said the gloomy man, "that the carriers
should stop at the Pigeon-house."

"Do be quiet, Curran," cried the Duke, "and pass round the decanter.
They'll not take the duty off claret, it seems."

"And Day, my Lord, won't put the claret on duty; he has kept the wine
at his elbow for the last half-hour. Upon my soul, your Grace ought to
knight him."

"Not even his Excellency's habits," said a sharp, clever-looking man,
"would excuse his converting Day into Knight."

Amid a shower of smart, caustic, and witty sayings, droll stories,
retort and repartee, the wine circulated freely from hand to hand; the
presence of the Duke adding fresh impulse to the sallies of fun and
merriment around him. Anecdotes of the army, the bench, and the bar,
poured in unceasingly, accompanied by running commentaries of the
hearers, who never let slip an opportunity for a jest or a rejoinder.
To me, the most singular feature of all this was, that no one seemed too
old or too dignified, too high in station, or too venerable from office,
to join in this headlong current of conviviality. Austere churchmen,
erudite chief-justices, profound politicians, privy councillors,
military officers of high rank and standing, were here all mixed up
together into one strange medley, apparently bent on throwing an air
of ridicule over the graver business of life, and laughing alike at
themselves and the world. Nothing was too grave for a jest, nothing too
solemn for a sarcasm. All the soldier's experience of men and manners,
all the lawyer's acuteness of perception and readiness of wit, all the
politician's practised tact and habitual subtlety, were brought to bear
upon the common topics of the day with such promptitude, and such power,
that one knew not whether to be more struck by the mass of information
they possessed, or by that strange fatality which could make men, so
great and so gifted, satisfied to jest where they might be called on to
judge.

Play and politics, wine and women, debts and duels, were discussed, not
only with an absence of all restraint, but with a deep knowledge of the
world and a profound insight into the heart, which often imparted to the
careless and random speech the sharpness of the most cutting sarcasm.
Personalities, too, were rife; no one spared his neighbour, for he did
not expect mercy for himself; and the luckless wight who tripped in his
narrative, or stumbled in his story, was assailed on every side, until
some happy exp