserted in Joseph Taylor's Annals of Health and Long Life, 1818. By Fuller he is miscalled Machell Vivan.

This word "dentire" is also used by Dr. W. Rawley (if not by Bacon himself) in the passage quoted at the commencement of this article. It is remarkable that it is quoted in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary (citing Bacon) under the erroneous form dentise. The observation is added "Not in use:" which should have been "Never existed!" Dr. Richardson, in his New Dictionary of the English Language, 1844, 4to. p. 512, has fallen into the same error, notwithstanding that he quotes Bacon in his old orthography. Dr. Noah Webster the American, in his 4to. Dictionary, 1828, has converted it into dentize. It is really a French word: "† Dentir, To

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The reality of any human being having three sets of teeth may be questioned: for, though some other instances of" a new set" at an extreme age are mentioned in the gossiping "Annals of Longevity," yet in all the better authenticated cases the accession is limited to a small number, and where the number is mentioned it is generally only two. Jane Lewson, who died in 1811 at the age of 116, had two new teeth at 87, having never lost one of her former set. Hannah Wilson, who died in 1807, aged 103, had two new teeth after her 85th year. Rebecca Poney, who died in 1795, aged 106, had two new teeth at 102, and all her teeth except two were perfect at her death. Peter Larocque, a butcher in Gascony, who lived to 102, and died in 1768, is said to have cut four large teeth at the age of 92; and Margaret Melvil, who died in 1783, at 117, had "several teeth" when a centenarian. These cases of senile dentition were sometimes accompanied by the return of fresh hair in its original youthful colour; and are paralleled by others in which the sense of vision was renewed. The great John Hunter, in his Treatise on the Human Teeth, admits that a third set has now and then appeared "complete" in very old people, but he seems to make this admission upon report only, for he also says that when such teeth come they usually do so in a very irregular manner, and that he had never seen an instance of the kind but once," and there two

breed young teeth." Cotgrave's French and English Dictionary, edit. Howell, folio, 1673. But the mark + denoted an obsolete word.

*The following case, which occurs in the obituary of the Gentleman's Magazine, resembles that of the Countess of Desmond in more points than one. "July 15, 1751. At Mapleton, Derbyshire, aged 112, Mary How, widow. Her death occasioned by pulling a codling off a tree, the limb of which breaking fell on her arm and broke it. About two years ago she cut a new set of teeth, and her hair turned from grey to a beautiful white, and she had a very florid countenance."-Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xxi. p. 332.

In another copy of this paragraph (in Easton's Health and Longevity) the words "new set of teeth" are altered into "several new teeth," as if the former statement had been in excess of the truth, and confirming the view we have taken on consideration of all the recorded cases.

fore teeth shot up in the lower jaw." He adds that such teeth, coming in one jaw and not in the other, were often more hurtful than useful, as they wounded the opposite gum, and had consequently to be extracted. It seems therefore most probable that the acquisitions of all these veterans were some few teeth only that had remained undeveloped, not required in their early days, but called forth by the last efforts of their vigorous nature. Had they dentired or bred teeth in their old age, as Lord Bacon supposed, they must also have formed, as Hunter suggests, "a new alveolar process, or series of osseous nests in which the teeth are hatched and grown; but these alveolar processes are limited to two, which are both born with us.

We now turn to the second question proposed by the late Archdeacon Rowan, Is there really a Portrait of the Old Countess of Desmond? There are many pictures which professedly represent her; among which it will be hard indeed if we do not find some that are true. The Quarterly Reviewer, in 1853, enumerated seven.

1. At Dromana, her assumed birthplace, the seat of Lord Stuart of Decies.

2. At Chatsworth. Formerly at Devonshire House in Piccadilly.

3. At Knole in Kent.

4. At Windsor Castle.

5. At Dupplin Castle, the mansion of the Earl of Kinnoul.

6. The Knight of Kerry's, at Ballynruderry.

7. Mr. Herbert's at Muckross.

In addition there are said to be,-8. One at Bedgebury in Kent, the seat of Viscount Beresford; and 9. One at the Marquess of Exeter's at Burghley. In the year 1744, Mr. West, (sometime President of the Royal Society,) exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries a portrait of the Countess of Desmond attributed to Levinz.§ Mr. Pennant, in 1772, besides those at Devon

* Works of John Hunter, F.R.S., edit. Palmer, 1835, vol. ii. p. 36. † Notes and Queries, I. iii. 341. Ibid. I. v. 260.

Camden's Britannia, edit. Gough, 1789, iii. 498. By Levinz is probably meant Jan Lievens, a Flemish painter who worked in the style of Rembrandt.