said, "I don't understand what your Royal Highness means by likening an empty bottle to a marine." The Duke immediately replied, "My dear general, I mean a good fellow that has done his duty, and who is ready to do it again."

This neat turn excited great applause, and becoming soon known in the army, has since been repeated with eclat at almost every messtable in the service.

His Royal Highness also said a tolerably good thing, which I find has not been done sufficient justice to in a late popular Magazine. -General England, who many years ago had the command of the Plymouth garrison, was a man of remarkably large size. With nearly the height of Samuel Macdonald, the Prince of Wales's porter, he possessed almost the rotundity of Daniel Lambert.

The Duke of York having eyed him with amazement, one day at the Horse Guards, exclaimed to his own Aid-de-camp, as soon as the General had made his bow, and was out of hear

ing; "England! Great Britain, by G-d! and the calf of Man to boot!"-pointing to the General's huge legs.

Another very good bon mot is told of him: viz., that when an Irish officer was introduced at the levee, as Major O'Sullivan O'Toole O'Shaughnessy, the Duke exclaimed, turning up the whites of his eyes, "O J-s!"

95

VII.

IRISH BULLS.

IT was a favourite amusement with Mr. Sheridan (as Michael Kelly says of him in his "Reminiscences") to make for his Irish friends, and to repeat as theirs, certain ludicrous expressions which generally go under the denomination of Bulls; and of these, he would sometimes in company drive a whole herd across the table, particularly if a native of the Emerald Isle happened to sit opposite to him. That many of these were manufactured for the purpose of exciting a laugh, there can be little doubt: but the following, the writer believes to be too good, even for the ingenuity of

Sheridan to fabricate-at least they must have had some foundation in truth.

One evening, at the club, the conversation turning on the propensity of Irishmen of all ranks to make blunders, a gentleman present defended his countrymen from the imputation, by saying that the natives of other countries made bulls as well as the Irish; and he related several instances among the English and Scotch, to prove his position:-such as, an advertisement that appeared in the London newspapers some years ago, "That Drury-lane was removed to the Opera House, until the former theatre should be rebuilt ;" and the resolution of the magistrates of Glasgow (some months pre ́vious), "To build their new gaol from the muterials of the old one; whilst the prisoners were to remain in the latter, until the former was rebuilt!" He maintained, moreover, that bullmaking was by no means a necessary accomplishment in an Irishman; for that only the lower orders made blunders, and that chiefly from their habit of thinking in one language, and speaking in another.

Very true, my good friend," replied Sheridan ; "I grant that the conception of an idea in the native Erse, and the utterance of it in a foreign tongue, (which the English certainly is to the majority of your countrymen,) may be the cause of blundering, or mistranslation, if you will have it so, to those with whom the former is the language of infancy, and the latter is acquired by education: but I have heard so many Irish gentlemen-nay, men of taste and understandingmake bulls, that I consider this propensity to be not only inherent in all Irishmen, but that it proceeds from that mercurial disposition which never permits them to reflect, so as to examine sufficiently the whole of the subject matter of which they are about to speak. I will give you one or two instances within my own knowledge :

I PROMISE TO PAY.

"A friend of mine, a half-pay Colonel, not very famous for punctuality in pecuniary matters, a misfortune we are all liable to,