It was upon a raw, cold, drizzling morning in February, 18__, that our regiment landed on the North-wall from Liverpool, whence we had been hurriedly ordered to repress some riots and disturbances then agitating Dublin.

We marched to the Royal Barracks, our band playing Patrick’s Day, to the very considerable admiration of as naked a population as ever loved music.  The __th dragoons were at the same time quartered there—­right pleasant jovial fellows, who soon gave us to understand that the troubles were over before we arrived, and that the great city authorities were now returning thanks for their preservation from fire and sword, by a series of entertainments of the most costly, but somewhat incongruous kind—­the company being scarce less melee than the dishes.  Peers and playactors, judges and jailors, archbishops, tailors, attorneys, ropemakers and apothecaries, all uniting in the festive delight of good feeding, and drinking the “glorious memory”—­but of whom half the company knew not, only surmising “it was something agin the papists.”  You may smile, but these were pleasant times, and I scarcely care to go back there since they were changed.  But to return.  The __th had just received an invitation to a ball, to be given by the high sheriff, and to which they most considerately said we should also be invited.  This negociation was so well managed that before noon we all received our cards from a green liveried youth, mounted on a very emaciated pony—­the whole turn-out not auguring flatteringly of the high sheriff’s taste in equipage.

We dined with the __th, and, as customary before going to an evening party, took the “other bottle” of claret that lies beyond the frontier of prudence.  In fact, from the lieutenant-colonel down to the newly-joined ensign, there was not a face in the party that did not betray “signs of the times” that boded most favourably for the mirth of the sheriff’s ball.  We were so perfectly up to the mark, that our major, a Connemara man, said, as we left the mess-room, “a liqueure glass would spoil us.”

In this acme of our intellectual wealth, we started about eleven o’clock upon every species of conveyance that chance could press into the service.  Of hackney coaches there were few—­but in jingles, noddies, and jaunting-cars, with three on a side and “one in the well,” we mustered strong—­Down Barrack-street we galloped, the mob cheering us, we laughing, and I’m afraid shouting a little, too—­the watchmen springing their rattles, as if instinctively at noise, and the whole population up and awake, evidently entertaining a high opinion of our convivial qualities.  Our voices became gradually more decorous, however, as we approached the more civilized quarter of the town; and with only the slight stoppage of the procession to pick up an occasional dropper-off, as he lapsed from the seat of a jaunting-car, we arrived at length at our host’s residence, somewhere in Sackville-street.