ver, it amuses
the gentlemen of St. Stephen's; and, I'm sure I'm not the man to
quarrel with innocent pleasures.

To me, looking back, as my Lord Brougham would say, from the period of
a long life, I cannot perceive even the slightest difference in the
appearance of the land, or the looks of its inhabitants. Dublin is the
same dirty, ill-cared-for, broken-windowed, tumble-down concern it
used to be--the country the same untilled, weed-grown, unfenced thing
I remember it fifty years ago--the society pretty much the same
mixture of shrewd lawyers, suave doctors, raw subalterns, and fat,
old, greasy country gentlemen, waiting in town for remittances to
carry them on to Cheltenham--that paradise of Paddies, and elysium of
Galway _belles_. Our table-talk the old story, of who was killed last
in Tipperary or Limerick, with the accustomed seasoning of the
oft-repeated alibi that figures at every assizes, and is successful
with every jury. These pleasant topics, tinted with the party colour
of the speaker's politics, form the staple of conversation; and,
"barring the wit," we are pretty much what our fathers were some half
century earlier. Father Mathew, to be sure, has innovated somewhat on
our ancient prejudices; but I find that what are called "the upper
classes" are far too cultivated and too well-informed to follow a
priest. A few weeks ago, I had a striking illustration of this fact
brought before me, which I am disposed to quote the more willingly as
it also serves to display the admirable constancy with which we adhere
to our old and time-honoured habits. The morning of St. Patrick's day
was celebrated in Dublin by an immense procession of teetotallers,
who, with white banners, and whiter cheeks, paraded the city,
evidencing in their cleanly but care-worn countenances, the benefits
of temperance. On the same evening a gentleman--so speak the morning
papers--got immoderately drunk at the ball in the Castle, and was
carried out in a state of insensibility. Now, it is not for the sake
of contrast I have mentioned this fact--my present speculation has
another and very different object, and is simply this:--How comes it,
that since time out of mind the same event has recurred on the
anniversary of St. Patrick at the Irish court? When I was a boy I
remember well "the gentleman who became so awfully drunk," &c. Every
administration, from the Duke of Rutland downwards, has had its
drunken gentleman on "St. Patrick's night." Wh