"Piron died yesterday," writes a journalist; and he adds, "They say he received the cure of St. Roche very badly." What an admirable piece of buffoonery! these cures going in turn to shrive the writers of the eighteenth century, and having flung at their heads epigrams composed for the occasion, perhaps, ten years before. Louis XV. died soon after Piron. A few hours before his death he said to Cardinal de la Roche-Aymon: "Although the king is answerable to God alone for his conduct, you can say that he is sorry for having caused any scandal to his subjects, and that from henceforth he desires to live but for the support of faith and religion, and for the happiness of his people!" Like Rameau, Piron, Helvetius, and Pompadour, this good little king Louis XV. must have his _bon mot_; he was sorry for having caused any scandal to his subjects, and at his last moment of existence would live from henceforth for the sole happiness of his people! "Can any thing be finer than this?" Finally came the Abbe de Voisenon's turn. Witty to his last hour, when they brought home the leaden coffin, the exact form and dimensions of which he had himself arranged and ordered beforehand, he said to one of his domestics,-- "There is a great-coat, any how, that you will not be tempted to steal from me." He died on the 22d of November, 1775, aged sixty-eight. FOOTNOTES: [Q] This was the celebrated society called the _Academie de ces Messieurs_: it numbered among its members all the more celebrated wits of the day. IRELAND IN THE LAST AGE. Recollections of Curran. From the London Times