it affected to protect. The Curate of St. Peters sang and danced, and prided himself on performing the movements and evolutions of the quadrille, certainly equal to any other divine of the Established Church, if not to any private lay gentleman of the three kingdoms. It often happened, too, that Mr. Maturin, either laboured under an attack of gout or met with some accident, which compelled the use of a slipper or bandage on one foot or one leg; and by an unaccountable congruity of mischances he was uniformly compelled on these occasions to appear in the public thoroughfares of Dublin, where the melancholy spectacle of a beautiful limb in pain never failed to excite the sighs and sympathies of all the interesting persons who passed, as well as to prompt their curiosity to make audible remarks or inquiries respecting the possessor.” We are much afraid that the vanity of Mr Maturin was not wonderfully peculiar, and with due allowance for those differences in our styles of dress and living which have been made in fifty years, it would not be difficult to find ministers of the gospel who would prove strong rivals to the curate of St Peter’s.
In 1825 the New Times presented the public with the original of that singular advertisement which has been so often quoted as an Irish bull, but which would appear to be home-bred: “Wanted by a Surgeon residing at Guildford, two apprentices, who will be treated as one of the family.”
The Hibernian companion to this would most fitly be the Dublin editor’s statement, in reference to a newly-invented laundry machine, that by its use every man would probably become his own washerwoman.
From washerwomen to general servants is but a step, and so from the Times of five-and-twenty years back we extract a model specimen, supposed to emanate from that rarest of raræ aves, a pattern domestic:—
DO YOU WANT A SERVANT? Necessity prompts the