d frocks,
loose trousers, and low shoes; but they overdid their parts, and lounged
like Tom Cooke in a sea-piece.

Others appeared as _elegans_, and were even greater burlesques on the
part. It was quite clear, however, that these formed no portion of the
better classes of the capital, and so I hastened to assure the Prince,
whose looks bespoke very palpable disappointment.

In Dublin, however, the changes were greater than I expected. It was not
alone that I had seen other and greater capitals, where affluence and
taste abound, and where, while the full tide of fashion sets "in" in one
quarter, the still more exciting course of activity and industry flows
along in another; but here an actual decline had taken place in the
appearance of everything. The shops, the streets, the inhabitants, all
looked in disrepair. There were few carriages, nothing deserving the
name of equipage,--none of that stir and movement which characterize a
capital. It all looked like a place where people dwelt to wear out
their old houses and old garments, and to leave both behind them when
no longer wearable. Windows mended with paper, pantaloon? patched with
party-colored cloth, "shocking bad hats," mangy car-drivers, and great
troops of beggars of every age and walk of mendicancy, were met with
even iu the best quarters; and with all these signs of poverty and
decay, there was an air of swaggering recklessness in every one that was
particularly striking All were out of temper with England and
English rule; and "Ireland for the Irish" was becoming a popular cant
phrase,--pretty much on the same principle that blacklegs extinguish the
lights when luck goes against them, and have a scramble for "the bank"
in the dark. The strangest of all was, however, that nobody seemed to
have died or left the place since I remembered it as a boy. There went
the burly barrister down Bachelor's Walk, with the same sturdy stride
I used to admire of yore,--his cheek a little redder, his presence
somewhat more portly, perhaps, but with the self-same smile with which
he then cajoled the jury, and that imposing frown with which he repelled
the freedom of a witness. There were the same civic magistrates, the
same attorneys, dancing-masters,--ay, even the dandies had not been
replaced, but were the old crop, sadly running to seed, and marvellously
ill cared for.

Even the Castle officials were beautifully consistent, and true to their
old traditions; they were as em