three guests to the family table; and so, indeed, did
it impress Cashel, who little knew that the dinner in question had been
devised, planned, and arranged full three weeks before, and the
company packed with a degree of care and selection that evinced all the
importance of the event.

Time was when the Irish capital enjoyed, and justly, the highest
reputation for all that constitutes social success; when around
the dinner-tables of the city were met men of the highest order of
intelligence, men pleased to exercise, without effort or display, all
the charm of wit and eloquence, and to make society a brilliant reunion
of those gifts which, in the wider sphere of active life, won fame and
honors.

As the race of these bright conversers died out,--for, alas! they
belonged to a past era,--their places were assumed by others of very
dissimilar tastes. Many educated at English universities brought back
with them to Ireland the more reserved and cautious demeanor of the
other country, and thus, if not by their influence, by their mere
presence, threw a degree of constraint over the tone of society, which,
in destroying its freedom, despoiled it of all its charm.

Fashion, that idol of an Englishman's heart, soon became an Irish deity
too, and it now grew the "ton" to be English, or at least what was
supposed to be such, in dress and manner, in hours, accent, and
demeanor. The attempt was never successful; the reserve and placidity
which sit with gracefulness on the high-bred Englishman, was a stiff,
uncourteous manner in the more cordial and volatile Irishman. His own
demeanor was a tree that would not bear grafting, and the fruit lost all
its raciness by the admixture.

The English officials at the Castle, the little staff of a commander of
the forces, a newly-made bishop, fresh from Oxford, even the officers
of the last arrived dragoon regiment, became, by right of "accent," the
types of manner and breeding in circles where, in the actual enjoyment
of social qualities, they were manifestly beneath those over whom they
held sway; however, they were stamped at the metropolitan mint, and the
competitors were deemed a mere depreciated currency which a few years
more would cancel forever.

Mrs. Kennyfeck, as a fashionable dinner-giver, of course selected her
company from this more choice section; a fact which deserves to be
recorded, to the credit of her hospitality; for it was a very rare
occurrence indeed, when she found