, however delightful it may
render the hours of one separated from home, family, and friends, is
yet not devoid of its inconveniences. How many an undisciplined and
uninformed youth has misconstrued its meaning and mistaken its
import How often have I seen the raw subaltern elated with imaginary
success--flushed with a fancied victory--where, in reality, he had
met with nothing save the kind looks and the kind words in which the
every-day courtesies of life are couched, and by which, what, in less
favoured lands, are the cold and chilling observances of ceremony, are
here the easy and familiar intercourse of those who wish to know each
other.

The coxcomb who fancies that he can number as many triumphs as he has
passed hours in Dublin, is like one who, estimating the rich production
of a southern clime by their exotic value in his own colder regions,
dignifies by the name of luxury what are in reality but the every-day
productions of the soil: so he believes peculiarly addressed to
himself the cordial warmth and friendly greeting which make the social
atmosphere around him.

If I myself fell deeply into this error, and if my punishment was a
heavy one, let my history prove a beacon to all who follow in my steps;
for Dublin is still a garrison city, and I have been told that lips as
tempting and eyes as bright are to be met there as heretofore. Now to my
story.

Life in Dublin, at the time I write of, was about as gay a thing as a
man can well fancy. Less debarred than in other countries from
partaking of the lighter enjoyments of life, the members of the learned
professions mixed much in society; bringing with them stores of
anecdote and information unattainable from other sources, they made
what elsewhere would have proved the routine of intercourse a season
of intellectual enjoyment. Thus, the politician, the churchman, the
barrister, and the military man, shaken as they were together in dose
intimacy, lost individually many of the prejudices of their caste, and
learned to converse with a wider and more extended knowledge of the
world. While this was so, another element, peculiarly characteristic
of the country, had its share in modelling social life--that innate
tendency to drollery, that bent to laugh with every one and at
everything, so eminently Irish, was now in the ascendant. From the
Viceroy downwards, the island was on the broad grin. Every day furnished
its share, its quota of merriment. Epigrams, good st