When this veracious history first displayed young Nelligan at a dinner-party, his manner was shy and constrained; his secluded, student-like habits had given him none of that hardihood so essential in society. If he knew little of passing topics, he knew less of the tone men used in discussing them; and now, although more conversant with the world and its ways, daily brought into contact with the business of life, his social manner remained pretty nearly the same cold, awkward, and diffident thing it had been at first. Enlist him in a great subject, or call upon him on a great occasion, and he could rise above it; place him in a position to escape notice, and you never heard more of him. The dinner company on this day contained nothing very formidable, either on the score of station or ability,--a few bar celebrities with their wives, an eccentric dean with a daughter, a garrison colonel or two, three country squires, and a doctor from Merrion Square. It was that interregnal period between the time when the castle parties included the first gentry of the land, and that later era when the priest and the agitator became the favored guests of vice-royalty. It is scarce necessary to say it was, as regards agreeability, inferior to either. There was not the courtly urbanity and polished pleasantry of a very accomplished class; nor was there the shrewd and coarse but racy intelligence of Mr. O'Connell's followers. The Marquis of Reckington had come over to Ireland to “inaugurate,” as the newspapers called it, a new policy; that is, he was to give to the working of the relief bill an extension and a significance which few either of its supporters or opposers in Parliament ever contemplated. The inequality of the Romanist before the law he might have borne; social depreciation was a heavier evil, and one quite intolerable. Now, as the change to the new system required considerable tact and address, they intrusted the task to a most accomplished and well-bred gentleman; and were Ireland only to be won by dinner-parties, Lord Reckington must have been its victor. To very high rank and great personal advantages he united a manner of the most perfect kind. Dignified enough always to mark his station and his own consciousness of it, it was cordial without effort, frank and easy without display. If he could speak with all the weight of authority, he knew how to listen with actual deference; and there was that amount of change and “play” in his demeanor that made his companion, whoever for the moment he might be, believe that his views and arguments had made a deep impression on the Viceroy. To those unacquainted with such men, and the school to which they belong, there might have appeared something unreal, almost dramatic, in the elegant gracefulness of his bow, the gentle affability of his smile, the undeviating courtesy which he bestowed on all around him; but they were all of the man himself,--his very instincts,--his nature.