one
canvas. They all, indeed, have a strong family resemblance, but
certainly they are like nothing else in nature; and to us, living in
grave, and possibly dull and prosaic England--and in this our matter of
fact and decorous age--the doings of the society which they have made
illustrious, appear more like a mad _saturnalia_ than the sober and
commonplace procedure of rational men. The whole people--every class,
profession, and degree--seemed to consider life but a species of
delirious dance, and a wild and frantic excitement the one sole
pleasure. Repose, thoughtfulness, and calm, they must have considered a
premature death. Every emotion was sought for in its extreme, and a
rapid variation from merriment to misery, from impassioned love to
violent hate, was the ordinary (if in such an existence any thing could
be deemed ordinary)--the common and ordinary condition of life.
Laughter, that was ever on the brink of tears--a wild joy, that might in
an instant be followed by hopeless despondency--alternations from
sanguine and eager hope to blank and apparently crushing despair,--such
was Irish life, in which every one appeared to be acting a part, and
striving to appear original by means of a strained and laborious
affectation. Steady, continued, and rational industry, was either
unknown or despised; economy was looked upon as meanness--thrift was
called avarice--and the paying a just debt, except upon compulsion, was
deemed conduct wholly unworthy of a gentleman. Take the account Mr.
Phillips himself gives. He speaks of the Irish squire; but the Irish
squire was the raw material out of which so-called Irish gentlemen were
made. "The Irish squire of half a century ago _scorned_ not to be in
debt; it would be beneath his dignity to live within his income; and
next to not incurring a debt, the greatest degradation would have been
voluntarily to _pay one_." And yet was there great pretension to
_honor_, but a man of honor of those days would in our time be
considered a ruffian certainly, and probably a blackleg or a swindler.
"It was a favorite boast of his (the first Lord Norbury) that he began
life with fifty pounds, and a pair of hair-trigger pistols." "They
served his purpose well.... The luck of the hair-triggers triumphed, and
Toler not only became Chief Justice, but the founder of two peerages,
and the testator of an enormous fortune. After his promotion, the code
of honor became, as it were, engrafted on that of the