DUBLIN IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.* THE deftness of touch which

gives such a fascination to Stevenson's Picturesque Edinburgh is not to be found in Miss Gerard's Picturesque Dublin. Her book is a curious medley of legend, tradition, history (not always quite accurate), and the descriptions of society entertainments such as adorn the pages of ladies' journals. We prefer Miss Gerard when she is trying to reconstruct the past, and to depict the faded glories of the eighteenth century, for, to be quite candid, her descriptions of balls in St. Patrick's Hall and of the amenities of Viceregal Drawing-rooms are somewhat conventional, and the chapter which she devotes to modern Dublin society leaves us quite unmoved. The illustrations by Miss Rose Barton and the reproductions of old engravings add more than a little to the attractiveness of the book. • In the latter half of the eighteenth century Dublin was one A the gayest cities in Europe, and its Viceregal Court was sparkling in comparison with the perennial dullness that sur- rounded the throne of George IIL Down to the reign of that Monarch, indeed, the Viceroy spent only six months in every two years in the country which he was supposed to govern. The Viceroyalty was regarded as a sort of polite banishment, and when the Earl of Bristol was unexpectedly told that it would be his duty to reside permanently in Dublin, he promptly resigned the office, though he was half way across the Channel at the time. Lord Townshend, how, ever—the "poor be-devilled Viceroy" of a popular ballad— accepted the new conditions, and with him begins the long list of permanent Governors. The Castle, it is true, was far from being an attractive residence. A gloomy, inconvenient pile of different dates and styles, it was described in 1688 by Lord Arran in a letter to his father Ormonde "as the worst Castle in the worst situation in Christendom." And the system of government must have been gall and wormwood to a man of sensitive honour. But there were compensations.

The dullness of exile was enlivened by Celtic gaieties, and if they occasionally overstepped the bounds of decorum, perhaps the wheels moved all the smoother. A game called " Cutcha- cutehoo " seems to have been long in vogue :—

"Two recesses were fitted up at the end of the grand saloons, and here behind a curtain the ladies prepared their toilet for the sport. In a moment the floor was crowded with' belles,' dowagers,' and 'beaux' hopping about in the sitting attitude required by the game. Great was the laughter when a gentle dame of high degree was capsized by the heavier assault of a stouter rival. Presently, as the fun waxed more furious, dresses were torn, hair disordered, paint on the fair faces began to rub off, and the whole became a romp."

How Henry VIII. would have enjoyed " Catchacutchoo!" The Liberties—so called because they were outside the

jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor—which grew up round the castle, are richer in historical interest than any other quarter of the city. Many of the tenement-houses, which now hold the dregs of the population, were once the town mansions of the Irish nobility ; and the squalid streets are full of memories of French refugees, of Handel and Swift, and of the Irish revolutionaries.

The Coombe—a low slum in what used to be the Bishop's Liberty—bears many traces of the Huguenot craftsmen, who fled with their skill and industry from the short-sighted persecution of Louis XIV. In Weaver's Square one can still distinguish some of the sharp-gabled, high-doored houses where these exiles wove the silks and poplins that carried their fame all over Europe. They taught -their secrete • Picturesque 1/x6144041 and Nem. By Pram eit t4rrerti Witt 91 Illustration. rRose Ban or!. V!.1., and Repruducttons of 0111 Engraft**. Ist.adua utoktins.m 1.128

ungrudgingly to the Irish, and the manufacture grew and flourished until the jealousy of English merchants found voice in the suppressive measures of the English Parliament.

Close to the Coombe lies Fishamble Street, with its theatre, in whiels Handel in 1741 conducted the first performance of his Messiah. The great musician was better treated in Dublin than be had been in London. We find him writing in high spirits to his friends :—" The nobility did me the honour to make amongst themselves a subscription for six nights, which did fill a room of six hundred persons, so that I did not need to sell a single ticket at the door, and without vanity the per- formance was received with general approbaf ion. I cannot sufficiently express the kind treatment I receive here ; but the politeness of this generous nation cannot be unknown to you, so I let you judge of the satisfaction I enjoy." Within almost a stone's throw of the scene of Handel's triumph stands the Cathedral of St. Patrick, though much changed both without and within since the days of Swift. But no alteration can sever the association with the greatest of its Deans, and Scott was right when he said "the whole Cathedral is merely his tomb." Swift's life and character are a perennial mystery. He did more than any other manof his time to lighten the burdens of the Irish people, whom all the while he frankly detested, and it surpasses the wit of any biographer to unravel the secret of his connection with Stella and Vanessa. Stella lies beside him in the cathedral, but for memories of Vanessa we must go further afield,—to Celbridge Abbey, which Swift always found within an easy ride of the city. In a corner of that most picturesque of houses Esther Vanhomrigh established herself after her father's death, and wore her heart out in frenzied love for a man old enough to be her father :—

"Vanessa, not in years a score, Dreams of a gown of forty-four.

Imaginary charms can find

In eyes with reading almost blind.

Cadenns now no more appears Declined in health, advanced in years ; She fancies music in his tongue, No further looks, but thinks him youug. What mariner is not afraid To venture on a ship decayed ?

What planter will attempt to yoke A sapling with a fallen oak?"

Towards the end of the century the Liberties were closely associated with the Irish revolutionaries. The leaders of the United Irishmen—the traitor Reynolds among them—used to meet at Oliver Bond's residence in Lower Bridge Street. Lord Edward Fitzgerald was arrested after a desperate

struggle in a house in Thomas Street, and Theobald Wolfe Tone's body was waked with national honours at 65 High

Street. Miss Gerard should be a little more accurate in her history. She tells us that Tone, having been implicated in the landing of the French at Killala Bay in 1798, was arrested in the fall uniform of the French service, and condemned to death. Wolfe Tone did not accompany General Humbert to Xillala Bay,—it was his brother Matthew who was arrested after that ill-judged attempt. Wolfe Tone was captured on board a French ship of the line in Lough Swilly some weeks later, and died, as he had lived, a poltroon. • The Viceregal Court has long been the mainstay of Dublin life, but in the eighteenth century the Irish Parliament was a still more important influence. It brought and kept together the Irish nobility and gentry. Chesterfield, indeed, in 1748 could describe the House of Lords as a. "hospital for incurables," and declare that Session after Session in the House of Commons presented "one unvaried waste of provincial imbecility." But those were the days of grovelling subservience to the English Government. A few years later the character of the Irish Parliament altered,—the spirit of opposition to a tyrannical system was evoked, and we doubt if any Assembly in the world could boast of a more brilliant band of contemporaries than Grattan, Flood, Curran, Ponsonby, Malone, and Plunket. Their style of oratory may seem to us a little old-fashioned, but think how the dullness of the House of Commons would be enlivened now by the fiery invective of a Grattan, or the biting sarcasm of a Flood.

"The nobility and gentlemen of Ireland," says Arthur Young in his Tour, "live in a manner that a man of £700 in England would disdain." But the middle of the eighteenth century saw the beginnings of a great Cliange-.--Thi elder

sons, who bad been sent to make the grand tour, returned with enlarged ideas, and a disdain of their paternal surroundings in the Liberties. So an exodus began which gradually altered the whole appearance of the city. James, Earl of Kildare, led the way. "They will follow me wherever I go," he said; and he built himself a palatial mansion in the unfashionable quarter of Molesworth Fields. His prophecy proved true, and houses sprang up all round the "ample spaciousness" of Stephen's Green, in Rutland Square, in Kildare Street, and in Mountjoy Square. And with their houses they changed their manners. The parsimony of the Liberties gave place to a reckless extravagance, to which the devil-may-care sort of gaiety so graphically depicted in the Knight of Gwynne was but a poor set-off. Yet there was an elegance about Irish society at the end of last century that was infinitely attractive. Even John Wesley was impressed by the merely material aspect of it. At Moira House in 1775 he "was surprised to observe, though not a more grand, yet a far more elegant room than any he had ever seen in England;" and then after describing its beauties be adds, "Must all this pass away like a dream ? " The Act of Union answered his question. and the Encumbered Estates Court supplied the moral. Less than fifty years after the Union Carlyle could see nothing in Dublin but "vapid, inane streets, fall of side-cars and trashery," and Thackeray's chief impression was of the window in the Shelbourne Hotel kept open by a hearth-brush. Sic transit gloria mundi. But though Dublin during Grattan's Parlia- ment was a. far more brilliant city than it is to-day, rural Ireland was, for the most part, sunk in a slavish and shabby misery entirely different from its present condition.