te for us in the
true spirit of our prejudices; and when we have complained of "a
beggared proprietary and a ruined gentry," they have bolstered up our
weakness with the new poor law. So much for an Irish encore.

A NUT FOR VICEREGAL PRIVILEGES.

"The sixth of Anne, chap. seventeen, makes it unlawful to
keep gaming-houses in any part of the city except the
'Castle,' and prohibits any game being played even there
except during the residence of the Lord Lieutenant. This act
is still on the statute book."--_Dublin Paper._

One might puzzle himself for a very long time for an explanation of
this strange _morceau_ of legislation, without any hope of arriving at
a shadow of a reason for it.

That gaming should be suppressed by a government is in no wise
unnatural; nor should we feel any surprise at our legislature having
been a century in advance of France, in the due restriction of this
demoralizing practice. But that the exercise of a vice should be
limited to the highest offices of the state is, indeed, singular, and
demands no little reflection on our part to investigate the cause.

Had the functions of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland been of that drowsy,
tiresome, uninteresting nature, that it was only deemed fair by the
legislature to afford him some amusing pastime to distract his
"_ennui_" and dispel his melancholy, there might seem to have been
then some reason for this extraordinary enactment. On the contrary,
however, every one knows that from the remotest times to the present,
every viceroy of Ireland has had quite enough on his hands. Some have
been saving money to pay off old mortgages, others were farming the
Phoenix; some took to the King Cambyses' vein, like poor dear Lord
Normanby--raked up all the old properties and faded finery of the
Castle, and with such material as they could collect, made a kind of
Drury-lane representation of a court. And very lately, and with an
originality so truly characteristic of true genius, Lord Ebrington
struck out a line of his own, and slept away his time with such a
persevering intensity of purpose, that "the least wide-awake" persons
of his government became actually ashamed of themselves. But to go
back. What, I would ask, was the intention of this act? I know you
give it up. Well, now, I have made the matter the subject of long and
serious thought, and I think I have discovered it.

Have you ever read, in the laws of the smaller German