sion or the other. It matters little that such
a feeling dilates the vanity in proportion to the absence of real
knowledge or good sense: it is not real, but affected knowledge, we are
writing about. Pride is confined to no condition; nor is the juvenile
pedantry of a youth upon the hob of an Irish chimney-corner much
different from the pride which sits upon the brow of a worthy Lord
Mayor, freshly knighted, lolling with strained dignity beside his
honorable brother, the mace, during a city procession; or of a Lady
Mayoress, when she reads upon a dead wall her own name flaming in yellow
capitals, at the head of a subscription ball; or, what is better still,
the contemptuous glance which, while about to open the said ball, her
ladyship throws at that poor creature--the Sheriff's wife.

In addition, however, to the enjoyment of this assumption of profound
learning which characterizes the young priest, a different spirit,
considerably more practical, often induces him to hook in other motives.
The learning of Denis O'Shaughnessy, for instance, blazed with peculiar
lustre whenever he felt himself out at elbows; for the logic with
which he was able to prove the connection between his erudition and a
woollen-draper's shop, was, like the ignorance of those who are to be
saved, invincible. Whenever his father considered a display of the
son's powers in controversy to be _capital_, Denis, who knew the _mollia
tempora fandi_, applied to him for a hat. Whenever he drew a heretic,
as a person who will be found hereafter without the wedding garment, and
clinched the argument with half a dozen quotations from syntax or Greek
grammar, he uniformly came down upon the father for a coat, the cloth
of which was finer in proportion to the web of logic he wove during the
disputation. Whenever he seated himself in the chair of rhetoric, or
gave an edifying homily on prayer, with such eloquence as rendered the
father's admiration altogether inexpressible, he applied for a pair of
smallclothes; and if, in the excursiveness of his vigorous imagination
he travelled anywhere beyond the bounds of common sense, he was certain
to secure a pair of shoes.

This, of course, did not escape the satirical observation of the
neighbors, who commented upon the circumstance with that good humor
which renders their mother-wit so pleasant and spicy. The scenes where
many of these displays took place, varied according to the occurrence
of those usual incidents