To complete the farce, the watchman shut the coach door, and
wished "their honours" good night. The robbery was not discovered until
the company was breaking up. No trace of the thieves can be found.

~113~~ There was certainly somewhat of an _Irishism_ in the baronet's
remark.--Of eight great coats stolen, the thieves could not discriminate
who were the respective owners, and if it had been possible that they
could have discriminated, it is not likely that any regard for the laws
of hospitality would have induced them to make an exception of Sir Felix
O'Grady's property amidst the general depredation.

The company, although secretly amused by the baronet's remarks, condoled
with him on the loss he had sustained; and the player protesting that
in stating the facts of Irish posting, he had no intention of giving the
baronet the least offence, unanimity was restored, and the conviviality
of the evening proceeded without further interruption.

Sir Felix made Irish bulls, and gave Irish anecdotes; the amateur
occasionally gave a song or a stanza impromptu; the player spouted,
recited, and took off several of his brother performers, by exhibiting
their defects in close imitations,--

"Till tired at last wi' mony a farce,"
They sat them down--

and united with the remaining company in an attentive hearing to a
conversation which the honorable Frederick Fitzroy had just commenced
with his friend Dashall.--

"You have now," said the honourable Frederick Fitzroy, addressing
himself to Dashall, "You have now become a retired, steady,
contemplative young man; a peripatetic philosopher; tired with the
scenes of ton, and deriving pleasure only from the investigation of
Real Life in London, accompanied in your wanderings, by your respectable
relative of Belville-Hall; and yet while you were one of us, you shone
like a star of the first magnitude, and participated in all the follies
of fashion with a zest of enjoyment that forbid the presage of satiety
or decline."

"Neither," answered Dashall, "have I now altogether relinquished those
pleasures, but by frequent repetition they become irksome; the mind is
thus relieved by opposite pursuits, and the line of observation which
I have latterly chosen has certainly afforded me much substantial
information and rational amusement."

~114~~ "Some such pursuit I too must think of adopting," replied
Fitzroy, "else I shall sink into the gulph of ennuit to the verge