And I wonder De Tocqueville and De Beaumont, and THE TIMES'
Commissioner, did not explain the Snobbishness of Ireland as contrasted
with our own. Ours is that of Richard's Norman Knights,--haughty, brutal
stupid, and perfectly self-confident;--theirs, of the poor, wondering,
kneeling, simple chieftains. They are on their knees still before
English fashion--these simple, wild people; and indeed it is hard not to
grin at some of their NAIVE exhibitions.
Some years since, when a certain great orator was Lord Mayor of Dublin,
he used to wear a red gown and a cocked hat, the splendour of which
delighted him as much as a new curtain-ring in her nose or a string of
glass-beads round her neck charms Queen Quasheeneboo. He used to pay
visits to people in this dress; to appear at meetings hundreds of miles
off, in the red velvet gown. And to hear the people crying 'Yes, me
Lard!' and 'No, me Lard!' and to read the prodigious accounts of his
Lordship in the papers: it seemed as if the people and he liked to be
taken in by this twopenny splendour. Twopenny magnificence,
indeed, exists all over Ireland, and may be considered as the great
characteristic of the Snobbishness of that country.
When Mrs. Mulholligan, the grocer's lady, retires to Kingstown, she has
Mulholliganville' painted over the gate of her villa; and receives you
at a door that won't shut or gazes at you out of a window that is glazed
with an old petticoat.
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