One must have lived for some months upon hard biscuit and harder beef to relish as we did the fare before us, and to form an estimate of our satisfaction. If the reader cannot fancy Van Amburgh’s lions in red coats and epaulettes, he must be content to lose the effect of the picture. A turkey rarely fed more than two people, and few were abstemious enough to be satisfied with one chicken. The order of the viands, too, observed no common routine, each party being happy to get what he could, and satisfied to follow up his pudding with fish, or his tart with a sausage. Sherry, champagne, London porter, Malaga, and even, I believe, Harvey’s sauce were hobnobbed in; while hot punch, in teacups or tin vessels, was unsparingly distributed on all sides. Achilles himself, they say, got tired of eating, and though he consumed something like a prize ox to his own cheek, he at length had to call for cheese, so that we at last gave in, and having cleared away the broken tumbrels and baggage-carts of our army, cleared for a general action. “Now, lads!” cried the major, “I’m not going to lose your time and mine by speaking; but there are a couple of toasts I must insist upon your drinking with all the honors; and as I like despatch, we’ll couple them. It so happens that our old island boasts of two of the finest fellows that ever wore Russia ducks. None of your nonsensical geniuses, like poets or painters or anything like that; but downright, straightforward, no-humbug sort of devil-may-care and bad-luck-to-you kind of chaps,--real Irishmen! Now, it’s a strange thing that they both had such an antipathy to vermin, they spent their life in hunting them down and destroying them; and whether they met toads at home or Johnny Crapaud abroad, it was all one. [Cheers.] Just so, boys; they made them leave that; but I see you are impatient, so I’ll not delay you, but fill to the brim, and with the best cheer in your body, drink with me the two greatest Irishmen that ever lived, ‘Saint Patrick and Lord Wellington.’” The Englishmen laughed long and loud, while we cheered with an energy that satisfied even the major. “Who is to give us the chant? Who is to sing Saint Patrick?” cried Maurice. “Come, Bob, out with it.” “I’m four tumblers too low for that yet,” growled out the major. “Well, then, Charley, be you the man; or why not Dennis himself? Come, Dennis, we cannot better begin our evening than with a song; let us have our old friend ‘Larry M’Hale.’” “Larry M’Hale!” resounded from all parts of the room, while O’Shaughnessy rose once more to his legs. “Faith, boys, I’m always ready to follow your lead; but what analogy can exist between ‘Larry M’Hale’ and the toast we have just drank I can’t see for the life of me; not but Larry would have made a strapping light company man had he joined the army.” “The song, the song!” cried several voices. “Well, if you will have it, here goes:”-- LARRY M’HALE. AIR,--_“It’s a bit of a thing_,” _etc_.