But bah! it was a poor provincial place, Dublin, in the old days of which I speak; and many a tenth-rate German residency is more genteel.

There were, it is true, near three hundred resident Peers at the period; and a House of Commons; and my Lord Mayor and his corporation; and a roystering noisy University, whereof the students made no small disturbances nightly, patronised the roundhouse, ducked obnoxious printers and tradesmen, and gave the law at the Crow Street Theatre.

But I had seen too much of the first society of Europe to be much tempted by the society of these noisy gentry, and was a little too much of a gentleman to mingle with the disputes and politics of my Lord Mayor and his Aldermen.

In the House of Commons there were some dozen of right pleasant fellows.

I never heard in the English Parliament better speeches than from Flood, and Daly, of Galway.