MORGAN, Lady (SYDNEY), was the daughter of a theatrical manager. named Owen son, who settled in Dublin. It is stated that she was born in 1786, but as she refuses to tell the date of her birth, "because dates are so cold, false, and erroneous," the reader of her autobiography will do well to add about ten years to her age. Her father fell into pecuniary difficulties, and the cleTer, bold, and lively young woman resolved to support the fortunes of the family, first as governess, and then as author. She wrote The Wild Irish Girl in 1806. A lady novelist was then rare, and Irish subjects were less hackneyed than they have since become. Sydney 0 wenson obtained a footing in the household of the marquis of Abereorn, in whose establishment her future husband, Dr. Morgan, held the post of private physician. The lord lieutenant was persuaded to make a knight of Dr. Morgan, and the newly wedded pair set up for themselves in Dub lin. Here she wrote the O'Donnel. 'fire opening of the continent in 1814 attracted the Morgans to Paris. Lady Morgan obtained admission into the highest society, corre sponded with several celebrities, and wrote a work on .M•anee,which was received and vehemently praised and censured by critics of different political opinions. In 1818 the Morgans went to wife to sketch manners, scenery, and society, while sir Charles was to contribute chapters on politics, science, and education. Lady Morgan was received with great hospitality by the Italian nobility and the foreign visitors at Rome. Her Italy appeared in 1821, and proved oue of the most successful and remuner
ative of her works. In 1824 the Morgans came to London, and in 1825 lady Morgan began to keep a diary, which contains some amusing bits of literary, fashionable, and political gossip. Her reputation as an authoress became obscured, but she continued to the end of her career to assume the twofold character of the lady of fashion and the woman of genius. She succeeded in obtaining from the government a pension of L'l300 a year, in acknowledgment of her literary merits, and partly, also, in recognition of the unjust and virulent attacks to which she had been subjected for having, in her earlier works, exposed the wrongs of her native country. She died in 1859, having con tinued busy with her pen and her tongue to the last; and leaving behind a great mass of correspondence of little intrinsic value and interest, which, with a memoir, her auto biography, and diary, was published in 1862, in 2 vols. Her descriptions of high life have much raciness and vigor, and her Irish sketches—the famous "Jug-day," in The O'Brims and the O'llfahertys, deserving special mention—arc perhaps the best account of that rackety, humorous, sentimental existence which was at once the charm and bane of Ireland, and which has but lately passed away.