r; and
the fellow, without further delay, bustled off to make the inquiry.
He returned in a few minutes with a civil message, that I could be
accommodated, and having placed before me the simple meal I ordered,
retired.

As I sat over my supper, I could not help feeling that unless memory
played me false, the company were little like the former frequenters
of this house. I remembered it of old, when Bubbleton and his brother
officers came there; and when the rooms were thronged with members
of both Houses of Parliament,--when peers and gentlemen of the first
families were grouped about the windows and fireplaces, and the highest
names of the land were heard in the din of recognition; handsome
equipages and led horses stood before the doors. But now the ragged mob
without was scarce a less worthy successor to the brilliant display than
were the company within to the former visitants. A tone of pretentious
impertinence, an air of swagger and mock defiance,--the most opposite to
the polished urbanity which once prevailed,--was now conspicuous; and
in their loud speech and violent gesticulation, it was easy to mark
how they had degenerated from that high standard which made the Irish
gentleman of his day the most polished man of Europe.

If in appearance and manner they fell far short of those my memory
recalled, their conversation more markedly still displayed the long
interval between them. Here, of old, were retailed the latest news of
the debate,--the last brilliant thing of Grattan, or the last biting
retort of Flood; here came, hot from debate, the great champions of
either party to relax and recruit for fresh efforts; and in the groups
that gathered around them you might learn how great genius can diffuse
its influence and scatter intelligence around it,--as the Nile
waters spread plenty and abundance wherever they flow: high and noble
sentiments, holy aspirations and eloquent thoughts, made an atmosphere,
to breathe which was to feel an altered nature. But now a vapid mixture
of conceit and slang had usurped the place of these, and a tone of
vulgar self-sufficiency unhappily too much in keeping with the externals
of those who displayed it: the miserable contentions of different
factions had replaced the bolder strife of opposite parties, and
provincialism had put its stamp on everything. The nation, too, if I
might trust my ears with what fell around me, had lost all memory of its
once great names, and new candida