ble at the time were productive of eventual benefit.

'Formerly, a few families had set the fashion. From time immemorial
everything had, in Dublin, been submitted to their hereditary authority;
and conversation, though it had been rendered polite by their example,
was, at the same time, limited within narrow bounds. Young people,
educated upon a more enlarged plan, in time grew up; and, no authority
or fashion forbidding it, necessarily rose to their just place, and
enjoyed their due influence in society. The want of manners, joined to
the want of knowledge in the new set, created universal disgust: they
were compelled, some by ridicule, some by bankruptcies, to fall back
into their former places, from which they could never more emerge. In
the meantime, some of the Irish nobility and gentry who had been living
at an unusual expense in London--an expense beyond their incomes--were
glad to return home to refit; and they brought with them a new stock of
ideas, and some taste for science and literature, which, within these
latter years, have become fashionable, indeed indispensable, in London.
That part of the Irish aristocracy, who, immediately upon the first
incursions of the vulgarians, had fled in despair to their fastnesses in
the country, hearing of the improvements which had gradually taken
place in society, and assured of the final expulsion of the barbarians,
ventured from their retreats, and returned to their posts in town. So
that now,' concluded Sir James, 'you find a society in Dublin composed
of a most agreeable and salutary mixture of birth and education,
gentility and knowledge, manner and matter; and you see pervading the
whole new life and energy, new talent, new ambition, a desire and a
determination to improve and be improved--a perception that higher
distinction can now be obtained in almost all company, by genius and
merit, than by airs and dress.... So much for the higher order. Now,
among the class of tradesmen and shopkeepers, you may amuse yourself, my
lord, with marking the difference between them and persons of the same
rank in London.'

Lord Colambre had several commissions to execute for his English
friends, and he made it his amusement in every shop to observe the
manners and habits of the people. He remarked that there are in Dublin
two classes of tradespeople: one, who go into business with intent
to make it their occupation for life, and as a slow but sure means of
providing for themselv