Between fifty and a hundred years ago the Anglo-Irish gentry, as all the world knows, were a wild and extravagant race. Duelling and drinking were the two great duties of a gentleman. A young man was instructed how to "make his head" early in life, and to acquire the gentle art of pistolling his friends, when now he would be studying Greek under Professor Jowett, or "coaching" for a civil-service examination. It was in bad taste in those halcyon days for a man to leave a pleasant social party in a state of sobriety, and he was liable to be challenged by his aggrieved companions if he did it frequently. The custom of locking the dining-room door and putting the key in the fire, so as to secure a comfortable night (on the floor), was so common as hardly to deserve notice; and in many old houses are still preserved the huge glasses bearing the toast of the Immortal Memory of William III., and calculated to hold three bottles of claret, all to be drunk at once by one member of the company, who then won the prize of a seven-guinea piece deposited at the bottom. Gambling was not a pastime, but a business; and a business shared by the ladies. On rainy days it was customary to lay the card-tables at ten o'clock in the morning, and on all days the work began immediately after the four-o'clock dinner. Of all field-sports hunting was the favorite; and, of course, horses and hounds helped to run away with estates as well as cards and claret. Great pomp, however, of a certain semi-barbaric kind was the crowning extravagance. Everybody drove four horses,--the loftier grandees invariably six,--with due accompaniment of outriders and running footmen. Dresses, jewels, and lace were of course in keeping with the equipage, albeit the furniture of the finest houses was what we should deem a strange mixture of magnificence and bareness,--beautiful pictures on the walls, and no curtains to the windows,--tapestry _fauteuils_, and a small square of carpet in the midst of a Sahara of plain deal floor. But the kitchen was the true scene of that Wilful Waste which assuredly brought Woful Want often enough in its train. Every gentleman's house served as a sort of free tavern for tenants, servants, laborers, and the relatives, friends, and acquaintances of tenants, servants, and laborers without end. Up stairs there was endless dinner-giving and claret-drinking; down stairs there was breakfasting, dining, and supping,--only substituting beef for venison and whiskey for claret. One famous countess, coming into an estate of twenty thousand a year, with a reserve of one hundred thousand pounds, spent the whole, and left a debt of another hundred thousand, after Garter-King-at-Arms had been summoned from England to see her in state to her mausoleum as a descendant of the Plantagenets. An earl in the North, of no great wealth, was carried to his grave by a procession of five thousand people, all of whom were entertained, and three