SHERIDAN'S MANTLE.
IT is a prevalent opinion that the Whigs of our day, if more de- corous, are also more dull than their predecessors. If they neither rattle the dice like Fox nor bilk their creditors like SHERIDAN, neither, it is said, have they inherited the brilliancy and wit of those distinguished men. The old spirit, however, is not quite extinct : " under the ashen cold is fire y-reken." The SHERIDAE of the day (in point of wit, for we should be loth to make such an insinuation against his .morals as the epithet implies) is no less a person than the cook of the Reform Club. Like SHERIDAN, this great man spices even his compliments with banter, and gives his colleagues pretty broad hints that he is laughing at them in his sleeve. His latest and most successful sarcasm was a contribution to a dinner bestowed upon Mr. O'CONNELL by some of his friends, on Saturday last. The Sun has given light to this delicate piece of playful equivocation- " In a very recherché dinner given last Saturday, by some friends of Mr. O'Connell, at the Reform Club, there was a remarkable dainty dish placed upon the table, entitled 'Le Souffle Monstre A la Clontarf.' The height of it was 29 inches and the width 17 ; it took four hours and a quarter to bake, and contained 36 eggs, with other ingredients in proportion. Fifty very small souffles were seen clinging round that colossal mountain; and an extraordinary good likeness of the great agitator (drawn on rice paper, and surrounded by wreaths of shamrock) appeared as it were rising from the volcanic crater."
Nothing could be more appropriate as a testimonial to the Repeal agitation: as substantial as the benefits that movement can confer upon Ireland, it is as lasting as the honest fame that will accrue to those who set it on foot. The " volcanic crater " of 36 eggs is as dulcet a contrast to the eggs with which " unabashed De Foe" was greeted, as the substantial liberty for which that sturdy agita- tor contended is to the dream of Milesian independence—the " redeunt Saturnia regna " of Mr. O'CosnaseL. The " fifty very small souffles " clinging round the " colossal " monster souffle are no bad emblem of the Tail : and the material on which the "very effigies " of the hero was traced, was selected, doubtless, with a view to hint, through its association with Lord MONTEAGLE, the renewed alliance between O'CoNNELL and that noble Anti-Repealer's party. The fancy and sentiment of the "dainty dish " is quite on a par with SHERIDAN'S most successful efforts in that line in St. Stephen's or Covent Garden ; and the sarcastic inuendo which lies hid in it is worthy of that wicked wit. The cook of the Reform Club may say, like BURNS, " The genius of the party found me at the saucepan, and threw the mantle of its inspiration over me." In this its day of dull decadence the party ought to make much of M. Sovaz.
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