Somewhere in the Scriptures it is written, that whoever gives to the

poor lends to the Lord. There are three reasons why I don't tell you

exactly where this may be found. In the first place, poor creatures that

you are, few of you happen to have the authorized Douay edition, printed

and published by Richard Coyne of Dublin, and certified as correct by

Archbishop Troy, and the other heads of the Church in Ireland--few

among you, I say, have _that_, though I know that there is not a house

in the parish without a loose song-book, or the History of the Irish

Rogues. In the second place, if ye had it, 'tis few of ye could read it,

ignorant haythens that ye are. And in the third place, if every man-jack

of ye did possess it, and could read it, (for the Church still admits

the possibility of miracles,) it would not much matter at this present

moment, because it happens that I don't quite remember in what part of

it the text is to be found;--for the wickedness of my flock has affected

my memory, and driven many things clean out of my head, which it took me

a deal of trouble to put into it when I was studying in foreign parts,

years ago. But it don't matter. The fault is not mine, but yours, ye

unnatural crew, and may-be ye won't find it out, to your cost, before ye

have been five minutes quit of this life. Amen.

"He who gives to the poor."--Ye are not skilled in logic, nor indeed in

anything that I know except playing hurley in the fields, scheming at

cards in public-houses for half gallons of porter, and defrauding your

clergy of their lawful dues. What is worse, there's no use in trying to

drive logic into your heads, for indeed that would be the fulfilment of

another text that speaks of throwing pearls before pigs. But if ye _did_

know logic--which ye don't--ye would perceive at once that the passage I

have just quoted naturally divides itself into two branches. The first

involves the _giving_; that is, rationally and syllogistically

considered, what ye ought to do. And the second involves the _poor_;

that is, the receivers of the gifts, or the persons for whom ye ought to

do it.

First, then, as to the giving. Now it stands to reason that, as the

Scripture says in some other place, the blind can't lead the blind,

because maybe they'd fall into the bog-holes, poor things, and get

drowned. And so, though there really is wonderful kindness to each other

among them, it is not to be expected that the poor can give to the poor.

No, the givers must be people who have something to give, which the poor

have not. Some of ye will try and get off on this head, and say that

'tis gladly enough ye'd give, but that really ye can't afford it. Can't

ye? If you make up your minds, any one of you, to give up only a single

glass of spirits, every day of your lives, see what it will come to in

the course of a year, and devote _that_ to the Church--that is to the

Clergy--and it will be more than some of the well-to-do farmers, whom I

have in my eye at this blessed moment, have had the heart to give me

during the last twelve months. Why, as little as a penny a day comes to

more than thirty shillings in the year, and even that insignificant

trifle I have not had from some of you that have the means and ought to

know better. I don't want to mention names, but, Tom Murphy of the Glen,

I am afraid I shall be compelled to name you before the whole

congregation, some day before long, if you don't pay up your lawful

dues. I won't say more now on that subject, for, as St. Augustine says,

"A nod's as good as a wink to a blind horse."

Now, the moral of the first part being clearly shown, that all who _can_

give _ought_ to give, the next branch is _to whom_ should it be given?

The blessed text essentially states and declares "to the poor." Then

follows the inquiry, who's "the _poor_." The whole matter depends on

_that_.

I dare say, ignorant as ye are, some of you will think that it's the

beggars, and the cripples, and the blind travellers who contrive to get

through the length and breadth of the country, guided by Providence and

a little dog tied to their fingers by a bit of string. No, I don't want

to say one mortal word against that sort of cattle, or injure them in

their honest calling. God help them. It's their trade, their estate,

their occupation, their business to beg--just as much as 'tis Pat

Mulcahy's business to tailor, or Jerry Smith's to make carts, or Tom

Shine's to shoe horses, or Din Cotter's to make potheen, and my business

to preach sermons, and save your souls, ye heathens. But these ain't

"the poor" meant in the text. They're used to begging, and they like to

beg, and they thrive on begging, and I, for one, wouldn't be the man to

disturb them in the practice of their profession, and long may it be a

provision to them and to their heirs for ever. Amen.

May-be, ye mean-spirited creatures, some among you will say that it's

yourselves is "the poor." Indeed, then, it isn't. Poor enough and

niggardly ye are, but you ain't the poor contemplated by holy Moses in

the text. Sure 'tis your nature to toil and to slave--sure 'tis what

ye're used to. Therefore, if any one were to give anything to _you_, he

would not be lending to the Lord in the slightest degree, but throwing

away his money as completely as if he lent it upon the security of the

land that's covered by the lakes of Killarney. Don't flatter yourselves,

any of you, for a moment, that you are "the poor." I can tell you that

you're nothing of the sort.

Now, then, we have found out who should be the givers. There's no

mistake about _that_--reason and logic unite in declaring that every one

of you, man, woman and child--should give, and strain a point to do it

liberally. Next, we have ascertained that it's "the poor" who should

receive what you give. Thirdly, we have determined who are _not_ "the

poor." Lastly, we must discover who _are_.

Let each of you put on his considering cap and think.--Well, I have

paused that you might do so. Din Cotter is a knowledgeable man compared

with the bulk of you. I wonder whether he has discovered who _are_ "the

poor." He shakes his head--but there is not much in _that_. Well, then,

you give it up. You leave it to me to enlighten you all. Learn, then,

to your shame, that it's the Clergy who are "the poor."

Ah! you perceive it now, do you? The light comes in through your thick

heads, does it? Yes, it's I and my brethren is "the poor." We get our

bread--coarse enough and dry enough it usually is--by filling you with

spiritual food, and, judging by the congregation now before me, its ugly

mouths you have to receive it. We toil not, neither do we spin, but if

Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed better than we are, instead

of being clothed in vermin and fine linen, 'tis many a time he'd be

wearing a thread-bare black coat, white on the seams, and out at the

elbows. It's the opinion of the most learned scholars and Doctors in

Divinity, as laid down before the Council of Trent, that the translation

is not sufficiently exact in regard of this text. And they recommend

that for the words "the poor," we should substitute "the clergy." Thus

corrected, then, the text would read "he who gives to the Clergy, lends

to the Lord," which, no doubt, is the proper and undiluted Scripture.

The words of the text are thus settled, and you have heard my

explanation of it all. Now for the application. Last Thursday was a week

since the fair of Bartlemy, and I went down there to buy a horse, for

this is a large parish, and mortification and fretting has puffed me up

so, that, God help me, 'tis little able I am to walk about to answer

all the sick calls, to say nothing of stations, weddings, and

christenings. Well, I bought the horse, and it cost me more than I

expected, so that there I stood without a copper in my pocket after I

had paid the dealer. It rained cats and dogs, and as I am so poor that I

can't afford to buy a great coat, I got wet to the skin, in less than no

time. There you were, scores of you, in the public houses, with the

windows up, that all the world might see you eating and drinking as if

it was for a wager. And there was not one of you who had the grace to

ask, "Father Prout, have you got a mouth in your face?" And there I

might have stood in the rain until this blessed hour (that is, supposing

it had continued raining until now), if I had not been picked up by Mr.

'Mun Roche, of Kildinan, an honest gentleman, and a hospitable man I

must say, though he is a Protestant.[12] He took me home with him, and

there, to your eternal disgrace, you villains, I got as full as a tick,

and 'Mun had to send me home in his own carriage--which is an

everlasting shame to all of you, who belong to the true Church.

[12] Created Lord Fermoy in 1855.

Now, I ask which has carried out the text? You who did not give me even

a poor tumbler of punch, when I was like a drowned rat at Bartlemy, or

'Mun Roche, who took me home, and filled me with the best of eating and

drinking, and sent me to my own house, after that, in his own elegant

carriage? Who best fulfilled the Scripture? Who lent to the Lord, by

giving to his poor Clergy? Remember, a time will come when I must give a

true account of you:--what can I say then? Won't I have to hang down my

head in shame, on your account? 'Pon my conscience, it would not much

surprise me, unless you greatly mend your ways, if 'Mun Roche and you

won't have to change places on that occasion: _he_ to sit alongside of

me, as a friend who had treated the poor Clergy well in this world, and

_you_ in a certain place, which I won't particularly mention now, except

to hint that 'tis little frost or cold you'll have in it, but quite the

contrary. However, 'tis never too late to mend, and I hope that by this

day week, it's quite another story I'll have to tell of you all.--Amen.

IRISH DANCING-MASTERS.

Five-and-twenty years ago, when I left Ireland, the original or

aboriginal race of country dancing-masters was nearly extinct. By this

time, I presume, it has almost died out. Here and there a few may be

seen,

"Rari nantes in gurgite vasto,"

but the light-heeled, light-hearted, jovial, genial fellows who were

actual Masters of the Revels in the district to which they respectively

belonged, are nowhere.

There used to be as much pride (and property) in a village

dancing-master as in a village schoolmaster, in my young days, and I

have heard of "many accidents by flood and field," caused by attempts to

remove a dancing-master or a pedagogue, of high reputation, from one

district to another. In such cases, the very abduction being the

strongest possible compliment to his renown, the person who was "enticed

away by force," always made a point of offering no resistance, and would

passively and proudly await the result. Indeed, care was always taken

that such removal should be actual preferment, as, to ameliorate his

condition, the residence provided for him in the new village, township,

or barony, was always better than that from which he was removed.

As a general rule, the abduction, of schoolmasters was a favorite

practice in Kerry--where every man and boy is supposed to speak

Latin[13]--while stolen dancing-masters did not abound in the

neighbouring counties of Cork and Limerick. The natural inference is

that the County Kerry-men preferred the culture of the head, while the

others rather cared for the education of the heels.

[13] There are full grounds for this assertion. Classical learning

has flourished in Kerry (under a hedge) from time immemorial. I

recollect an illustrative anecdote. Two poor scholars who were

travelling through Kerry, came to a farm-house, when faint with

hunger, and foot-sore with walking; they went in, and modestly

wanted "a drink of water," which was given them. On leaving the

house, where they had expected something better than this scant

hospitality, one of them exclaimed, "Ah, Pat, that's not the way

that a farmer's wife would trate a poor scholar in our part of the

world. 'Tis the good bowl of milk she'd give him, and not the

piggin of cold water. She's a _malus mulier_." The other responded,

"Say _mala_--it must be so to agree with the feminine _mulier_.

Don't you know that _malus mulier_ is bad Latin?" "Hold your

tongue," was the answer: "whatever it is, it is only too good for a

niggard like _her_."

To have a first-rate hedge-schoolmaster was a credit to any parish. To

have engrossed the services of an eminent _maître de danse_ was almost a

matter of considerable pride and boasting, but to possess _both_ of

these treasures was indeed a triumph.

There was more pride, perhaps, in having a schoolmaster of great

repute--more pleasure in owning a dancer of high renown. The book-man

was never known to dance, and the village Vestris was rarely able to

write his name. Thus they never clashed. One ruled by day, and the other

had unquestioned sovereignty in the hours between dusk and dawn.

Such a being as a youthful dancing-master I never saw--never heard of.

They were invariably middle-aged men, at the youngest; but professors of

"the poetry of motion," who were about seventy, appeared the greatest

favourites. It was dreaded, perhaps, that the attraction of youth and

good dancing combined would be too much for the village beauties to

resist. On the same system, in all probability, it was a _sine quâ non_

that the dancing-master should be married.

The Irish peasantry used to have a sort of passion for dancing. Hence

the necessity for a teacher. On stated evenings during the winter, no

matter what obstacles wet weather or dirty roads might present, a large

company of pupils, from the age of ten to forty years, would assemble,

in some roomy barn, possessing a smooth and hard floor of

closely-pounded clay, to receive instructions in the saltatory art.

Sometimes, when the teacher was ambitious, he would flourishingly open

the proceedings with what was called "a bit of a noration,"--the oratory

principally consisting of sesquipedalian words and mythological

allusions, being composed by the schoolmaster--utterly unintelligible,

but sounding largely, and delivered in an _ore rotundo_ manner and with

"a laudable voice," as if the dancing-master really understood the words

he uttered. Not taking particular pains to follow "copy," and frequently

putting in words of his own when those written down for him had slipped

out of his memory, these orations were amusingly absurd. They invariably

commenced with an allusion to Miriam dancing before Moses, after the

passage of the Red Sea, (on which occasion, no doubt, was first heard

"the piper who played before Moses," familiarly named in Irish

colloquy,) and, passing down, through Homer and the classics, always

ended with a warm eulogy on the antiquity of the dance.

In those days, the favourite exhibitions were the jig, the reel, the

hornpipe, and the country-dance. The last-named was considered

dreadfully genteel--too aristocratic, in fact, for the multitude--and

was learned and practiced (as courting and kissing often are) on the

sly! The reel was countenanced--and no more. It was rather Scotch than

Irish. Every one was expected to be able to go that laborious piece of

amusement called "The Sailor's Hornpipe,"--faint vestiges of which are

extant, to this hour, in nautical scenes,--as represented on the stage.

Words cannot describe the evolutions of this remarkable dance, when

exhibited with all the scientific varieties of which it was

capable. The shuffles, cross-shuffles, jumps, hops, leaps, cuttings,

slides, and so on, which were introduced, I am unable to describe. The

manner in which "heel-and-toe" was employed and varied, some abler

historian may record.

That the hours passed away on swift pinions at these dancing academies,

may well be imagined. There was any quantity of flirtation at all times,

and about half the marriages in the country owed their origin to these

_réunions_. It is creditable to the proverbial good conduct of my

countrywomen, that loss of character rarely, if ever, resulted from

these free-and-easy meetings.

The real glory of the evening, however, was when the dancing-master,

after a world of solicitation, would "take the flure," in order to give

his admiring pupils a touch of his quality. On such an occasion, the

door of the house would be lifted off its hinges, and placed in the

centre of the floor. Abandoning the little _kit_ (a small-sized violin)

which was his companion at all other exhibitions, he would allow a blind

piper to "discourse most excellent music," and, on the door, would

commence that wondrous display of agility, known, in my time, as "cover

the buckle;"--a name probably derived from the circumstance that the

dancing-master, while teaching, always wore large buckles in his shoes,

and by the rapidity of motion with which he would make his "many

twinkling feet" perpetually cross, would seem to "cover" the appendages

in question. The great effort was to exhibit all varieties of steps and

dances, without once quitting the prostrate door on which the exhibitor

took his stand. The jumps, the "cuttings" in the air, the bends, the

dives, the wrigglings, the hops--these were all critically regarded by

his audience, and sometimes rewarded with such exclamations as "That's

the way,"--"now for a double cut,"--"cover-the-buckle, ye divel,"--"Oh,

then, 'tis he that handles his feet nately." At the conclusion, when he

literally had danced himself almost off his legs, he would bow to the

company, and--if he were very much a favourite, or had eclipsed all

former displays--one of the prettiest girls in the room would go round,

plate in hand, and make a collection for him. How the ten-penny and

five-penny bits would tumble in, on those occasions--particularly if the

fair collector could be induced to announce, with a blush and a smile,

that she would take an extra donation on the usual terms, which meant

that, for five shillings into the plate, any gallant swain might brush

the dew from her own coral lips, on that occasion only and by particular

desire. Can you doubt, for a moment, that the likely "boy" who had been

sitting by her side all the evening, making babies on her eyes (as the

saying is), and with his arm round her waist, just to steady her in her

seat, would jump up and fling his crown-piece into the treasury--though

the pecuniary sacrifice would probably involve his being obliged to

dispense, for a few weeks more, with "the new Carline hat" on which his

dandyism had set its mind, for his Sunday adorning!

It was difficult for "an outsider" to become a spectator of the peculiar

modes of teaching adopted and practiced by these masters. At a small

extra rate, they would undertake to give instructions in that

"deportment," of which the late Mr. Turvey-drop was such an illustrious

exemplar. I never witnessed anything of this sort, but have conversed on

the subject with some who did. From what I could learn, the whole course

of tuition in this particular branch must have been ludicrous in the

extreme. Besides lessons in standing, walking, sitting, and even leaning

with grace and ease, more recondite points were considered. Such were

"how to slide out of a room backwards" (on the chance, no doubt, of some

of the rustics having to appear at Court, before Royalty)--"how to

accept a tumbler of punch from a gentleman," touching the liquid with

her lips, so as to leave a kiss within the cup, as Ben Jonson

advises,--"how to refuse a kiss," and yet not destroy the hope of its

being accepted, a little later in the evening,--and, above all, "how to

take a kiss," in the most genteel and approved manner of politeness!

These instructions, super-added to a lesson that was called

"the Grecian bend" (which was nothing less than a coquettish way of

leaning forward, with the eyes cast down, while listening to soft

nonsense from a favoured swain), were peculiar and private. The only way

in which the male sex could obtain a glimpse at such Eleusinian

mysteries was by taking a recumbent position on the roof of the house,

carefully removing a small portion of the thatch, and using eyes and

ears in that situation to the best advantage. If detected by the irate

maidens, the spy would run a fair chance of a scratched face and

well-boxed ears.

As might be expected, the country dancing-master sometimes had stupid

and refractory pupils. There was a common method of giving them

instruction, which, for its practical simplicity, may be worth relating.

When the pupil would persist in _not_ recollecting which foot was to be

used, at particular periods, the dancing-master would take a rope made

of twisted hay, called a _suggaun_, and fasten it around one of the

delinquent's ankles. He would then take a similar bracelet of twisted

willow, denominated a _gad_, and put this on the other. Then, instead of

directing the pupil to the particular use or motion of the right leg or

the left, he would exclaim, "Rise upon _suggaun_," or "Sink upon _gad_,"

and in this manner convey his instructions beyond a possibility of

mistake by even the most stupid!

Of course, where there was large company of young people, full of life

and spirit, under pupilage to a not young instructor, a variety of

practical jokes would be perpetrated, at his expense, every now and

then. They were almost invariably of a good-natured kind. One, which

might be considered as to "be repeated every night until farther

notice," generally came off towards the end of the evening. A joyous,

light-hearted damsel would suddenly start up, while the music was

playing, and, placing herself before the dancing-master, with that

particular description of curtsy called "a bob," silently challenge him

to dance with her. Now, under all circumstances, except actual inability

to move, the gentleman so challenged has nothing to do but pick up the

gauntlet, and "take the flure." Then, challenger and challenged would

commence an Irish jig--a dance so violent that, writing in the dog-days

as I do, the very recollection of it makes me feel as if the barometer

was some two hundred in the shade. When the damsel had pretty well tired

herself, one of her fair friends would take her place, and so on until a

round dozen or so had had their turn. All this time, the doomed victim

of a man had to continue dancing--and the point of honour was to do so,

without giving in, as long as strength and wind lasted. The company

would gather round, forming a ring for the performers, and the word

would be, "On with the dance" (as it was, at Brussels, on the eve of

Waterloo), until, at last, some male spectator would pityingly dash

into the circle, take the tired man's place, and permit the breathless

and exhausted victim to totter to a seat, gasping out a protest, as he

did, that he could have held out for half an hour longer, and wondered

why any gentleman should interfere with another gentleman's _divarshun_.

In the preceding story of "The Petrified Piper," mention is made of a

dancing-master commonly known as "Ould Lynch." He was an original, in

many respects, and, like many of his profession, was in a constant

flutter of faded finery and actual poverty. He was so much a character

that my father took rather a fancy to him, and had him often at the

house, as a teacher of dancing, in the well populated town of Fermoy. He

had small chance of earning what would keep life and soul together. But

he was a quiet, unassuming man, better educated than most of his class,

and full of anecdote. One social virtue he eminently possessed:--he was

one of the best backgammon players I ever saw, and (I speak it

modestly,) was very fond of me as a pupil.

Lynch was a County Limerick man, on the confines of "the Kingdom of

Kerry," and informed me that, in the parish where he was brought up, the

natives had a passion for backgammon, and were wont, on high-days and

holidays, to hold tournaments (on their favourite game) with the

inhabitants of the next parish, in Kerry. Unfortunately, one day

when a great trial of skill was appointed to come off, it turned out

that no backgammon box was forthcoming. Both parties had contrived to

forget it. To send for the necessary implements would have been a waste

of time, when the combatants had "their souls in arms," and were "eager

for the fray." In this dilemma, a lad who had a decided genius for

expedients suggested a plan by which, without delay, their mutual wishes

could be realized. Under his advice, one of the meadows was fixed upon

as the scene of action. The turf was removed at intervals, so as to make

the place present the semblance of a backgammon board, and substitutes

for men were readily found in the flat stones and slates with which the

ground abounded. The great difficulty was--the dice! They could

extemporize board and men, but how to raise the bits of ivory? The lad

was not to be baffled. He proposed that two men, one selected from each

party, should sit on the ditch opposite each other, with "the board in

the centre, with their respective backs turned _from_ the combatants,

and, in turn, should call out the numbers, as if they had been actually

thrown by dice! This brilliant idea was acted upon. A halfpenny was

thrown up to decide who should have first play, and the men on the ditch

alternately called out, at will, any of the throws which might have

been actually cast had the dice themselves been "to the fore."

Such primitive practice, I venture to say, had never before been applied

to the noble _science_ of backgammon. I use the word advisedly, because,

with skill and judgment, what is called bad luck does not very

materially affect the game. The art is to conquer, despite bad throwing.

Lynch succeeded a worthy named Hearne--a _nom de guerre_, his enemies

averred, for the less euphonious one of Herring. Whatever his name, the

man was quite a character. He fancied himself a poet, and was

particularly fond of taking his favourite pupils aside to communicate to

them in a confidential manner, _sotto voce_, the latest productions of

his muse,--it being expected that, a little later in the evening, the

favoured individuals should delicately draw him out and solicit him to a

public recital of his verses. After a good deal of pressing on their

part, and a show of resistance on his, (which every one understood,) the

little dancing-master would mount on a table, deliver a flourishing

preface in prose, and then go through the recitation, in a manner which

set description at defiance. At the conclusion of this feat, which was

duly encored, Hearne was wont to distribute copies of his composition

printed on whity-brown paper, and the tribute of a five-penny bit was

expected in acknowledgment of the same--simply, as he said, "to pay for

the printing." He had such a peculiar system of orthography--spelling

the words by the sound--that I venture, with all due diffidence, to put

forward his claim to take precedence of the interesting and worthy

founders of the newspaper-nondescript, _The Fonetic Nuz_, at which the

Londoners laughed heartily a dozen years ago. By some accident, I have

preserved a copy of one of Hearne's poetical compositions, in which his

own mode of spelling is carefully preserved, and I subjoin it as a

curiosity,--a specimen of what emanated, some thirty years ago, from one

who belonged to the peculiar class (of which Grant Thorburn is the head)

worthy of being called The Illiterate Literati!

"_A few lions addressed in prease of Mr. Jon Anderson, Esquire, by

his humble servant, and votary of the Muses, Wm. Ahearne, profesor

of dancing._

"Who lives in this Eaden wich lyes to the easte

Of Fermoy ould bridge and its pallasades;

He is the best man on the Blackwater's breast,

As thousans from povirty he has razed.

"There's no grand Pear in all Urop this day,

With him can compare most certinly,

In bilding a town of buty and sweay

As Fermoy and its gay sweet liberty.

"Now, weagh well the case betwin him and those

Who travel the globe and fair Itly,

After skroozhing their tinnants hard when at home,

And spinding their store most foulishly."

The most original idea in these "few lions," is the geographical

information that Italy is _not_ a part of the globe. In the pen-ultimate

line, the poet may have hinted a little sly satire at the "at home" in

high life, where the crushing of hundreds into a space where tens can

scarcely sit in comfort is esteemed a great feat.

A wealthy attorney, named Henley, who had been kind to Hearne, was the

object of an eulogistic "pome." It ran somewhat thus:

There is a barrister of great fame

In Fermoy, I do declare,

Who administers strict justas

Without bribery or dessate.

May God prolong your days,

Your Court to reglate,

And force sly roges and villines

To pay their dews and rates.

CHARLEY CROFTS.

In the immortal "Maxims of O'Doherty," written by the late Dr. Maginn,

mention is made of a dinner at the late Lord Doneraile's, in the South

of Ireland, in which a reproof was administered to his Lordship's

meanness in the article of--tippling. He says, "My friend, Charley

Crofts, was also of the party. The claret went lazily round the table,

and his Lordship's toad-eaters hinted that they preferred punch, and

called for hot water. My Lord gave in, after a humbug show of

resistance, and whiskey-punch was in a few minutes the order of the

night. Charley, however, to the annoyance of the host, kept swilling

away at the claret, on which Lord Doneraile lost all patience, and said

to him, 'Charley, you are missing quite a treat; this punch is so

excellent.' 'Thank ye, my Lord,' said Charley, 'I am a plain man, who

does not want trates; I am no epicure, so I stick to the claret.'"

This free-and-easy gentleman, of whom I have some personal recollection,

belonged to a class of which, I suspect, he was the very latest

specimen. Charley Crofts, who had acquired no book-learning, because he

was born to a large landed property, was of a respectable family in the

west of the county Cork, and, even in his decline, was highly honoured

by the multitude, as coming from "the good ould stock." Brought up, but

not educated, by his mother, Charley entered the world with very

flattering prospects. He had a good property, good looks, good temper,

and (what he most prized) good horses. Cursed with an easy disposition,

he had never learned how to utter the monosyllable "No," but had

unfortunately learned how to sign his name--his friends kindly giving

him very frequent opportunities of practicing that autograph, by

obtaining it, across narrow slips of stamped paper, ('yclept "bills" and

"promissory notes") underneath the words "_Accepted, payable at the Bank

of James Delacour, Mallow_." In the long run, these autographs ruined

him--as, bit-by-bit, all his property went to meet the sums to which

they pledged him, and Charley Crofts found himself, at the age of

thirty, without home or money. He had preserved one thing, however--his

personal character. He had committed a great many of the frailties of

his sex and youth, but the shadow of a disreputable or doubtful action

never rested on his name. He could proudly say, like Francis the First,

after the battle of Pavia, "All lost, except honour."

The result was that, in his poverty, he was as highly thought of as in

his affluence, and was ever a welcome guest in the first houses of his

native county.

Like the rest of his class, (I mean the estated Irish gentlemen of the

last century,) Charley Crofts had learned to drink deeply. He used to

narrate, with great glee, an incident connected with his entrance into

vivacious habits. His mother, having occasion to leave their country

residence, in order to transact some business in Cork, left her hopeful

son in full possession of the house and full command of the servants,

for the fortnight she intended being absent. Charley, who was then in

his sixteenth year, determined that he would hold no powerless sceptre

of vice-royalty, and invited sundry acquaintances to visit him, which

they did. As a hogshead of fine claret was always on tap, there was no

difficulty in obtaining an adequate supply of drink. One day, however, a

guest happened to express a desire to vary the post-prandial proceedings

by the introduction of a few bottles of port. Now, it happened that Mrs.

Crofts possessed (and was known to possess) some remarkably fine port

wine, which she carefully kept locked up, reserving it for "State days

and holidays." Charley had been left the key of the cellar, and,

considering that his hospitality was especially appealed to, by the hint

about the port, went down and had a supply brought up. That afternoon's

performance went rather hard against the port. Indeed, so much of it was

drank that Charley Crofts was puzzled how to account for it, without

making full confession. A few days after his mother's return, she asked

him to accompany her to the cellar, to provide a suitable location for a

supply of sherry which she expected from Cork. The first thing which

attracted her notice was the remarkable diminution in the stock of her

valued and nearly unique port wine. Catching her eye, Charley

anticipated her inquiry, by remarking that, in her absence, a remarkable

thunder-storm had penetrated to the cellar and broken a quantity of the

bottled wine. Taking up two or three of the bottles, and fully aware

that it would be useless to repine or get angry over the mischief done,

she drew her hopeful son's attention to them, and only said, "A dreadful

storm, indeed! It has actually drawn the corks out of the necks of the

bottles, instead of bursting them in the usual way!"

For the last five-and-thirty years of his life, Charley Crofts may be

said to have literally _lived all around_. He had a number of tried

friends, who were glad to have him as their guest and boon companion,

for a month at a time. He could tell a good story, knew the private

history of every family in the county, was undoubted authority on

horseflesh and every subject connected with the sports of the field, and

could take any quantity of wine without its apparently affecting him.

Nature had endowed him with great muscular power, immense physical

strength, a temper which nothing could cloud, and a mode of expression

so terse as sometimes to be almost epigrammatic. He was exactly

qualified for the shifting sort of life upon which he had fallen.

When I met him, the brighter portion of his career had passed. He was

but the wreck of what he once had been, I was assured by every one; but

one may judge, from the ruin, what the structure had been in its pride.

Numerous anecdotes were afloat as to his sayings and doings, but it is

difficult to realize their effect in our days, unless you could imagine

the person on whom they were affiliated. Though I fear that I shall fail

in the attempt, I shall endeavour to record two or three.

As a four-bottle man, who could drink every one else under the table,

Charley Crofts was not so much of a favourite with wives as with their

husbands. They knew, by experience, that with Charley Crofts in the van,

a wet evening might be looked for--in the dining-room.

Mr. Wrixon, of Ballygiblin, near Mallow, (father of Sir W.

Wrixon-Becher, who married Miss O'Neill, the eminent actress,) had only

a small hereditary property when he succeeded to vast estates, on

condition that he superadded the name of "Becher" to his own patronymic.

As plain Mr. Wrixon, with a small property, he had lived unnoticed, but

his circle of friends immensely increased when he became Mr.

Wrixon-Becher, and a man of "Ten Thousand a Year." Soon after, he

married an English lady, with some fortune, much pride, a fair share of

beauty, and a decided abhorrence of the drinking habits of her husband's

friends. She had heard of, and had been cautioned against, the vivacious

enormities of Charley Crofts, and had actually declared to her husband

(in private, of course) that whenever Mr. Crofts took a seat at her

table, she would immediately relinquish hers.

One day, when Wrixon had been out with the Duhallow hounds, and the run

had been quick and long, the only man who was in with him "at the

death," was Charley Crofts, and under the circumstances--the rain

beginning to fall heavily, Crofts' place of sojourn being at least ten

miles distant, and Ballygiblin at hand,--Wrixon felt that he _must_

invite Charley home, or rest under the imputation of behaving in an

unsportsmanlike and inhospitable manner.

So, he told Charley that half a dozen other good fellows were to take

"pot-luck" with him that day, and that he must insist on Charley's

joining them. Without any pressing or denial, the invitation was

accepted.

Now, Charley Crofts knew, just as well as if he had been present when

the affair was discussed, how and why it was that, of all the houses in

the barony of Duhallow, the mansion of Ballygiblin was the only one to

which he had not a general invitation. Wrixon, the moment he reached

home, turning over his companion to the friendly custody of a mutual

acquaintance, who was to form one of the party that day, hastened to

"his lady's chamber," where he found his wife dressed for dinner, and

(as her glass told her) looking remarkably well. A few well-expressed

and well-timed compliments on her appearance, a congratulation or two on

her exquisite taste in dress, a half-hint and half-promise as to the

killing effect of a set of pearl in contrast with her ebon looks, and

more "blarney" of the same sort, made the lady so very gracious that the

husband ventured to communicate under what circumstances he had been

compelled to invite Charley Crofts to her table. The lady took them, as

they sometimes do in French courts of justice, as "extenuating

circumstances," and consented to receive the dreaded Charley. This done,

she found her way into the drawing-room, where the guests waited upon

her--the most subdued and quiet of them being Charley Crofts. At first,

with his grave air and grave attire, she thought that he might have been

a clergyman.

As the only stranger in the party, Charley had to escort Mrs. Wrixon to

the dining-room, to sit next her, to perform the duties of carving for

her, to supply her with a little of the small change of conversation.

Nobody could behave more decorously, more unlike the lady's fearful

anticipations of the dreaded guest. Now and then, when addressed by his

friends, a quaint remark or a satiric witticism would make her smile,

and convince her that the dangerously seductive companionable character

of her guest had not been undeservedly obtained. On the whole, she had

every reason to think him very much of a gentleman, and graciously

smiled on him when she quitted the table.

"You have conquered her, by Jove," exclaimed Wrixon. "Not yet," said

Charley, "but in a fair way for it." The wine went round. The

conversation branched off into its usual channels, and settled, at last,

upon a meet of the hounds which was to take place on Mr. Wrixon's

property, at which all the company present would attend.

In the middle of the discussion, one of the footmen duly announced that

his lady was waiting for them, with tea and coffee, in the drawing-room.

Heretofore, in that house, such an announcement had always been a mere

matter of form. Not so now. Charley Crofts started up and proceeded to

obey the summons. "Nonsense!" they all exclaimed. "Don't turn milksop.

No one ever goes to tea or coffee in this house." "Say what you may,"

said Charley, "the lady shall not have to complain of my want of

politeness."

In the drawing-room, sooth to say, no gentleman had been expected, and

Mrs. Wrixon was taking a solitary cup of tea. She was an admirable

musician, and was playing "Gramachree" (that saddest of all Irish airs)

just as Charley reached the door. Now, music was among the things which

he thoroughly understood and appreciated, and the moment that he heard

her exquisite execution on the harp he paused, spell-bound, listening

with rapt attention and delight, while the pathos of the air drew tears

from eyes all unaccustomed to the melting mood. When she had concluded,

she turned round, saw the effect which she had produced, and (need I say

it) was flattered at that proof of her skill.

Quickly recovering himself, Charley Crofts informed her that he had the

pleasure of accepting the invitation she had sent into the dining-room.

Tea was accordingly provided, and the conversation naturally fell upon

music. Charley happened to be a first rate flutist, and having mentioned

in what a delightful manner the flute and harp went together, either to

accompany the voice or without, Mrs. Wrixon sent for her husband's

flute, and allowed him to show her how correctly he had spoken.

Presently, she even sang to the double accompaniment, and her husband

and his friends, curious to know how Crofts was getting on, having now

adjourned from their wine, found him thus engaged.

Meanwhile, in intervals of from three to five minutes, Charley Crofts

had gulphed down successive, and almost countless, cups of tea. Again

and again had the tea-pot been replenished--and emptied. At last, quite

tired out, Mrs. Wrixon said, half in sport, half in earnest, "I am sure,

Mr. Crofts, that I never gave you credit for being such a determined

tea-drinker. As my hand is rather tired, may I beg that you will help

yourself?"

"Madam," said Charley, with imposing gravity, "I am a plain man. I do

not prefer tea to other liquids. You were so good as to send for us to

tea. I always obey a lady's summons when I can, and came hither. I am

accustomed, for years past, to take a certain quantity of fluid after

dinner. I care not what that fluid may be, so that I have my _quantum_.

Ale, punch, wine, or, as now, even this tea. I can help myself to the

other liquids, but tea has no flavor unless it be poured out by a lady's

fair hand!"

Mrs. Wrixon, perceiving that she was fairly caught, exclaimed, "Well,

Mr. Crofts, I think that I must leave you to take what you please in the

dining-room, but whenever you want a little music you can have it here,

and I only hope my husband will treat you so well that you will

frequently give me the pleasure of seeing you under this roof."

This was the manner in which Charley Crofts conquered Madam Wrixon, the

proud, high-bred lady. Good friends they continued unto her dying day,

and Charley would rather hear her play the harp, as she only could play

it, (he fancied,) than assist at the broaching of the finest pipe of

claret that ever was smuggled over from Bordeaux.

Mr. Wrixon, albeit a man of unbounded generosity, had one _leetle_

drawback. He would give sumptuous entertainments; he paid the chief

expenses of the Duhallow Hunt; he indulged his wife in all luxuries of

attire and adornment; he had a passion for beautiful horses and costly

equipages; he was liberal in his charities; he acted as banker for many

of his poorer friends who were of the lackland genus; he seemed to fling

money away, though, indeed, he was by no means a spendthrift; but the

one little "blot" in his tables (I mean, in his character) was a

feverish anxiety to economize on such mere trifles as _cream and

butter_!

So it was, however. His friends were at once amused and rendered

uncomfortable by it. It interfered with the perfection of their tea and

coffee, and always prevented their taking a desired quantity of

bread-and-butter. To allude to this matter, to show the slightest

consciousness of Mr. Wrixon's peculiar idiosyncrasy, in this respect,

was what his friends never ventured upon. They were not the less anxious

to have it removed.

They determined that Charley Crofts should be the amputator. The next

day, at a very early breakfast, preparatory to their taking the field

with the fox-hounds, a lively party assembled at Mr. Wrixon's table, in

unexceptionable red coats, enviable buckskins, irreproachable top-boots,

and the ordinary skull-caps covered with black velvet, which, from time

immemorial, formed the costume of the members of the Duhallow Hunt;

"the most sportingest set of gentlemen," I once heard a peasant say

"that mortial eyes did ever look upon."

The breakfast included all that should constitute the matutinal meal of

a party of keen sportsmen about to cross the country at break-neck

speed--all, except cream and butter, of which, as usual, there was a

_minimum_ supply, very much short of what might be expected from a dairy

of over twenty milch cows. Charley Crofts, as this was his first visit,

might be supposed to be in ignorance of his host's feelings upon that

point. At all events, he acted as if he were.

The cream and butter were placed close by Mr. Wrixon--the supply for a

party of nine or ten consisting of a very small ewer-full of the former,

and two or three _pats_ of the latter, each about the size of a

penny-piece. As if it were a matter of course, Charley, having put the

needful quantities of tea into his cup, filled it up with the entire

contents of the cream-ewer, and, at the same time, put all the butter

upon his plate. Mr. Wrixon, startled by such invasion of his favourites,

feebly desired one of the servants to bring "a _little_ more cream and a

_little_ more butter."

By the time the fresh supply was on the table, Charley Crofts had

emptied his cup and eaten his toast. He lost no time in appropriating

the prized articles, as before, chatting away with his usual

_nonchalance_, as if he had done nothing uncommon. Mr. Wrixon, sitting

like one astonied, watched the disappearance of the second supply, and

ordered a third replenishment, which went the way of the preceding.

Rising in his chair, he addressed the butler and exclaimed, "John,

desire that _all_ the cream and butter in the dairy be brought up, I

think we shall have need of the whole of it." Turning to Crofts, he

emphatically said, "I have heard of eating bread-and-butter, but

Charley, _you eat butter and bread_." By this time the laugh which arose

gave him the pleasant information that he was _sold_. From that hour he

was as liberal with his cream and butter, as he previously had been with

every other article in his mansion. He never was able to ascertain

whether Charley Crofts had been put up to the trick, or had simply hit

the nail by accident.

Charley Crofts did not confine his visits to the gentry in his native

county of Cork. In the decline of his fortunes--indeed, as long as he

was able to do anything--he always was possessor of a gem or two in the

way of horseflesh. For many years, his income was almost wholly derived

from the sale of horses, out of which he obtained a large profit, and it

was known that any animal which he sold or vouched for might be depended

on. In the way of business, having disposed of a fine hunter to one of

the family, who was sportingly inclined, he had to pass a few days at

the house of Mr. Lyons, of Croom, in the county of Limerick. This old

man had acquired a vast fortune by following the business of a grazier,

and had invested large sums in the purchase of landed estates. His sons,

determined to cut a figure in the county, indulged in all manner of

excess and extravagance. At the time of Charley Crofts' visit, they

issued cards for a splendid _déjeuner à la fourchette_, to which the

leading people of the district were invited. As Charley Crofts was on

intimate terms with everybody who had pretensions to notice, the Lyons

family, in solemn conclave assembled, determined that it would be a

sagacious and politic move to get him to officiate as a something

between Major Domo and Master of the Ceremonies at the intended

festival. Desiring no better fun, he cheerfully consented.

The attendance on the gala day was what the newspapers would describe as

"full and fashionable." Many went from curiosity, to see in what manner

the _parvenu_ would attempt "to ape his betters"--_i.e._, themselves.

Several attended, because they owed money to old Lyons (who did a little

in _bills_ after abandoning _beef_), and did not like to affront him by

not accepting his invitation. A good many went, because they had heard

that "all the world and his wife" would be present, and a jovial day

might be anticipated.

Thanks to Charley Crofts' _surveillance_, the entertainment, well got

up, went off admirably.

Among the more aristocratic guests was the Lady Isabella Fitzgibbon,

sister to that Earl of Clare who was the schoolfellow and friend most

tenderly and lastingly loved by Byron. At that time she was a fine young

woman. She is now a stern old maid--like the odd half of a pair of

scissors, of no use to herself or any body else. Lady Isabella affected

to look down, with some degree of superciliousness, upon the

millionaire's hospitality. Having probably laid in a good supply of

mutton chops or beef steaks before she went out, she pointedly neglected

the delicacies of the season, which were abundantly supplied, and merely

trifled with a lobster-salad. Old Lyons, who had a great respect for

good feeding, and particularly for substantials, turned round to her, as

she sat by his side, the image of aristocratical

don't-care-a-pin-for-all-the-world-ativeness, and kindly said, "Ah,

then, my lady, why don't you take some of the good beef and mutton, the

capons and the turkeys, and don't be after filling your stomach with

that cowld cabbage!"

The high-born _dama_ nearly fainted at what she considered the vulgar

good-nature of her host. Soon after, when she had recovered from the

shock, she said that she thought she would have a little bread and

butter. Immediately opposite her, and within reach of Old Lyons, was a

crystal bowl in which floated sundry little _pats_ of that delicious

butter for which the county Limerick is famed. Lyons made several vain

efforts to spear one of these with a fork, at last, finding that it was

impossible to make the capture in that manner, he raised up his

coat-sleeve, tucked up the wrist-band of his shirt, and plunging his

hand into the bowl, with the exclamation, 'Ha, you little jumping

Jennies, I am determined to have you now," secured two pieces of the

butter, which he triumphantly deposited on his noble guest's plate, with

the words, "There, my lady, when I took the matter _in hand_, I knew I

must succeed."

Charley Crofts departed this life some twenty years ago. The close of

his career was passed in Cove, where he lived upon an annuity provided

by the liberality of some of his former friends. His health had failed

him, suddenly, a few years before, and he who had been wont "to set the

table in a roar," for nearly forty years, subsided into a querulous

valetudinarian. He published his Autobiography, shortly before his

death, and it deserves mention as one of the dullest of its class, as

far as I recollect, (it is a long time since I yawned over it,) the

subject matter chiefly consisted of fierce personalities directed

against sundry relatives who, he said, had cheated him out of his

property.

To the very last, Charley Crofts could give graphic narratives of his

former career and companions, but the moment he attempted to _write_

them down, their spirit wholly evaporated.

IRISH PUBLICISTS.

HENRY GRATTAN.

The history of Ireland's independence, from the rise of the Volunteers

until the treacherous sacrifice of nationality by the passing of the Act

of Union--an interval of twenty years, yet crowded with events and

eminent characters--can best be read in the lives of the illustrious men

who asserted, vindicated, and carried that independence. Looking back at

the brief but brilliant period in which they shone, truly did Curran

speak of them, to Lord Avonmore, as men "over whose ashes the most

precious tears of Ireland have been shed."

Among this noble and gallant array of public virtue and genius HENRY

GRATTAN stands conspicuous and pre-eminent. To condense a memoir of him

into the space which I have here reserved would be a vain attempt. Let

me sketch him in his youth. The child, Wordsworth said, is father of the

man, and this was particularly true as regards Grattan.

Henry Grattan, stated by most of his biographers to have been born in

1750 (the year in which Curran entered into earthly existence), was four

years older, his baptismal register in Dublin bearing date the 3d of

July, 1746. His father, a man of character and ability, was Recorder of

Dublin for many years, and one of the metropolitan parliamentary

representatives from 1761 to his death in 1766. The well-known patriot,

Dr. Lucas, was senatorial colleague and opponent of the elder Grattan,

who, although nominally a Whig, was actually a Tory,--was the law

officer of the Corporation, which Lucas undauntedly opposed,--and on all

essential, political, and legislative points, sided with the Government

of the day.

The Grattan family were of considerable and respectable standing in

Ireland, and Henry Grattan's grandfather and grand-uncles had enjoyed

familiar intimacy with Dean Swift and Dr. Sheridan. Henry Grattan's

mother was a daughter of Thomas Marlay, Chief Justice of Ireland, who

almost as a matter of course in those days, was to be found on the side

of the Government, but administered justice fairly, and on some few

occasions showed a love for and pride in his native Ireland. Grattan's

mother was a clear-headed, well-informed woman. On both sides,

therefore, he had a claim to hereditary talent.

At ordinary day-schools, in Dublin, Henry Grattan received his

education. John Fitzgibbon, afterwards the unscrupulous tool of the

Government and the scourge of Ireland (as Lord Chancellor Clare), was

his class-mate at one of these seminaries. Grattan rapidly acquired the

necessary amount of Greek and Latin, and in 1763, being then 17 years

old, entered Trinity College. Here, among his friends and competitors,

were Foster (afterwards Speaker of the House of Commons), Robert Day,

who subsequently adorned the Bench. In the University there was

particular rivalry between Fitzgibbon and Grattan; the first was well

grounded in classics and science, but almost wholly ignorant of modern

literature. Both obtained the highest prizes in the University,--Grattan

getting premium, certificate, or medal at every examination.

Before he had completed his twentieth year, Grattan had declared his

political opinions. They were patriotic--they were Irish--they were

opposed to the principles and practice of his father, and strongly

identical with those of Dr. Lucas, his father's constant and bitter

opponent. Lucas was a remarkable man. He it was who, immediately after

the accession of George III., introduced a bill for limiting the

duration of the Irish Parliament to seven years--the custom being, at

the time, that a new Parliament should be chosen when a new monarch

ascended the throne, and last during his lifetime. It took seven years'

perseverance to effect this change--upon which the English Cabinet

thrice put a veto. A fourth and final effort succeeded, the limitation

being eight years. It was Lucas who, following in the steps of Swift,

boldly attacked bad men and bad measures in the newspapers, and thus

asserted the Liberty of the Press--that which Curran so earnestly

desired to be preserved when, addressing his countrymen, he said, "Guard

it, I beseech you, for when it sinks, there sink with it, in one common

grave, the liberty of the subject and the security of the Crown." It was

Lucas who strenuously denied the right of a British Parliament to govern

Ireland, who asserted his country's right to legislative independence,

who insisted on her claim for self-government. For this, the law was

strained against him,--for this, Dublin grand juries ordered his

writings to be publicly burned by the hands of the common hangman--for

this, a venal House of Commons voted that he wrote sedition and was an

enemy of his country--for this, the Speaker was ordered to issue a

warrant for his arrest and imprisonment in gaol--for this, the Lord

Lieutenant was solicited to denounce him by Proclamation--for this, the

Corporation of Dublin disfranchised him--for this, he had to fly his

country and secure life and comparative liberty by eleven years of

enforced exile. On his return, in 1760, that very city of Dublin from

which he had fled for his life elected him for one of its

representatives, Grattan's father being his colleague. As such, the

elder Grattan, who was a courtier, opposed the Septennial Bill.

Henry Grattan, a patriot from his childhood, ardently adopted Dr. Lucas'

views in favour of Ireland's independence. The result was that, in

1765-6, Henry Grattan was at variance with his father. The death of the

elder Grattan took place in 1766, and it was then discovered how much he

resented his son's assertion of liberal politics. He could not deprive

him of a small landed estate, secured to him by marriage settlement, but

bequeathed from him the paternal residence of the family for nearly a

century. Thus Henry Grattan had to enter the world, not rich in worldly

wealth, and with his soul saddened by the marked and public posthumous

condemnation by his father. No wonder that, as he declared in one of his

letters at the time, he was "melancholy and contemplative, but not

studious." No wonder that, solitary in the old home, he should sadly

say, "I employ myself writing, reading, courting the muse, and taking

leave of that place where I am a _guest_, not an _owner_, and of which I

shall now cease to be a _spectator_." His household Gods were shattered

on his hearth, and he sat, cold and lonely, among their ruins. Yet, even

then, he dreamed that fortune, smiling upon him, would enable his old

age to resign his breath where he first received it. Never was that

dream fulfilled. Not even did he die

"'Midst the trees which a nation had given, and which bowed,

As if each brought a new civic crown for his head;"

but his spirit departed, fifty-four years later, in the metropolis of

the haughty land which had crushed the independence and broken the

nationality of

"His own loved island of sorrow."

At the age of twenty-one, Henry Grattan went to London to study the law.

At that period, as at present, it is indispensable for every one who

desires to be admitted to the Irish bar, that he shall have "studied"

for two years at one of the Inns of Court in London. Perhaps this, as

much as anything else, shows how completely the English habit has been,

and is, to treat Ireland as a mere _province_. Candidates for admission

to the Scottish bar are not required to pursue this _nominal_ course of

study in another country. Nominal it is, for the requirement does not

involve the acquisition, in the most infinitesimal degree, of any

knowledge of the principles or practice of the law. All that is

necessary is that the future barrister shall have eaten twenty-four

dinners in the Hall of his London Inn of Court (three at each term)

during two years, and a certificate of this knife-and-fork

practice--which is facetiously called "keeping his Terms"--is received

by the Benchers of the Queen's Inn in Dublin, as proof that the

candidate has duly qualified himself by study! There is no examination

as to his knowledge of law--two years in London, and a somewhat lesser

amount of legal feeding in Dublin, being the sole qualification for the

Irish Bar!

In Michaelmas Term, 1767, being two months past his majority, Henry

Grattan entered his name, as student, on the books of the Middle Temple

in London. Although he intended to live by the practice of the law, he

devoted little attention to its study. Black-letter, precedents, and

technicalities he cared little for. The broad principles of

jurisprudence attracted his attention; but he mastered them, not as an

advocate, but as a future law-maker. In fact, nature had intended him

for a politician and statesman, and his mind, from the first, followed

the bias which "the mighty mother" gave. As late as August, 1771, when

he had been four years in the Temple, he wrote thus to a friend: "I am

now becoming a lawyer, fond of cases, frivolous, and illiberal; instead

of Pope's and Milton's numbers, I repeat in solitude Coke's

instructions, the nature of fee-tail, and the various constructions of

perplexing statutes. This duty has been taken up too late; not time

enough to make me a lawyer, but sufficiently early to make me a dunce."

In the same letter he said, "Your life, like mine, is devoted to

professions which we both detest; the vulgar honours of the law are as

terrible to me as the restless uniformity of the military is to you."

During the four years of his English residence, varied by occasional

visits to Ireland, Mr. Grattan's heart certainly never warmed to the

profession which he had chosen. The confession which I have just quoted

was made only a few months before he was called to the Irish bar in

Hilary Term, 1772. Yet he was a hard reader, a close student, an early

riser, and a moderate liver. To afford the means of enlarging his

library, he avoided expensive amusements and practiced a very close

economy. In November, 1768, these saving habits became matter of

necessity rather than of choice, when his mother died so suddenly that

she had not time to make, as she had purposed, a formal disposition of

her reversion to a landed property which she had meant to leave her son.

It passed, therefore, to another branch of the family, leaving Grattan

such limited resources that it now was necessary for him to follow a

profession.

How, then, did Grattan employ his time in England? We have his own

regretful confession, that it was not, for the first four years, in the

study of the law. Shortly after his first visit to London, he lost one

of his sisters; and deep sorrow for her death, and a distaste for

society, drove him from the bustle of the metropolis to the retirement

of the country. He withdrew to Sunning Hill, near Windsor Forest, amid

whose mighty oaks he loved to wander, meditating upon the political

questions of the day, and making speeches as if he already were in

parliament. Mrs. Sawyer, his landlady, a simple-minded woman, knew not

what to make of the odd-looking, strange-mannered young man, and

hesitated between the doubt whether he was insane or merely eccentric.

When one of his friends came to see him, she complained that her lodger

used to walk up and down in her garden throughout the summer nights,

speaking to himself, and addressing an imaginary "Mr. Speaker," with the

earnestness of an inspired orator. She was afraid that his derangement

might take a dangerous character, and, in her apprehension, offered to

forgive the rent which was due, if his friends would only remove her

eccentric lodger.

Seventy years after this (in 1838) Judge Day, who lived to almost a

patriarchal age, and had been intimate with Grattan in London, wrote a

letter, in which, describing him at college, "where he soon

distinguished himself by a brilliant elocution, a tenacious memory, and

abundance of classical acquirements," he proceeds to state that Grattan

"always took great delight in frequenting the galleries, first of the

Irish, and then of the English House of Commons, and the bars of the

Lords." His biographer records that this amateur Parliamentary

attendance had greater attractions for him than the pleasures of the

metropolis, and that he devoted his evenings in listening, his nights in

recollecting, and his days in copying the great orators of the time.

Judge Day also has remembered that Grattan would spend whole moonlight

nights in rambling and losing himself in the thickest plantations of

Windsor Forest, and "would sometimes pause and address a tree in

soliloquy, thus preparing himself early for that assembly which he was

destined in later life to adorn."

Such was Grattan's self-training. So did he prepare himself for that

career of brilliant utility and patriotism which has made his name

immortal.

Events of great moment took place in England during Grattan's sojourn

there. The contest between John Wilkes and the Government was then in

full course, leading to important results, and encouraging, if it did

not create, the publication of the fearless and able letters of Junius.

At that time, great men were in the British Senate, and Grattan had the

good fortune to hear their eloquence, to watch the deeds in which they

participated. The elder Pitt, who had then withdrawn from the Commons,

and exercised great power in the Upper House, as Earl of Chatham, still

took part in public business. There, too, was Lord North--shrewd, obese,

good-tempered, and familiar. There was Charles James Fox, just

commencing public life, alternately coquetting with politics and the

faro-table--his great rival, Pitt, had not then arisen, nor his eminent

friend Sheridan, but Edmund Burke had already made his mark, Barrè was

in full force, as well as Grenville, and the great lawyers Loughborough

and Thurlow had already appeared above the horizon, while Lords Camden

and Mansfield were in the maturity of fame. Then, also, flourished

Charles Townshend, who would have deserved the name of a great

statesman but for his mistake in trying to obtain revenue for England

by taxation of America. There was the remarkable man called

"Singlespeech" Hamilton, from one brilliant oration which was declared

by Walpole to have eclipsed the most successful efforts even of the

elder Pitt. In the Irish Parliament, too, which he always visited when

in Dublin during the Session, were men of great eminence and ability,

with some of whom--Flood, Hutchinson, and Hussey Burgh--not long after,

Grattan was himself to come into intellectual gladiatorship. In both

countries, therefore, he became familiar with politics and politicians.

What marvel if he deviated from the technicalities of the law into the

wider field of law-making and statesmanship?

How closely he observed the eminent persons who thus came before his

notice, may be judged from the character of Lord Chatham, which was

introduced in a note to "Barataria,"(a satirical _brochure_ by Sir

Hercules Langrishe), as if from a new edition of Robertson's History of

America. Many persons, at the time, who looked for it in Robertson, were

disappointed at not finding it there. _Apropos_ of Langrishe; it may be

added that he it was who said--that the best History of Ireland was to

be found "in the continuation of _Rapin_," and excused the swampy state

of the Ph[oe]nix Park demesne by supposing that the Government neglected

it, being so much occupied _in draining the rest of the kingdom_.

Greatly admiring the nervous eloquence of Lord Chatham, it is evident

that Grattan's own style was influenced, if not formed by it. He could

not have had a better model. Grattan, out of pure admiration of the man,

reported several of his speeches for his own subsequent use. Writing

about him many years later, he said, "He was a man of great

genius--great flight of mind. His imagination was astonishing. He was

very great, and very odd.[14] He never came with a prepared harangue; his

style was not regular oratory, like Cicero or Demosthenes, but it was

very fine, and very elevated, and above the ordinary subjects of

discourse. He appeared more like a pure character advising, than mixing

in the debate. It was something superior to that--_it was teaching the

lords, and lecturing the King_. He appeared the next greatest thing to

the King, though infinitely superior. What Cicero says in his 'CLARIS

ORATORIBUS' exactly applies: '_Formæ dignitas, corporis motus plenus et

artis el venustatis, vocis et suavitas et magnitudo._' 'Great subjects,

great empires, great characters, effulgent ideas, and classical

illustrations formed the material of his speeches.'"[15]

[14] This refers more particularly to the year 1770.

[15] Grattan used to say that nothing ever was finer, in delivery

and effect, than Chatham's appeal, on the American question, to the

bishops, the judges, and the peers:--"You talk of driving the

Americans: _I might as well talk of driving them before me with

this crutch_."

Until he permanently and finally took up his residence in Dublin,

Grattan was greatly prejudiced in favour of England. In August, 1771, he

wrote to a friend that he would return to Ireland that Christmas, "to

live or die with you," and added, "It is painful to renounce England,

and my departure is to me the loss of youth. I submit to it on the same

principle, and am resigned." At that time he was twenty-five years old.

In his letters to his friends at this time, he commented on Irish

politics so forcibly as to show that he was a close observer. Alluding

to the means used by the Viceroy (Lord Townshend) to corrupt the

legislature, he said, "So total an overthrow has Freedom received, that

its voice is heard only in the accents of despair." This sentence very

probably suggested the concluding part of Moore's beautiful lyric, "The

harp that once through Tara's halls,"

"Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes,

The only throb she gives,

Is when some heart indignant breaks,

To show that still she lives."

Early in 1772, Grattan was called to the Irish bar--not from any

predilection for the profession, but from the necessity of eking out his

limited means by the exercise of his talents. It is recorded that having

gone the circuit, and failed to gain a verdict in an important case

where he was specially retained, he actually returned to his client half

the amount of his fee--fifty guineas. A man who could act thus, was

clearly not fitted for the profession, nor destined to arrive at wealth

by its means.

At that time the rising talent of Ireland was decidedly liberal, and in

favor of progress. Grattan was thrown into familiar intimacy with this

society, and his own opinions were influenced, if not determined, by the

Catholic spirit of their avowed principles. Lord Charlemont, Hussey

Burgh, Robert Day, (afterwards the Judge,) Dennis Daly, and Barry

Yelverton--men whose names are familiar to all who have read the history

of Ireland's later years of nationality--were his familiar friends.

Grattan wished for the lettered ease of literary retirement, but his

narrow means did not permit him to live without labour. He said, "What

can a mind do without the exercise of business, or the relaxation of

pleasure?" He took to politics as a relief from the demon of _ennui_. He

attended the debates in Parliament. He said "they were insipid; every

one was speaking; nobody was eloquent." He had become a lawyer, as he

sadly confessed, "without knowledge or ambition in his profession." He

would fain have gone into retirement, but complained that, in his too

hospitable country, "wherever you fly, wherever you secrete yourself,

the sociable disposition of the Irish will follow you, and in every

barren spot of that kingdom you must submit to a state of

dissipation or hostility." He said that his passion was retreat, for

"there is certainly repose, and may be a defence, in insignificance."

He was destined for better things. He had married Henrietta Fitzgerald,

who claimed descent from the Desmond family, (actually from that branch

of which that Countess of Desmond, who died at the age of 162, was the

foundress,) but had, as her own dowry, the far greater wealth of youth,

beauty, virtue, talent, and devoted affection. The union was eminently

happy. Mrs. Grattan became the mother of thirteen children, and it is

known that on many occasions, but especially in the troublous times of

1798 and 1800, (the rebellion and the betrayal of Ireland by her

parliament,) Grattan frequently consulted and acted on the advice of his

wife, which invariably was to do what was right, regardless of personal

consequences. After his marriage, he went to reside in the county

Wicklow, where, almost from early youth, he had been enamoured of the

beautiful scenery, and even then spoke of Tinnahinch, which he

subsequently purchased, as a place which might be "the recreation of an

active life, or the retreat of an obscure one, or the romantic residence

of philosophical friendship." "Here," said his son, "he mused in when

melancholy, he rejoiced in when gay; here he often trod, meditating on

his country's wrongs--her long, dreary night of oppression; and here he

first beheld the bright transient light of her redemption and her

glory." Here, too, in the moments of grief he wept over her divisions

and her downfall. The place continues a family possession, and,

identified as it is with the name of Grattan, should never be allowed to

pass into the possession of any others.

Grattan's wife, highly gifted by nature, and with her mind cultivated

and enlarged by education, urgently pressed him to embark in political

life. She knew, even better than himself, what his mental resources

were, how patriotic were his impulses, how great his integrity, how

undaunted his courage. She interested his friends in his behalf, and, at

last, on the death of Mr. Caulfield (Lord Charlemont's brother), Grattan

was returned to Parliament for the borough of Charlemont, and on the

11th of December, 1775, in his thirtieth year, Henry Grattan took his

seat as member for Charlemont. On the fourth day after he made a

speech--a spontaneous, unstudied, and eloquent reply--and it was at once

seen and admitted that his proper place was in Parliament. From that day

the life of Grattan can be read in the history of Ireland.

What he did may be briefly summed up. He established the Independence of

Ireland, by procuring the repeal of the statute by which it had been

declared that Ireland was inseparably annexed to the Crown of Great

Britain, and bound by British acts of Parliament, if named in them--that

the Irish House of Lords had no jurisdiction in matters of appeal--and

that the _dernier resort_, in all cases of law and equity, was to the

peers of Great Britain.

For his great services in thus establishing Ireland's rights, the

Parliament voted him £50,000. He considered that this was a retainer for

the future as well as a mark of gratitude for the past, and henceforth

devoted the remainder of his life--a period of nearly forty years--to

the service of his country.

Grattan's last act, as an Irish legislator, was to oppose the Union,

which destroyed the nationality _he_ had made--his last act, as a public

man, was to hurry to London, in his seventy-fifth year, under the

infliction of a mortal disease, to present the petition in favour of the

Irish Catholics, and support it, at the risk of life, in Parliament.

Grattan's great achievements were all accomplished in early life, while

the "_purpurea juventus_" was in its bloom, while the heart was in its

spring. Great men, of all shades of political and party passion have

been eager and eloquent in his praise. Byron, speaking of Ireland,

ranked him first among those

"Who, for years, were the chiefs in the eloquent war,

And redeemed, if they have not retarded, her fall."

Moore, who knew him well, said,

"What an union of all the affections and powers,

By which life is exalted, embellished, refined,

Was embraced in that spirit--whose centre was ours,

While its mighty circumference circled mankind."

Faithfully too, as well as poetically, did he describe his speeches as

exhibiting

"An eloquence rich, wherever its wave

Wandered free and triumphant, with thoughts that shone through,

As clear as the brook's 'stone of lustre,' and gave,

With the flash of the gem, its solidity too."

Lord Brougham said that it was "not possible to name any one, the purity

of whose reputation has been stained by so few faults, and the lustre of

whose renown is dimmed by so few imperfections." After describing the

characteristics of his eloquence, he added, "It may be truly said that

Dante himself never conjured up a striking image in fewer words than Mr.

Grattan employed to describe his relation towards Irish independence,

when, alluding to its rise in 1782, and its fall, twenty years later, he

said, 'I sat by its cradle--I followed its hearse.'"

Sydney Smith, in an article in the _Edinburgh Review_, shortly after

Grattan's death, thus bore testimony to his worth:--"Great men hallow a

whole people, and lift up all who live in their time. What Irishman does

not feel proud that he has lived in the days of Grattan? who has not

turned to him for comfort, from the false friends and open enemies of

Ireland? who did not remember him in the days of its burnings, wastings

and murders? No government ever dismayed him--the world could not bribe

him--he thought only of Ireland: lived for no other object: dedicated to

her his beautiful fancy, his elegant wit, his manly courage, and all the

splendour of his astonishing eloquence. He was so born, so gifted, that

poetry, forensic skill, elegant literature, and all the highest

attainments of human genius, were within his reach; but he thought the

noblest occupation of a man was to make other men happy and free; and in

that straight line he kept for fifty years, without one side-look, one

yielding thought, one motive in his heart which he might not have laid

open to the view of God or man."

The man to whom tributes such as these were voluntarily paid, must have

been a mortal of no ordinary character and merit.

DANIEL O'CONNELL.

Daniel O'Connell, at one period called "the member for all Ireland," was

born, not at, but near Derrynane Abbey, in Kerry, on the 6th of August,

1775, and died at Genoa on the 15th of May, 1847. He had nearly

completed his seventy-second year. For nearly forty years of that

extended period he had been a public man--perhaps the most public man in

Ireland. For at least a quarter of a century his reputation was not

merely Irish--nor British--nor European--but unquestionably

cosmopolitan.

Fallen as we are upon the evil days of Mediocrity, it may not be useless

to dwell upon the conduct and the character, the aims and the actions,

of one who, think of him as we may, candour must admit to be one of the

great men of the age,--one of the very few great men of Ireland's later

years.

"Some men are born to greatness--some achieve greatness--and some have

greatness thrust upon them." Daniel O'Connell stands in a predicament

between the two latter postulates. He certainly was the artificer of his

own fame and power, but, as certainly, much of it arose out of the force

of circumstances. When he launched his bark upon the ocean of politics,

he may have anticipated something--much of success and eminence, but he

never could have dreamed of wielding such complete and magnificent power

as was long at his command. Strong determination, great ability, natural

facility of expression, the art of using strong words without committing

himself, and a most elastic temperament, ("prepared for either fortune,"

as Eugene Aram said of himself)--all these formed an extraordinary

combination, and yet all these, even in their unity, might have been of

little worth, but for the admitted fact that circumstances happily

occurred which allowed these qualities a fair scope for development.

Many poets, I dare swear, have lived and died unknown--either not

writing at all, or writing but to destroy what they had written. Noble

orators have lived and died, "mute and inglorious," because the

opportunity for display had never been given. In truth, we may say, with

Philip Van Artevelde,

"The world knows nothing of its greatest men."

It is the curse of Authorship that until the grave fully closes upon his

ashes, the fame of the writer is scarcely or slightly acknowledged. When

the turf presses upon his remains, we yield tardy justice to his merits,

and translate him, as a star, into the "heaven of heavens" of renown.

But the Orator, on the other hand, has _his_ claims admitted from the

commencement--he may make his fame by one bold effort--he may win

admiration at one bound, and each successive trial, while it matures his

powers, increases his reputation. He lives in the midst of his fame--it

surrounds him, like a halo: he is the observed of all observers,--he has

constant motive for exertion--he breathes the very atmosphere of

popularity, and has perpetual excitement to keep up his exertions. Of

this there scarcely ever was a more palpable example than O'Connell.

Originally gifted with all the attributes of a popular if not a great

orator, he advanced, by repeated efforts, to the foremost rank, because

the public voice cheered him--the public opinion fostered him. Had he,

for three or four years, spoken to dull or cold audiences, the world

would probably have lost him as an orator. He might, indeed, have been a

great forensic speaker, but of that eloquence which placed seven

millions of Irish Catholics in a situation where, without being branded

as rebels, they might openly demand "justice for Ireland," the chance

is, the world have known nothing. What man, before this man, had ever

succeeded in awakening at once the sympathy of the old and of the new

world? Few men so well out-argued the sophistry of tyranny. Far above

the crowd must he be, who, at one and the same time, affrighted the

Russian autocrat by his bold invectives, and was appealed to as the

common enemy of misrule, by the unhappy victims of the

"Citizen-King"--who not only asserted the rights of his fellow slaves in

Ireland, but hesitated not, at all times and in all places, to express

his

"Utter detestation

Of every tyranny in every nation!"

O'Connell was often denounced as a "Dictator." What made him one? The

exclusive laws which kept him humiliated in his native land. The wrongs

of Ireland made him what he was, and Misrule carefully maintained the

laws which made those wrongs. Had Ireland been justly governed, there

would not have been occasion for such "agitation" as Mr. O'Connell kept

up. If the "agitator" was indeed the monster which he was represented to

be, Misrule is the Frankenstein which made him so. The wrongs of Ireland

and the tyranny of evil government goaded him into action, and gave him

power. Misrule sowed the wind, and reaped the whirlwind.

It has been strongly asserted, and as strongly denied, that a long line

of ancestry gave O'Connell an hereditary right to take part in the

public affairs of his native land, as if he, and all of us, did not

inherit that right as an heir-loom derived from the first principles of

nature. The tradition of his house was that the O'Connell family were

entitled to rank among the most ancient in Ireland, antiquarians having

avowed that his surname was derived from Conal Gabhra, a prince of the

royal line of Milesius--that they originally possessed immense estates

in the county of Limerick, and removed to the barony of Iveragh, in the

western extremity of Kerry, where they enjoyed the almost regal office

of Toparchs;--that, in the time of Elizabeth, their then chief, Richard

O'Connell, made submission of his lands to the British crown;--that the

rebellion of 1641 removed the sept O'Connell to the County Clare, by

forfeiture (a certain Maurice O'Connell it was who forfeited his

property in the Civil Wars of 1641, and received the estates in Clare as

a partial indemnity; his uncle, Daniel O'Connell of Aghgore, in Iveragh,

took no share in the Civil War, and thus preserved his estate);--that

the Clare branch of the family supported James II., and, on the triumphs

of the Orange party, had to seek in foreign lands the distinctions from

which the Penal Laws excluded it in its own.

One of these, a certain Daniel O'Connell, who subsequently was created

Count of "the Holy Roman Empire," disqualified, by his religion, from

holding military or civil rank in his own country, entered the French

service in 1757--when he was only fourteen years of age. He served in

the seven years' war--at the capture of Port Mahon, in 1779, and was

severely wounded at the grand sortie on Gibraltar in 1782--remained

faithful to Louis XVI., until fidelity was of no further use--emigrated

to England--was there appointed, in 1793, Colonel of the 6th Irish

Brigade--retained that command until the corps was disbanded--returned

to France, at the Restoration, in 1814--was there and then restored to

his rank of General and Colonel-Commandant of the regiment of Salm, and

named Grand Cross of the Order of St. Louis--refused to take rank under

Louis Philippe--and died in 1834, aged ninety-one, a military patriarch,

full of years and honours, holding the rank of General in the French,

and being oldest Colonel in the English service. Count O'Connell was

grand-uncle to "the Liberator."

It may not be generally known that the military tactics of Europe at the

present day have emanated from Count O'Connell. The French Government

resolved, in 1787, that the art of war should be thoroughly revised, and

a military board, consisting of four general officers and one colonel,

was formed for that purpose. Count O'Connell, who then commanded the

Royal Suedois (or Swedish) regiment, was justly accounted one of the

most scientific officers in the service, and was named as the junior

member of that board. The other members soon discovered how correct and

original were the views of their colleague, and unanimously confided to

him the _redaction_ of the whole military code of France. So well did he

execute this important commission, that his tactics were followed in the

early campaigns of revolutionized France, by Napoleon--and finally

adopted by Prussia, Austria, Russia and England.

To Morgan O'Connell, father of "the Liberator," descended none of the

property originally held by the family. His elder brother, Maurice,

succeeded to a large portion, (that which eventually was bequeathed to

Daniel,) and it had the peculiarity of being free from all chiefry,

imposts, or Crown charge--an unusual thing, and occurring only in the

instance of very remote tenure. This portion was held under what was

called Shelburne leases--renewable for ever, and first granted _before_

the enactment of the Penal laws, and therefore not "discoverable;" that

is, not liable to be claimed from a Catholic holder by any Protestant

who chose to claim them.

Daniel O'Connell's father became a petty farmer and a small shop-keeper

at Cahirciveen. At that time he was simply known as "Morgan

Connell,"--there being some to this day who wholly deny the right of the

family to the prefix of "O." The Irish proverb says:

By Mac and O,

You'll always know

True Irishmen, they say;

For if they lack

The O or Mac,

No Irishmen are they.

The same doubters have contended that the independence realized by

Morgan O'Connell was gained, not by farming nor by shop-keeping, but by

extensive smuggling. But it was gained in some manner, and with it was

purchased a small estate at Carhen, within a mile of Cahirciveen, where

his years of industry had been passed, and not far from Derrynane. It

was at Carhen that Daniel O'Connell was born, on the 6th August,

1775--the very day (he used to say) on which were commenced hostilities

between Great Britain and her American colonies.

Daniel O'Connell's grandfather was the third son of twenty-two children.

He died in 1770, leaving as his successor his second son, Maurice (John,

the eldest, having predeceased him). This gentleman was never married,

and it was on his death, in 1825, that the "Agitator" succeeded him as

owner of the Derrynane estate. Morgan O'Connell (father to the

"Liberator") died in 1809, and left two other sons, who are also

handsomely provided for--John, as owner of Grena, and James of Lakeview,

both places near Killarney.

I trust that I have not travelled out of my way to give this sketch of

the descent of the family connexions of O'Connell. It shows that, at any

rate, _he_ is not the _novus homo_--the mere upstart, without the

advantages of birth and fortune, which he was often represented to be.

At the same time, no O'Connell need be ashamed of what honest industry

accomplished--that much of the landed property which O'Connell's father

inherited, held by John O'Connell of Grena, was purchased from the

profits of his business as a farmer and general shop-keeper.

From the first, Maurice O'Connell, of Derrynane, attached himself to his

nephew Daniel, whom he educated. The earliest instructions in any branch

of learning which the future "Liberator" received, were communicated to

him by a poor hedge-schoolmaster, of a class ever abounding in Kerry,

where every man is said to speak Latin. David Mahony happened to call at

Carhen when little Daniel was only four years old, took him in his lap,

and taught him the alphabet in an hour and a half. Some years later, he

was regularly taught by Mr. Harrington--one of the first priests who set

up a school after the repeal of the laws which made it penal for a Roman

Catholic clergyman even to live in Ireland. At the age of fourteen he

went abroad with his brother Maurice to obtain a good education.

Seventy years ago, the policy, or rather the impolicy of English

domination actually prohibited the education of the Catholics within

Great Britain and Ireland. They were, therefore, either compelled to put

up with very limited education, or forced to go abroad for

instruction,--rather a curious mode of predisposing their minds in

favour of the English laws. Mr. O'Connell was originally intended for

the priesthood, and was educated at the Catholic seminary of Louvain,

next at St. Omer, and, finally, at the English college of Douay, in

France. But, at that time, there were fully as many lay as clerical

pupils at that college.

At St. Omer, Daniel O'Connell rose to the first place in all the

classes, and the President of the College wrote to his uncle, in

Ireland--"I have but one sentence to write about him, and that is, that

I never was so mistaken in all my life as I shall be, unless he be

destined to make a remarkable figure in society."

The two brothers commenced their homeward journey on the 21st of

December, 1793--the very day on which Louis XVI. was guillotined at

Paris. During their journey from Douay to Calais, they were obliged to

wear the revolutionary cockade, for safety. But, as good Catholics, they

were bound to abhor the atrocities perpetrated, at that time, by the

Jacobins, in the sacred name of liberty, and when they stood on the deck

of the English packet-boat, indignantly tore the tri-colour from their

hats, and flung them, with all contempt, into the water. Some French

fishermen, who saw the act, rescued the cockades, and flung imprecations

against the "aristocrats" who had rejected them. At the same time, when

an enthusiastic Irish republican, who had "assisted" at the execution of

Louis, exhibited a handkerchief stained with his blood, the young

students turned away and shunned him, in disgust and abhorrence. Not

then, nor at any period of his career, was O'Connell an anti-monarchist.

It is said that, during the trial of Thomas Hardy, at London, (October,

1794,) for high treason, he was so much shocked at the unfair means used

by the Crown lawyers to convict the accused--means foiled by eloquent

Erskine and an honest jury--that he resolved to place himself as a

champion of Right against Might, and identify himself with the cause of

the people. While he was on the Continent, that relaxation of the Penal

laws took place which allowed the Catholic to become a barrister. It is

probable that _this_ was the immediate cause of his becoming a lawyer. A

young man of his sanguine temperament was likely to prefer the bar, with

its temporal advantages,--its scope for ambition,--its excitement,--its

fame, to the more secluded life of an ecclesiastic. Accordingly, I find

that he entered as a law-student at Lincoln's Inn, in January, 1794--eat

the requisite number of term-dinners there, for two years--pursued the

same qualifying course of "study" at King's Inn, Dublin, and was called

to the Irish bar, in Easter term, 1798, in the 23d year of his age.

The Rebellion was in full fling at the time, and (in order, no doubt, to

show his "loyalty" as a Catholic) he joined what was called "the

lawyers' corps," associated to assist the Government in putting down

revolt.

The period of his admission was singularly favourable. Catholics had

just been admitted to the Irish bar--to the minor honours of the

profession; although it was hoped, and not extravagantly, that, in time,

all its privileges would be thrown open to them. It was impossible to

say what was Mr. O'Connell's ambition at the time; however high, he

could not have had a dream of the elevation which he subsequently

reached. He must have felt, however, that he had a wide field for the

exercise of his abilities. His ostensible ambition, for many years, was

to become a good lawyer. During what is called "the long vacation," and

at other periods when he could spare time, he resided a good deal with

his uncle in Kerry, where he pursued the athletic sports in which,

almost to the close of his career, he delighted to participate. On one

occasion, while out upon a hunting expedition, he put up at a peasant's

cabin, sat for some hours in his wet clothes, and contracted a typhus

fever. In his delirium he often repeated the lines from Home's tragedy

of Douglas:

"Unknown I die--no tongue shall speak of me.

Some noble spirits, judging by themselves,

May yet conjecture what I might have proved,

And think life only wanting to my fame."

His son has preserved a letter, written in December, 1795, when he was

in his twenty-first year, in which he communicates his views to his

uncle Maurice, of Derrynane. A passage or two may be worth quoting, to

show with what earnestness he devoted himself to the career upon which

he was then preparing to enter. He says, "I have now two objects to

pursue--the one, the attainment of knowledge; the other, the acquisition

of all those qualities which constitute the polite gentleman. I am

convinced that the former, besides the immediate pleasure which it

yields, _is calculated to raise me to honour, rank, and fortune_ [how

prophetic were the young man's aspirations!]; and I know that the latter

serves as a general passport or first recommendation; and, as for the

motives of ambition which you suggest, I assure you that no man can

possess more of it than I do. I have, indeed, a glowing, and--if I may

use the expression--an enthusiastic ambition, _which converts every toil

into a pleasure, and every study into an amusement_."

He adds, in the same honourable spirit, "Though nature may have given me

subordinate talents, I never will be satisfied with a subordinate

situation in my profession. No man is able, I am aware, to supply the

total deficiency of abilities, but every body is capable of improving

and enlarging a stock, however small, and, in its beginning,

contemptible. It is this reflection that affords me most consolation. If

I do not rise at the bar, I will not have to meet the reproaches of my

own conscience. * * * Indeed, as for my knowledge in the

professional line, that cannot be discovered for some years to come; but

I have time in the interim to prepare myself to appear with greater

_éclat_ on the grand theatre of the world."

As a barrister, he naturally took the Munster circuit, and here his

family connexion operated very much in his favour. In the counties of

Clare, Limerick, Kerry and Cork, he had relatives in abundance, and

being, I believe, the first Catholic who had gone that circuit, he

naturally engrossed a considerable portion of the business which the

Catholics had previously, _ex necessitate_, distributed among the

barristers of a contrary persuasion. He succeeded, moreover, in

establishing the reputation of being a shrewd, clever, hard-working

lawyer, and briefs flowed in so abundantly, that he may be cited as one

instance, amid the ten thousand difficulties of the bar, of great

success being immediately acquired. There was nothing precarious in this

success: he was evidently a shrewd, clever, long-headed lawyer, and

while the Catholics gave him briefs, because of his family and religion,

the Protestants, not less wise, were not backward in engaging his

assistance--not that they much loved the man, but that his assistance

was worth having, as that of a man with a clear head, a well-filled

mind, strong natural eloquence, and, from the very first, a mastery over

the art of cross-examining witnesses.

O'Connell's friends scarcely anticipated, from what his youth had been,

the success which met him on his first step into active manhood. He held

his first brief at the Kerry Assizes, in Tralee. Between a country

gentleman named Brusker Segerson and the O'Connells there long had been

a family feud. Brusker accused one of the O'Connell tenants at Iveragh,

of sundry crimes and misdemeanors, which judge and jury had "well and

truly to try and determine." Young O'Connell had his maiden brief in

this case. Brusker, knowing the young lawyer's inexperience, anticipated

a triumph over him, and invited a party of friends to witness the "fatal

facility" with which the accused would be worsted. But it happened not

only that the accused was the acquitted, but there was a general

opinion, from the facts on the trial, that Brusker Segerson's conduct

had been oppressive, if not illegal. Brusker turned round to his friends

and soundly swore that "Morgan O'Connell's _fool_ was a great lawyer,

and would be a great man." Henceforth he always employed O'Connell--but

with the distinct and truly Irish understanding that the hereditary and

personal feud between them should in no wise be diminished!

One of O'Connell's earliest displays of acuteness was at Tralee, in the

year 1799, shortly after he had been called to the bar. In an intricate

case, where he was junior counsel (having got the brief more as a family

compliment than from any other cause), the question in dispute was as

to the validity of a will, which had been made almost in _articulo

mortis_. The instrument was drawn up with proper form: the witnesses

were examined, and gave ample confirmation that the deed had been

legally executed. One of them was an old servant, possessed of a strong

passion for loquacity. It fell to O'Connell to cross-examine him, and

the young barrister allowed him to speak on, in the hope that he might

say too much. Nor was this hope disappointed. The witness had already

sworn that he saw the deceased sign the will. "Yes," continued he, with

all the garrulousness of old age, "I saw him sign it, and surely _there

was life in him at the time_." The expression, frequently repeated, led

O'Connell to conjecture that it had a peculiar meaning. Fixing his eye

upon the old man he said,--"You have taken a solemn oath before God and

man to speak the truth and the _whole_ truth: the eye of God is upon

you; the eyes of your neighbours are fixed upon you also. Answer me, by

the virtue of that sacred and solemn oath which has passed your lips,

_was the testator alive when he signed the will_?" The witness was

struck with the solemn manner in which he was addressed, his colour

changed--his lips quivered--his limbs trembled, and he faltered out the

reply--"_there was life in him_." The question was repeated in a yet

more impressive manner, and the result was that O'Connell half

compelled, half cajoled him to admit that, after life was extinct, a

pen had been put into the testator's hand,--that one of the party guided

it to sign his name, while, as a salvo, for the consciences of all

concerned, a living fly was put into the dead man's mouth, to qualify

the witnesses to bear testimony that "there was life in him" when he

signed that will. This fact, thus extorted from the witness, preserved a

large property in a respectable and worthy family, and was one of the

first occurrences in O'Connell's legal career worth mentioning. Miss

Edgeworth, in her "Patronage," has an incident not much different from

this; perhaps suggested by it. The plaintiffs in this case were two

sisters named Langton, both of whom still enjoy the property

miraculously preserved to them by the ingenuity of O'Connell; they were

connexions of my own (Sarah Langton, the youngest, was married to my

cousin, Frank Drew, of Drewscourt), and I have often heard them relate

the manner in which he had contrived to elicit the truth.

It is no common skill which can protect innocence from shame, or rescue

guilt from punishment. Nothing less than an intimate knowledge of the

feelings of the jury, and the habits and characteristics of the

witnesses, can enable an advocate to throw himself into the confidence

of a jury composed of the most incongruous elements, and to confuse,

baffle, or detect the witnesses. There is no power so strong as that of

good cross-examination; and I never knew any man possess that power in

a more eminent degree than O'Connell. The difficulty is to avoid asking

too many questions. Sometimes a single query will weaken evidence, while

a word more may make the witness confirm it. Some witnesses require to

be pressed, before they bring out the truth--others, if too much

pressed, will turn at bay, and fatally corroborate every thing to which

they already have sworn. It is no common skill which, intuitively as it

were, enables the advocate to perceive when he may go to the end of his

tether,--when he _must_ restrain. The fault of a young barrister is that

_he asks too many questions_. It is a curious fact, that, from the first

moment he was called to the bar, O'Connell distinguished himself by his

cross-examinations. If he was eminent in a criminal trial, he was no

less so in civil cases. Here he brought all his legal learning to bear

upon the case, and here, too, he had the additional aid of that

eloquence which usually drew a jury with him.

John O'Connell gives an anecdote which illustrates his father's success

in the defence of his prisoners. It had fallen to his lot, at the

Assizes in Cork, to be retained for a man on a trial for an aggravated

case of highway robbery. By an able cross-examination, O'Connell was

enabled to procure the man's acquittal. The following year, at the

Assizes for the same town, he found himself again retained for the same

individual, then on trial for a burglary, committed with great

violence, very little short of a deliberate attempt to murder. On this

occasion, the result of Mr. O'Connell's efforts rose a disagreement of

the jury; and, therefore, no verdict. The Government witnesses having

been entirely discredited during the cross-examination, the case was

pursued no farther, and the prisoner was discharged. Again, the

succeeding year, he was found in the criminal dock; this time on a

charge of piracy! He had run away with a collier brig, and having found

means for disposing of a portion of her cargo, and afterwards of

supplying himself with some arms, he had actually commenced cruising on

his own account, levying contributions from such vessels as he chanced

to fall in with. Having "caught a tartar," whilst engaged in this

profitable occupation, he was brought into Cove, and thence sent up to

Cork to stand his trial for "piracy on the high seas." Again Mr.

O'Connell saved him, by demurring to the jurisdiction of the Court--the

offence having been committed within the jurisdiction of the Admiralty,

and, therefore, cognizable only before an Admiralty Court. When the

fellow saw his successful counsel facing the dock, he stretched over to

speak to him, and, raising his eyes and hands most piously and fervently

to heaven, he cried out--"Oh, Mr. O'Connell, may the Lord spare you--_to

me_!"

Here let me give my opinion, that the disqualification of his

religious tenets, which kept him in a stuff gown while his juniors in

standing, and inferiors in talent, were strutting about with all

professional honour, was _not_ much detriment to O'Connell's

advancement. Here was a man, confessedly at the head of his profession,

yet excluded from its honours by unjust and intolerant laws--it became,

therefore, a practice to consider him a martyr for the sake of his

religion, and he got many and many a brief because such was the feeling.

His disqualification as a Catholic gained him business as a Barrister.

The Union failed to make Ireland happy--because the chains of the

Catholics were still allowed to gall them, instead, as Mr. Pitt

contemplated, of being removed with the least possible delay. George

III. threw himself between Ireland and justice. Relief was expected from

Mr. Fox, and might, perhaps, have been granted, but the death of that

statesman, almost immediately succeeded by an Anti-Catholic Ministry,

sounded the knell to the hopes of the people of Ireland. It was at this

time that Mr. O'Connell came forward as a politician; he had personal

reasons for doing so, because, now being in the enjoyment of a very

excellent practice at the bar, he found numerous vexations arising from

the privileges enjoyed by men less talented, less qualified than

himself, but who enjoyed the advantages which religious and political

"ascendency" gave them.

The Catholics at last threw themselves into an attitude of defence.

O'Connell's first decided step[16] was the taking part in the proceedings

of a meeting of Catholics, held in Dublin in May, 1809. Then, for the

first time for over a hundred years, Catholics literally "spoke out."

Their daring appeared to draw strength for their despair. What was

called "the Catholic Committee" was formed, and this, strongly against

O'Connell's advice, violated the law by assuming a _representative_

character. Lord Killeen (eldest son of the Earl of Fingal, a Catholic

peer), and some others of the leaders, were prosecuted by the

Government. They were defended by O'Connell, and Ireland then witnessed

the almost unprecedented circumstance of Catholic agitators being

acquitted by a Protestant jury in Dublin.

[16] O'Connell's first public speech was against the Union. It was

made on January 13, 1800, at a Catholic meeting in Dublin, in

unequivocal condemnation of that measure. The resolutions that day

adopted were drawn up by O'Connell, and assumed an antagonistic

position.

The Catholic Committee, however, became alarmed, and broke up. Then was

formed the Catholic Board, at which it was a matter of dispute whether

Emancipation might not be purchased by allowing the Crown to pay the

Catholic clergy, and giving the head of the Church of England a veto on

the appointment of Catholic bishops in Ireland. Feeble and vacillating,

the greater portion of the Catholic nobility held aloof from the

struggle, in which O'Connell took the popular side. Later in the day,

The late Duke of Richmond (Viceroy of Ireland) put down the Catholic

Board by means of his Attorney-General Saurin. The members of that

Board, as some small acknowledgment for the services of their colleague,

voted Mr. O'Connell a piece of plate, of the value of 1000_l._ The Board

being put down, the Catholic cause would have fallen but for the

intrepidity of O'Connell, who assumed the leadership at once, and

published a letter, continued annually for a long time, in which he

stated the wrongs of Ireland, with her claims for relief, and suggested

the mode of action. This annual message had the motto, from Childe

Harold,

"Hereditary bondsmen, know ye not,

Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow."

Mr. Saurin is said to have seriously contemplated prosecuting O'Connell

for sedition because of this motto from "Childe Harold."

The Catholic Board was suppressed, it is true, but there remained a

thousand modes of action by which the spirit of patriotism might be kept

alive in Ireland. Aggregate and other public meetings were instantly

held, and at one of these Mr. O'Connell, in 1815, designated the

Corporation of Dublin as a "beggarly corporation." A member of that

"beggarly" and bankrupt body took upon himself to play the bravo in its

defence. This man was a Mr. D'Esterre, and is understood to have had a

promise of patronage from the Corporation (in the shape of a good

berth), if he humbled the pride of O'Connell. It is more charitable than

reasonable to hope that the Corporation were not so ruffianly as to hold

out this hope to D'Esterre, because he was notoriously the best shot in

Dublin; and yet, such "honourable" assassination is exactly what such a

body would reward, if they did not suggest it.

D'Esterre paraded the streets of Dublin with a horse-whip in his hand,

and vowed vengeance against O'Connell. He did not meet him; but he

afterwards challenged him. O'Connell refused to apologize--met the

challenger, and mortally wounded him. D'Esterre, as I have said, was a

crack shot, and O'Connell was not; but it sometimes happens that the

practiced duellist suffers the penalty which he has inflicted upon

others.

D'Esterre had been an officer of marines, and it has been stated, and

always believed, that he constituted himself the Champion of the

Corporation, not only in the hope, but with a direct promise of

obtaining a lucrative appointment, provided that he "silenced"

O'Connell. The odds were five to one in his favour--for he was cool and

determined, and could snuff a candle with a pistol shot at twelve paces.

His skill, his coolness, availed not. At the first shot he fell, and his

death speedily followed.

Soon after, Sir Robert Peel (the then Irish Secretary) fastened a

quarrel upon Mr. O'Connell, who again placed himself in the hands of his

friends. A hostile meeting was appointed--the authorities in Dublin

interfered--the parties were bound over to keep the peace--they agreed

to meet on the Continent, but the duel was ultimately prevented by the

arrest of Mr. O'Connell, in London, on his way to Calais. He was held to

bail before the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, not to fight Mr.

Peel; and since that time declined any further meetings of the sort.[17]

It would have been well if, when he determined to avoid duels, O'Connell

had also resolved to abstain from language offensive to men of honour

and men of feeling. His chief fault, during his last thirty years, was

the application of epithets towards his political opponents, which

appear to have been culled rather in the market of Billingsgate, than in

the flowery garden of Academe!

[17] It was the late Dr. England, Catholic Bishop of Charleston, S.

C., who then resided near Cork, who pointed out to O'Connell the

conjoint sin and folly of duelling, and induced him to promise that

he would never again appeal to arms. It was reported, at the time,

that O'Connell had lingered in London, when Peel expected him at

Calais, awaiting news of his wife's health (he had left her ill in

Dublin), and that another public character had declined a challenge

on the plea of his daughter's illness. The late Chief Justice Burke

thus commemorated the double event:

"Two heroes of Erin, abhorrent of slaughter, Improved on the Hebrew

command; One honored his wife, and the other his daughter, That

'their days might be long on the land.'"

For several years after the duel with D'Esterre, O'Connell was almost

alone in the struggle for Emancipation. His practice steadily increased,

and his legal knowledge, ability and tact, united with wondrous art in

the examination of witnesses, and great influence with juries (by the

union of a species of rhetoric consisting of common sense, humour, and

rough eloquence, cemented together by a good share of "Blarney"), soon

made him a very successful barrister. Whenever a Catholic victim was to

be defended or rescued, whether an Orange oppressor was to be assailed

and punished, O'Connell was in the van. The Catholics readily took him

as their champion, and he won their gratitude by his services, and

gained their personal attachment by a good humour which nothing could

daunt, and a plain, straightforward, affectionate manner of eloquence

which went directly home to their hearts. To this hour it is a moot

point whether the Irish had greater admiration for his talents,

gratitude for his services, confidence in his fidelity, or attachment

for his person.

He continued increasing in influence for many years. From 1815, until he

relinquished most of his practice in 1831, the annual income from his

professional pursuits cannot have averaged less than from £6000 to

£8000--an immense sum for a lawyer to make in Ireland. No man could make

such an income, except one who was at once an excellent Nisi Prius

pleader, as well as a good Crown lawyer. He united the highest

qualifications of both. He could wield at will immense power over a

jury, and argue with a success rarely equalled, so as to reach the

understanding of a judge. Hence, he had the most extraordinary

versatility. You would see him at one o'clock joking a jury out of a

verdict in the Nisi Prius court, or familiarly laying down cases for the

information of the judge; and, the next hour, you might behold him in

the Crown court, defending an unhappy man accused of murder, and

exercising a caution and prudence in his unparalleled cross-examination

of witnesses which would alike surprise and please. No man could more

readily get the truth from a witness, or make him say only just as much

as suits the particular point he had in view.

In 1821, when George the Fourth visited Ireland, Mr. O'Connell made "his

first appearance, by particular desire," in the part of a courtier. He

presented a laurel crown to the monarch on his departure, and eulogized

him to the seventh heaven as "a real friend of old Ireland," anxious to

see her

"Great, glorious, and free,

First flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea."