It would be a most unfair criterion of the tastes and pleasures of that day, were we to pronounce, from our experience of what Dublin now is. Provincialism had not then settled down upon the city, with all its petty attendant evils. The character of a metropolis was upheld by a splendid Court, a resident Parliament, a great and titled aristocracy. The foreground figures of the time were men whose names stood high, and whose station was recognized at every Court of Europe. There was wealth more than proportioned to the cheapness of the country; and while ability and talent were the most striking features of every circle, the taste for gorgeous display exhibited within doors and without, threw a glare of splendour over the scene, that served to illustrate, but not eclipse the prouder glories of mind. The comparative narrowness of the circle, and the total absence of English reserve, produced a more intimate admixture of all the ranks which constitute good society here than in London, and the advantages were evident; for while the aristocrat gained immeasurably, from ready intercourse with men whose pursuits were purely intellectual, so the latter acquired a greater expansiveness, and a wider liberality in his views, from being divested of all the trammels of mere professional habit, and threw off his pedantry, as a garment unsuited to his position in society. But what more than all else was the characteristic of the time, was the fact, that social eminence--the “succès de salon”--was an object to every one. From the proud peer, who aspired to rank and influence in the councils of the state, to the rising barrister, ambitious of parliamentary distinction--from the mere fashionable idler of the squares, to the deep plotter of political intrigue--this was alike indispensable. The mere admission into certain circles was nothing--the fact of mixing with the hundred others who are announced, and bow, and smile, and slip away, did not then serve to identify a man as belonging to a distinct class in society; nor would the easy platitudes of the present day, in which the fool or the fop can always have the ascendant, suffice for the absence of conversational ability, ready wit, and sharp intelligence, which were assembled around every dinner-table of the capital. It is not our duty, still less our inclination, to inquire why have all these goodly attractions left us, nor wherefore is it, that, Uke the art of staining glass, social agreeability should be lost for ever. So it would seem, however; we have fallen upon tiresome times, and he who is old enough to remember pleasanter ones, has the sad solace of knowing that he has seen the last of them.