quire the cause; they all
came back roaring with laughter. At length Charlemont, rather irritated
by the ridicule of the display, rode down the line and desired the
captain to order them to move; not a man stirred; they were as immovable
as a wall of brass. He then took the affair upon himself; and angrily
asked, 'if they meant to insult him.' 'Not a bit of it, my lord,' cried
out all the Paddies together. 'But we are not on _speaking terms_ with
the captain.'"

"How perfectly I can see Charlemont's countenance at that capital answer:
his fastidious look turning into a laugh, and the real dignity of the man
forced to give way to his national sense of ridicule. Is there any hope of
his coming over this season, C----?" asked the prince.

"Not much. He talks in his letters of England, as a man married to a
termagant might talk of his first love--hopeless regrets, inevitable
destiny, and so forth. He is bound to Ireland, and she treats him as
Catharine treated Petruchio before marriage. But he has not the whip of
Petruchio, nor perhaps the will, since the knot has been tied. He is only
one of the many elegant and accomplished Irishmen who have done just the
same--who find some strange spell in the confusions of a country full of
calamities; prefer clouds to sunshine, and complain of their choice all
their lives."

"Yes," said W----. "It is like the attempt to put a coat and trousers on
the American Indian. The hero flings them off on the first opportunity,
takes to his plumes and painted skin, and prefers being tomahawked in a
swamp to dying in a feather-bed like a gentleman!"

"Or," said the prince, "as Goldsmith so charmingly expresses it of the
Swiss--to whom, however, it is much less applicable than his own
countrymen--

'For as the babe, whom rising storms molest,
Clings but the closer to his mother's breast,
So the rude whirlwind and the tempest's roar
But bind him to his native mountains more.'"

My story next came upon the _tapis_; and the sketch of my capture by the
free-traders was listened to with polite interest.

"Very possibly I may have some irregular neighbours," was the prince's
remark. "But, it must be confessed, that I am the intruder on their
domain, not they on mine; and, if I were plundered, perhaps I should have
not much more right to complain, than a whale-catcher has of being swamped
by a blow of the tail, or a man fond of law being forced to pay a bill of
costs."

"On the