er, I think I'll cut
Paul."

"I'm certain you will," said O'Grady, with an emphasis that could not be
mistaken. "But come, Hinton, we had better be moving; there's some stir
at the portico yonder, I suppose they're coming."

At this moment the tramp of cavalry announced the arrival of the guard
of honour; the drums beat, the troops stood to arms, and we had barely
time to mount our horses, when the viceregal party took their places in
the carriages, and we all set out for the Phoenix.

"Confess, Hinton, it is worth while being a soldier to be in Ireland."
This was O'Grady's observation as we rode down Parliament-street, beside
the carriage of the Viceroy. It was the first occasion of a field-day
since the arrival of his Excellency, and all Dublin was on the tiptoe of
expectation at the prospect. Handkerchiefs were waved from the windows;
streamers and banners floated from the house-tops; patriotic devices and
allegoric representations of Erin sitting at a plentiful board, opposite
an elderly gentleman with a ducal coronet, met us at every turn of the
way. The streets were literally crammed with people. The band played
Patrick's-day; the mob shouted, his Grace bowed; and down to Phil
O'Grady himself, who winked at the pretty girls as he passed, there did
not seem an unoccupied man in the whole procession. On we went,
following the line of the quays, threading our way through a
bare-legged, ragged population, bawling themselves hoarse with energetic
desires for prosperity to Ireland. "Yes," thought I, as I looked upon
the worn, dilapidated houses, the faded and bygone equipages, the
tarnished finery of better days--"yes, my father was right, these people
are very different from their neighbours; their very prosperity has an
air quite peculiar to itself." Everything attested a state of poverty, a
lack of trade, a want of comfort and of cleanliness; but still there was
but one expression prevalent in the mass--that of unbounded good humour
and gaiety. With a philosophy quite his own, poor Paddy seemed to feel a
reflected pleasure from the supposed happiness of those around him, the
fine clothes, the gorgeous equipages, the prancing chargers, the flowing
plumes--all, in fact, that forms the appliances of wealth--constituting
in his mind a kind of paradise on earth. He thought their possessors at
least ought to be happy, and, like a good-hearted fellow, he was glad of
it for their sakes.

There had been in the early part