around him in which the pathos was employed to support the cause of a client, but recourse was had to a brusquerie, to an uncouth and ungracious mode of handling the subject, and the force of lungs was often called in to supply the place of sound argument or logical deduction. Of a different class of men was Mr Hussey, he was a ready, every day speaker, he had the talent of a clever rifleman, knew to a hair the point of attack, could attain it easily and carelessly; was expert at a sudden sarcasm; could level an appropriate anecdote with sharp effect, and disappear from the search of his adversary, in the very moment, he inflicted the wound. Yet, Mr Hussey was not deficient in the kindlier characteristics of a public man: no speaker could talk down an angry opponent, when it so pleased him into more provoking good humour, or wipe away with a few words the bitterness of an entire debate. There was something singularly hibernian, no doubt, in the manner and matter of the entire man, he looked, smiled, and acted the brogue. His red hair and twinkling blue eyes were not less idiomatic than his phraseology. This with Irishmen like himself, might have told; with others, it was worse than useless, it was injurious. Yet, with all this he had many merits. He was an admirable political colleague; no man in the entire body was bet ter fitted to the guerilla warfare of a desultory debate. He could follow, but he could not lead. Mr O'Connell can lead but he cannot follow; the initiating or conducting of a measure was not the forte of Mr Hussey. It is the pride and glory of Mr O'Connell to be the architect of a scheme, and having once laid the foundation stone, the superstructure soon shews itself, and we see the coping, before we are scarcely aware that the edifice is begun. Perhaps no greater contrast ever exhibited itself at the Irish Bar than Mr Hussey and Mr. O'Connell, whether it was incapacity or the interposition of a gay and volatile nature, the former addicted himself but little, or with little effect, to the severer kind of political study. He was a man, who received and gave out quickly the impressions of the moment, but retained frothing. His political enthusiasm was soon exhausted; he retired, when others thought he was only com

mencing, disgusted or fatigued from public affairs; the political enthusiasm of Mr O'Connell is like the fires of Etna, ever intense, ever blazing; evil it has sometimes committed, but from the very lava has come forth a noble fruit, which has refreshed his countrymen after their years of bondage and oppression, and in the enjoyment of which, he participates with them in all the plenitude of his ardent patriotism.

The great fault of the Irish barristers at this time was, that they missed the national mind; they were not exactly Irish enough to sacrifice every thing to the good of the country, and too much Irish to bear tamely the wrongs, which their peculiar mode of faith entailed upon them. Of this class was Mr. Clinch, who although a barrister, can scarcely be said to have adopted altogether the popular party. Studious, patient informed, a perfect master of details, he viewed every subject in its minutest, rather than its largest bearings, examined painfully every matter with the microscope in his hand, and elaborated, from the most confused and abstruse materials, conclusions, which when sufficiently understood, were received with wonder by his audience, but found totally useless, when attempted to be carried into any real or practical effect. It was Mr. Clinch's misfortune, though in a different sense from Lord Ffrench to have been born either too early or too late. He would have been venerated in the olden days of black letter decisions and portly brass-clasped folios, in the times of the Bellarmines and the Scaligers, as a man singularis et recondita sapientiæ. In the present, he might do no dishonour to the venerable judgment bench of the Roman Rota, but in an assembly of ardent and enquiring Irishmen, whose feelings at all times travel so much quicker than their reason, and who required no quotation from moth-eaten statutes to prove to them their grievances, which they found written in deep and enduring letters in their hearts, it must be confessed that Mr. Clinch's eloquence and learning fell, like manna in the desert, and melted away in thin air, before any one could be met, willing or able to collect it. He too, as much as Lord Trimleston, though in a somewhat different way, altogether missed the national mind; he went on

with it side by side, but always in a parallel direction. There was no point of contact between him and the country, his whole energies were spent in the strenua inertia of solving, little difficulties, or raising injuriously little difficulties into great ones. A nation was to be summoned from the tomb, and he went about examining the form and fashion of the sepulchre. Hence few listened, and fewer understood. His support was only of occasional value, almost always heard, in despite of his keen logic with incredulity and of his real knowledge, with neglect and impatience, he was always behind or beyond his audience.

He went on refining,

And thought of convincing, whilst they thought of dining.

Such a man was too doctrinal, too dogmatic, too much a man of learned saws and nice precedents for the fierce and fervent realities of ordinary political life. When the coarse struggle, and the tumultuous clamour came onward, his weapons too delicate for such a warfare, snapt asunder, his voice was lost in the crowd. The fastidiousness of a learned leisure then seized him; he retired from a conflict in which rougher energies were requisite: he could not fight in so rude a field; he went home, and sighed in solitude over the fortunes of his country.

Such were some of the celebrated men, who preceded Mr. O'Connell in the great and stupendous work of the regeneration of their country. They lived not to see the accomplishment of their endeavours, nor to witness the glory of their emancipated land. Their acts and characters have been fully portrayed by other pens; but the time was fast approaching, when altogether, another "birth of men" was to rush up behind the former exhibitions, far more audacious, far more successful, gifted with firmer will, though scarcely with higher powers, and who placed in circumstances, which guided them far more, than they have guided the circumstances, have mainly combined by some inscrutable disposition of moral causes, ultimately to produce those great results, which seemed to defy the wis

dom of the wisest, and the courage of the bravest before them.

Mr. O'Connell was at this time like a lion in his den, mustering all his strength and vigour to pounce upon the enemies, by whom his country was assailed. As yet, he had not appeared upon the turbulent arena of political strife, confining himself to the prosecution of his professional duties, in the exercise of which, his real character at times shone forth, confounding his antagonists, and startling the bench itself by the display of his extraordinary talents. He was not one of those cold, frigid pleaders, who having no immediate interes in the success of the case, consider that they have performed their duty in a dry detail of circumstances, without making one impassioned effort to enforce a conviction of right on the minds of the jury or the judge. Not so, was it with O'Connell, the cause of his client was his own, his whole soul appeared to be concentred in overthrowing every obstacle which legal subtlety or fine spun argument might have thrown in the way of the success of his client. With an equal tact did he lay hold of those advantages, with which the ignorance or oversight of his adversary furnished him, and having once made them his own, he turned and twisted them in every possible form, until he saw that he had made the impression which he desired, and then by the exercise of his oratorical powers, he brought the Bench into an admission of the justness of his cause, and ultimately secured the triumph of his client.

There is little doubt that the tone and temper of Mr. O'Connell's mind acquired an additional strength from the extraordinary talents, which some of the leaders of the Catholic body at this period displayed. It was impossible with a mind constituted as Mr. O'Connell's was, to live in the atmosphere of such men, without imbibing some portion of their enthusiasm, or acquiring a thorough knowledge of all the bearings of the great and momentous question which then engrossed the whole of their attention. The communication of instruction as well as of information on all the essential points under consideration passed from mind to mind, with the ra

pidity of the electrical fluid, and on the susceptible one of Mr. O'Connell, not a part was lost, which quickly taking root, shot forth with a luxuriance, scarcely to be equalled in ancient or modern times.

At this time, a triumvirate appeared amongst the members of the catholic body, in the persons of Dr. Dromgoole, Dr. Troy and Dr. Milner, who may be said to have been the guides of Mr. O'Connell in the course which he had marked out for himself, and who in the galaxy of talent, which at this period shone in Ireland, may be regarded as the brightest luminaries. As a champion of the church, Dr. Dromgoole was turbulent and warlike. His armoury was almost exclusively from the Vatican, the weapon he delighted in, was the double edged sword of scholastic dialectics. The councils, the fathers the dusty library of ancient and modern controversy were his classics. Valiant, uncompromising, headstrong, he bore with a sulky composure, on his sevenfold shield of theology, all the lighter shafts of contemporary ridicule, and went on like another Ajax, or the poetic animal, to whom he is compared in the Iliad, through staves and stones to the accomplishment of his solemn purpose. His celebrated manifesto against the church triumphant, or the established church of Ireland created at the time a sort of absurd panic amongst friends and foes. The anti-catholic seized with avidity the opportunity of fastening the delirium of an individual on the same portion of the body, much in as wise and effectual a way as the friends of Don Basilio in the Barbiere de Seviglia attempted to talk him into the sudden belief that he is attacked with, fever. The Catholics thought it necessary to disclaim the imputation; a ludicrous and injurious precedent.

On this subject Mr. O'Connell justly observes it was ludi crous because it was attaching to these reveries the importance of sober truth; it was injurious, because it admitted the necessity of contradicting by public resolutions, the speech of every individual, which should contain opinions at variance with the opinions of the body. The consequences of this position are obvious; if such speeches were to be contradicted every time