sparkling character of Dublin society.
How they managed to sparkle when discussing some of the heavy dinner

menus of the time I cannot think. Here is one of the Dean of Down's
bills of fare:-

Turkeys endove
Boyled leg of mutton

Greens, etc.
Soup

Plum Pudding
Roast loin of veal

Venison pasty
Partridge

Sweetbreads
Collared Pig

Creamed apple tart
Crabs

Fricassee of eggs
Pigeons

No dessert to be had.
Although there is no mention of beverages we may be sure that this

array of viands was not eaten dry, but was washed down with a
plentiful variety of wines and liquors.

The hosts, either in Dublin or London, who numbered among their
dinner guests such Irishmen as Sheridan or Lysaght, Mangan or Lever,

Curran or Lover, Father Prout or Dean Swift, had as great a feast of
wit and repartee as one will be apt soon to hear again; although it

must have been Lever or Lover who furnished the cream of Irish
humour, and Father Prout and Swift the curds.

If you are fortunate enough to be bidden to the right houses in
Ireland to-day, you will have as much good talk as you are likely to

listen to anywhere else in this degenerate age, which has mostly
forgotten how to converse in learning to chat; and any one who goes

to the Spring Show at Ball's Bridge, or to the Punchestown or
Leopardstown races, or to the Dublin horse show, will have to

confess that the Irishwomen can dispute the palm with any nation.
'Light on their feet now they passed me and sped,

Give you me word, give you me word,
Every girl wid a turn o' the head

Just like a bird, just like a bird;
And the lashes so thick round their beautiful eyes

Shinin' to tell you it's fair time o' day wid them,
Back in me heart wid a kind of surprise,

I think how the Irish girls has the way wid them!'
Their charm is made up of beautiful eyes and lashes, lustre of hair,

poise of head, shapeliness of form, vivacity and coquetry; and there
is a matchless grace in the way they wear the 'whatever,' be it the

chiffons of the fashionable dame, or the shawl of the country
colleen, who can draw the two corners of that faded article of

apparel shyly over her lips and look out from under it with a pair
of luminous grey eyes in a manner that is fairly 'disthractin'.'

Yesterday was a red-letter day, for I dined in the evening at Dublin
Castle, and Francesca was bidden to the concert in the Throne Room

afterwards. It was a brilliant scene when the assembled guests
awaited their host and hostess, the shaded lights bringing out the

satins and velvets, pearls and diamonds, uniforms, orders, and
medals. Suddenly the hum of voices ceased as one of the aides-de-

camp who preceded the vice-regal party announced 'their
Excellencies.' We made a sort of passage as these dignitaries

advanced to shake hands with a few of those they knew best. The
Lord Lieutenant then gave his arm to the lady of highest rank (alas,

it was not I!); her Excellency chose her proper squire, and we
passed through the beautifully decorated rooms to St. Patrick's Hall

in a nicely graded procession, magnificence at the head, humility at
the tail. A string band was discoursing sweet music the while, and

I fitted to its measures certain well-known lines descriptive of the
entrance of the beasts into the ark.

'The animals went in two by two,
The elephant and the kangaroo.'

As my escort was a certain brilliant lord justice, and as the
wittiest dean in Leinster was my other neighbour, I almost forgot to

eat in my pleasure and excitement. I told the dean that we had
chosen Scottish ancestors before going to our first great dinner in

Edinburgh, feeling that we should be more in sympathy with the
festivities and more acceptable to our hostess, but that I had

forgotten to provide myself for this occasion, my first function in
Dublin; whereupon the good dean promptly remembered that there was a

Penelope O'Connor, daughter of the King of Connaught. I could not
quite give up Tam o' the Cowgate (Thomas Hamilton) or Jenny Geddes

of fauld-stule fame, also a Hamilton, but I added the King of
Connaught to the list of my chosen forebears with much delight, in

spite of the polite protests of the Rev. Father O'Hogan, who sat
opposite, and who remarked that

'Man for his glory
To ancestry flies,

But woman's bright story
Is told in her eyes.

While the monarch but traces
Through mortal his line,

Beauty born of the Graces
Ranks next to divine.'

I asked the Reverend Father if he were descended from Galloping
O'Hogan, who helped Patrick Sarsfield to spike the guns of the

Williamites at Limerick.
"By me sowl, ma'am, it's not discinded at all I am; I am one o' the

common sort, just," he answered, broadening his brogue to make me
smile. A delightful man he was, exactly such an one as might have

sprung full grown from a Lever novel; one who could talk equally
well with his flock about pigs or penances, purgatory or potatoes,

and quote Tom Moore and Lover when occasion demanded.
Story after story fell from his genial lips, and at last he said

apologetically, "One more, and I have done," when a pretty woman,
sitting near him, interpolated slyly, "We might say to you, your

reverence, what the old woman said to the eloquentpriest who
finished his sermon with 'One word, and I have done'".

"An' what is that, ma'am?" asked Father O'Hogan.
"'Och! me darlin' pracher, may ye niver be done!'"

We all agreed that we should like to reconstruct the scene for a
moment and look at a drawing-room of two hundred years ago, when the

Lady Lieutenant after the minuets at eleven o'clock went to her
basset table, while her pages attended behind her chair, and when on

ball nights the ladies scrambled for sweetmeats on the dancing-
floor. As to their probable toilets, one could not give purer

pleasure than by quoting Mrs. Delany's description of one of them:-
'The Duchess's dress was of white satin embroidered, the bottom of

the petticoat brown hills covered with all sorts of weeds, and every
breadth had an old stump of a tree, that ran up almost to the top of

the petticoat, broken and ragged, and worked with brown chenille,
round which twined nasturtiums, ivy, honeysuckles, periwinkles, and

all sorts of running flowers, which spread and covered the
petticoat. . . . The robings and facings were little green banks

covered with all sorts of weeds, and the sleeves and the rest of the
gown loose twining branches of the same sort as those on the

petticoat. Many of the leaves were finished with gold, and part of
the stumps of the trees looked like the gilding of the sun. I never

saw a piece of work so prettily fancied.'
She adds a few other details for the instruction of her sister

Anne:-
'Heads are variously adorned; pompons with some accompaniment of

feathers, ribbons, or flowers; lappets in all sorts of curli-murlis;