are to be seen seated side by side, and with a
strange indifference to the purposes of social
meetings, consent to a sort of enforced and
cloistered segregation. But, to produce due
musical effect, tenors must sit with tenors, and
soprani with soprani. On one side the wreaths
and ribbons are one colour, on the other side
they are different. Here the " amateur " may
see violet eyes and oval faces in plenty. Then
for the performance. In this way have been
"recited " nearly every opera of note— Marta,
Don Giovanni, II Trovatore, Ernani, La Sonnambula,
Norma, &c., with no lack of prima donnas
or tenors. These are the most pleasing
entertainments that can be conceived.

Indeed, the rage for music is quite a Dublin
feature. The excitement is great, and at private
houses the " concert " is going on all the year.
Sometimes we see, about five o'clock, a
street blocked with carriages, and from open
windows have the music of the Italian quartet
borne to us, and know that this is a
musical "tea" going on. But the gala-time
for the lower classes, for the shilling gallery
and pit, is when the opera sets in (and we have
nearly two months' opera every year), and then
Santley and Titiens reign, and are borne on the
wings of a tumultuous but discriminating
applause. Not often do we find, as the writer
has seen, the great finale in the third act of
Ernani encored by an " unwashed" audience; nor
is it only in Italy that singers have " ovations."
Who will forget the Piccolomini furor, and the
birds and wreaths lowered down to the stage,
the speeching of that piquant little lady at one
o'clock in the morning from her hotel window
to a crowd of a thousand persons, the dragging
home of her carriage every night? Or, as was
the case with Grisi on her farewell, the torch-
light procession? These things take us a little
out of the world of prose and conventional
buckram.

The theatre, too, like music, is a special Irish
taste. Amateur acting is in great favour. The
"soldiers " have their season of five nights
every year, taking the theatre, which is barely
smaller than Drury Lane. It is built on the
principle that the audience are to be " shown off"
to the best advantage as well as the actors, the
whole " dress circle " being a sort of balcony;
and when the company are crowded close, and
the house full from floor to ceiling, the effect is
very gay indeed. And on these " command
nights " the vice-regal box blazed with mirrors,
and chandeliers, and hangings, and was filled
with a staff, and soldiers mounted guard on the
stairs and lobbies, and the manager, according
to old custom, was seen in a court suit, and with
a pair of wax-lights, walking backwards and
showing the Viceroy to his box. So important
an officer is he looked upon, that the Theatre
Royal manager may present himself " at Court."
As we look back through that old reign, very
many of those pleasant theatrical nights present
themselves, that white head— always conspicuous
—that genial heart, ready to welcome and
encourage all these pastimes. Now there was a
tragedy, now a comedy; now there was a
comedy of French manners skilfully adapted
from the French, as skilfully acted and set off
with new music, new dresses, and new scenery.
The result was a gradual training of a corps of
amateur actors, who were fast becoming, a
pleasant feature in the place, when there came
that strange and gradual sinking, and the final
break-down. These were the nightly joys.

But when the summer evenings set in, there
were other entertainments of an al fresco sort to
amuse tin's pleasure-loving society, and files of
carriages were seen trailing through the pleasant
avenues of the Park making for the charming
gardens of " the Lodge"—the Viceroy's country
house where were the dairymaids, and the cows,
and the syllabub, fresh as new milk could make
it, and the music playing, and the quadrilles of
little children on the bowling-green— perhaps
the most amusing feature of the whole. More
pleasant still were the cricket meetings, there
being a vice-regal club, for he delighted, not in
the play itself, but in looking on and following
it, and marking. Hither came every
English club of note, specially I Zingari, with
their gipsy colours, who were made welcome and
"put up " vice-royally in the cheerful apartments
of "the Lodge" while the days of play lasted.
In honour of these guests, the ball and the
concert were set on foot, and many of I Zingari
remember pleasantly those cheerful old cricket
festivals.

Yet with all this junketing, and fiddling, and
high jinks night and day, this feasting and
making merry, the city is not in a morally
healthy condition. The strangest feature is the
utter absence of the influence or presence of
a middle class— a broad, loud-voiced, strong
trading class. For all purposes of power or tone,
this body, which should be the bones and muscles
of every sound community, is a mere cypher.
They make no sign. They are weak and retiring.
For them is no round of honest middle-class
amusement, the monster halls with the huge
oratories, an honest school of politics, an
independent sterling school of politics, which should
be sufficient for them. There is nothing of this
kind. They fluctuate between those above
them and below them. They pant for the cheap
glories, the Brummagem " fashion " that is over
their heads. They spend their lives sighing to be
admitted into those choice enclosures, and are at
last happy in their old age if they are allowed to
look in over the rails, or sit on the wall.
Nowhere, it must be confessed, does this upas of
false " gentility," this aping at selcctness and
"feshion," spread its branches so wide and do
such mischief as in this pleasant community.
In no city are there such sacrifices made to the
Juggernaut Fashion, or is that pelican in a frock-
coat— the Dublin father—so handsomely drained
of his blood by his " fashionable" family. And he
opens his veins, it must be said, cheerfully. On
every side we can see the " slaving " barrister and
the "slaving" doctor sitting up of nights, rising
by candlelight, and with infinite pain scrapes
together, out of fees ill paid and faithlessly