her numerous _proteges_ in art,
science, or letters.

This visit to the "Cashel Gallery," as she somewhat grandiloquently
designated the collection, had been a thing of her own planning; first,
because Mrs. White was an adept in that skilful diplomacy which so
happily makes plans for pleasure at other people's houses--and oh, what
numbers there are!--delightful, charming people as the world calls them!
whose gift goes no further than this, that they keep a registry of their
friends' accommodation, and know to a nicety the season to dine here,
to sup there, to picnic at one place, and to "spend the day"--horrible
expression of a more horrible fact--at another. But Mrs. White had also
another object in view on the present occasion, which was, to introduce
her companion, Mr. Elias Howie, to her Dublin acquaintance.

Mr. Elias Howie was one of a peculiar class, which this age, so fertile
in inventions, has engendered, a publishers' man-of-all-work, ready for
everything, from statistics to satire, and equally prepared to expound
prophecy, or write squibs for "Punch."

Not that lodgings were not inhabited in Grub Street before our day,
but that it remained for the glory of this century to see that numerous
horde of tourist authors held in leash by fashionable booksellers,
and every now and then let slip over some country, to which plague,
pestilence, or famine, had given a newer and more terrible interest
In this novel walk of literature Mr. Howie was one of the chief
proficients; he was the creator of that new school of travel which,
writing expressly for London readers, refers everything to the standard
of "town;" and whether it be a trait of Icelandic life, or some remnant
of old-world existence in the far East, all must be brought for trial to
the bar of "Seven Dials," or stand to plead in the dock of Pall Mall
or Piccadilly. Whatever errors or misconceptions he might fall into
respecting his subjects, he made none regarding his readers. He knew
them by heart,--their leanings, their weakness, and their
prejudices; and how pleasantly could he flatter their town-bred
self-sufficiency,--how slyly insinuate their vast superiority over all
other citizens, insidiously assuring them that the Thames at Richmond
was infinitely finer than the Rhine or the Danube, and that a trip to
Margate was richer in repayal than a visit to the Bosphorus! Ireland
was, just at the time we speak of, a splendid field for his peculiar
talents. Th