miles without being solicited for alms: that
he may peep into scores of parlours without
catching the remotest glimpse of a pig
wrestling for potato-parings with ragged
children: that he may sojourn in Dublin for
days without seeing a drunken man: that no
blackguard boys pursue him with ribaldry,
or fling mud at him. or tilt tip-cats in his eyes:
no gents puff cigar-smoke in his face: no man
curses him for a Saxon, or insults him for
a heretic: that the people are civil and
obliging: that there are shops which would
put the glories of Ludgate Hill and Regent
Street to shame: hotels that for magnitude
and splendour vie with the Aldelphi at Liverpool
and the Bedford at Brighton: and when
I state that to crown all this there has been
built in Merrion Square, on the lawn of
what was once the Duke of Leinster's palace
a Palace of Art and Industry, elegant and
tasteful in construction, vast in extent, and
magnificent in contents, due solely to the
genius and patriotism of Irishmen, and to
which more than ten thousand persons resort
daily:—were I to declare so much, I should
be enumerating what may or may not
happen to a stranger in Dublin; and I should
bring forward sufficient evidence, I fancy,
to support me in the assertion that an
Englishman, well up on the Irish Question,and
the Irish Grievance and the Irish Ulcer, will
have some cause to open his eyes on his
first visit to Eblana; by which classical name
I beg to state, for the information of my
Saxon readers, Dublin was known to the
geographer Ptolemy in the year of Grace
one hundred and forty.

So many things that he expected to see the
traveller does not see, that he is fairly
puzzled and amazed.  The pigs and the drivers
whooping after them; the excited Hibernians
brandishing shillelaghs and whisky bottles,
and entreating passers-by to tread on the tails
of their coats—where are they?  Are the
colonists in England more Irish than Ireland?
I came to behold looped and windowed
raggedness, and, behold! I find luxury and
splendour; I came to see, in the words of the
poet (a little altered)—

"——Repealers spouting,
And Lady Morgan making tay;
A ruined city and a bankrupt nation,
An abject peasantry on a barren sod;
Fighting like divils for conciliation,
Hating each other for the love of God."

In lieu of all this I come upon Mr. Dargan
and Sir John Benson's glories; the palatial
drapery establishment of Messrs. McSwiney
and Delany); a theatre nearly as large as
Covent Garden theatre; a mechanics'
institute like a West End club; railway stations
handsomer and more commodious than the
majority of English termini; second-class
carriages glistening with French polish and
plate-glass, and redolent of morocco leather;
barracks much finer than Buckingham
Palace; a bay vieing with the Bay of Naples,
and a park (the Phœnix) that may compete
with that of Windsor.

There, gentlemen and brigadiers of Ireland!
have I put enough couleur de rose on my
palette? Is the picture sufficiently gaily
tinted for you? Have I omitted one spray
of the feathers in your cap? I shall certainly
expect after this to have a serenade of the
brass band under my windows; to have
something handsome in the way of rint
transmitted to me weekly.

The more so, because I honestly aver that
all I have stated of the splendour of the first
aspect of Dublin is strictly unexaggerated
and correct. The first! alas, the first! C'est
le premier pas, they say, qui coûte; but c'est le
second pas qui achète, the first step costs, but
the second buys—experience, disillusion.

Philosopher fresh from admiring the river
front of Somerset House, cross by the bridge
and gaze at Somerset's sorry brick sides. Tell
me what the back windows of stately New
Oxford Street look upon—whether upon more
stateliness or upon Church Lane. Tear up
the granite of Regent Street and look into the
sewers. Cut open the five guinea Pantheon
doll that squeaks papa and mamma, and take
out the bran, and sawdust, and old rags. Go
from the Venus de Medicis to the dissecting
room of Bathrolomew's.  Remove my lady's
false hair and paint; take out her false
teeth; tear out her false eyes, and
Mortality to bed.  I knew a man once who had a
vague chemical notion in his head that whatever
in Nature was not oxygen or hydrogen
or nitrogen was carbon; and who, whenever he
he had received an injury or a slight from
any rich or powerful man, was wont to
comfort himself by pointing to the coal-scuttle
and saying "Why sir, after all he's no more
than that."

Mind I don't say that all this is the case
with Dublin—that there must needs be dirt
and wretchedness behind the granite splendour
of the Post-Office, the Bank of Ireland, and
Nelson's Column, or that King William's
bronze doll in Dame Street is stuffed with
sawdust and old rags. All this remains for
after showing; but I have seen only the
splendour of Dublin as yet, and if you please
I would rather not search for the rags and
dirt and sawdust to-day. For the sky is blue,
and the sun shines brightly; so let us take a
walk along, what Dublin lias as good
reasons as any to be proud of, the length of her
quays.

The Dublin quays are nearly three miles
long. The pretty little river Liffey, for its
whole course throughout the city, is not
hidden, like the Thames at London, by houses
and wharfs. No hideous seven-storied
warehouses, no rubbish crowded wharfs, no
Phlegethonian fleets of frowning coal- barges, no
factories with tasteless chimneys twisting
out black smoke, no piles of rotting
timbers, or dismantled half broken-up ships, or