Among the notable personages that were this day presented to the Duke, we must not omit to notice the Honourable Mr. Berenger, M. P. for the County of——, of an ancient and ennobled family, whose ancestor came to Ireland in the time of the second Henry. He wore a very large black curled peruke, which flowed like a lion's mane adown his shoulders; his coat and small-clothes were of light blue velvet, richly embroidered; a waistcoat richly worked, and adorned with foliations formed of various precious stones. He wore, too, a superb diamond-hilted sword; diamond shoe and knee buckles; silk stockings, with gold embroidered clokes; and the heels of his shoes were of red Morocco leather. He was indeed, beyond all dispute, the unparalleled dandy of his day! Mr. Berenger had been in his youth a very handsome man; but his face now was deadly pale; and his eyes, which had been once brilliant as the diamonds which adorned him, reposed, dim and shorn of their beams, within their hollow and shrivelled sockets. Time, too, had left his stern impress in the indented furrows of the cheek and the care-scored wrinkles of his brow: he looked the languid voluptuary, while surfeit and satiety seemed to seal up his lips. His figure, notwithstanding, was yet even still fine and commanding. His countenance, however, spoke more plainly of the preterpluperfect than either of the present or future tense. His eyes reposed on the carpet or upon vacancy; they had in them "no speculation, that they did glare withal." When attending the gay and dissipated court of the second Charles he had often revelled with Rochester, and jested with Killigrew and, moreover, had the high distinction paid him of being called "a very finished gentleman indeed" by the witty monarch, "whose word no man relied on!"
The eccentric Mr. Berenger had severally proposed at three different times a matrimonial alliance with Lady Lucy, the Duke's youngest sister, who politely, but positively refused him; and upon some overtures to renew his solicitations, Lady Lucy observed, that as she had so long delayed to marry for love, she was now resolved not to marry in the capacity of a nurse-tender! This was so home an argumentum ad superbiam a cut and thrust at the pride of the Honourable Member, that he now seemed to have no intention of becoming a Benedict. Lady Letitia found great fault with her sister, complained of her cruelty, and sturdily maintained "that the Honourable M. P. having shewn such a confirmed constancy, ought not to have met with this sharp repulse; for it was evident and manifest that Mr. Berenger did not indeed belong to the shabby class of 'perhaps' suitors.
But it is now time that we should return from this digression. Sir John Caldwell was at the levee, and his protegé, our quondam acquaintance Doctor Dismal Drew, a newly-appointed chaplain, in a gown and cassock spick and span, who having fully acceded to the rules and stipulations of address, costume, and conduct, appeared indeed to have been moulded into quite a different personage. However his strange absence of mind and defect of judgment fully remained unaltered, as was fully exemplified on the ensuing Sunday, when he preached a sermon at the castle chapel before the Duke and his vice-regal suite. The text was chosen in bad tact, however, and still worse policy: it was selected from the xxvth chapter of Proverbs, 5th verse: "Take away the wicked from before the king, and his throne shall be established in righteousness!" This was unquestionably an uncalled for attack upon the ministry, upon the noble viceroy, and on his patron; and his name was struck out of the list of chaplains, never to be again restored. So much for Doctor Drew! whose head seemed to be obtuse albeit—certainly, however, it was never destined to be encircled with that ornament with which Sancho crowned the head of his favourite Dapple.
Early on the succeeding day her Grace the Duchess of Tyrconnel, the lovely Lady Adelaide, Ladies Letitia and Lucy, escorted by the polite and facetious Sir Patricius Placebo, arrived safely at Dublin Castle, and were most warmly and affectionately received by the Duke and viceroy.
The vice-regal party sat down to dinner at their usual and not irrational hour of four o'clock, which, in these our modern days of dissipation and late hours, would be considered as an hour for dinner quite gothic and á la Bourgeois; for in these our polished days of finished taste and refinement, late hours seem to be the very acme of fashion; late dinners necessarily being succeeded by late suppers, and, par conséquence, afternoon breakfasts, in consequatory succession, bringing up the rere of fashionable high-life to the great practice and benefit of the College of Physicians.
The conversation after dinner was lively and agreeable. The Duchess described their journey, and gave many traits of the good feeling and humour of the lower classes, as witnessed in their journey from Tyrconnel Castle. When the ladies had retired, Lord Glandarah, who was of the party, speaking of the eccentric Mr. Berenger, who had been at the levee on the preceding day, turning to Sir Patricius, inquired of him if he knew that eccentric personage? and the following reply, aided by the effects of brisk Champaign, thus effervesced and flowed from his lips: "Oh, yes, my Lord, I have before these days met with Count Berenger, as he was called; I have too heard him converse with the Windsor beauties, whose similitudes Sir Peter Lely, of pictorial fame,