Well, we have not got this same western "Rip van Winkle," nor do I think we are likely to do so, for this simple reason, that if he were a Clare man, he 'd never have been caught "napping;" so, now, let us look about us and see if, on the very surface of events, we shall not find something to our purpose. But where to begin, that's the question: no clue is left to the absentee of a few years by which to guide his path. He may look in vain even for the old land-marks which he remembered in boyhood; for somehow he finds them all in masquerade.
The goodly King William he had left in all the effulgence of his Orange livery, is now a cross between a river-god and one of Dan's footmen. Let him turn to the Mansion-house to revive his memory of the glorious hip, hip, hurra's he has shouted in the exuberance of his loyalty, and straightway he comes plump against Lord Mayor O'Connell, proceeding in state to Marlborough-street chapel. He asks who are these plump gentlemen with light blue silk collars, and well-rounded calves, whose haughty bearing seems to awe the beholders, and he is told that he knew them of old, as wearing dusky black coats and leather shorts; pleasant fellows in those days, and well versed in punch and polemics. The hackney-coaches have been cut down into covered cars, and the "bulky" watchmen reduced to new police. Let him turn which way he will--let it be his pleasure to hear the popular preacher, the eloquent lawyer, or the scientific lecturer, and if his memory be only as accurate as his hearing, he will confess "time's changes;" and when he learns who are deemed the fashionable entertainers of the day--at whose boards sit lords and baronets most frequently, he will exclaim with the poet--
"Pritchard 's genteel, and Garrick 's six feet high."
Well, well, it's bad philosophy, and bad temper, too, to quarrel with what is; nowhere is the wisdom of Providence more seen than in the universal law, by which everything has its place somewhere; the gnarled and bent sapling that would be rejected by the builder, is exactly the piece adapted for the knee timber of a frigate; the jagged, ill-formed rock that would ill suit the polished portico, is invaluable in a rustic arch; and, perhaps, on the same principle, dull lawyers make excellent judges, and the people who cannot speak within the limits of Lindley Murray, are admirable public writers and excellent critics; and as Doctor Pangloss was a good man "because he knew what wickedness was," so nothing contributes to the detection of faults in others, like the daily practice of their commission by ourselves; and never can any man predict failure to another with such eloquence and impressiveness, as when he himself has experienced what it is to be damned.