ute to its stability, by rabid attacks on its members, and
absurd comparisons of their own fitness for affairs, with the heads of
our best and wisest. These things he must have remembered long ago,
and with respect to them, we are pretty much as we were; but I will
introduce him to an evening party--a society where the _elite_ of
Dublin are assembled; where, amid the glare of wax lights, and the
more brilliant blaze of beauty, our fairest women and most gifted and
exalted men are met together for enjoyment. At first blush there will
appear to him to have been no alteration nor change here. Even the
very faces he will remember are the same he saw a dozen years ago:
some pursy gentlemen with bald foreheads or grey whiskers who danced
before, are now grown whisters; a few of the ladies, who then figured
in the quadrille, have assumed the turban, and occupy an ottoman; the
gay, laughing, light-hearted youth he formerly hobnobbed with at
supper, is become a rising barrister, and has got up a look of learned
pre-occupation, much more imposing to his sister than to Sir Edward
Sugden; the wild, reckless collegeman, whose name was a talisman in
the "Shades," is now a soft-voiced young physician, vibrating in his
imitation of the two great leaders in his art, and alternately
assuming the "Epic or the Lake" school of physic. All this may amuse,
but cannot amaze him: such is the natural current of events, and he
ought to be prepared for it. The evening wears on, however; the frigid
politeness and ceremonious distance which we have for some years back
been borrowing from our neighbours, and which seem to suit our warmer
natures pretty much as a suit of plate armour would a _danseuse_ in a
ballet--this begins to wear off, and melt away before the genial heat
of Irish temperament; "the mirth and fun grow fast and furious;" and a
new dance is called for. What, then, is the amazement, shall I say the
horror, of our friend to hear the band strike up a tune which he only
remembered as associated with everything base, low, and disgraceful;
which, in the days of his "libertine youth," he only heard at riotous
carousals and roistering festivals; whose every bar is associated with
words--ay, there's the rub--which, in his maturer years, he blushes to
have listened to! he stares about him in wonderment; for a moment he
forgets that the young lady who dances with such evident enjoyment of
the air, is ignorant of its history; he watches her sparkl