OUR PORTRAIT GALLERY.-NO. XLIX.

DEAN KIRWAN.

"Clarum et venerabile nomen."

WALTER BLAKE KIRWAN-a name identified with some of the proudest, and the holiest, of national recollections. As the numbers are rapidly diminishing, who retain any remembrance of this extraordinary man, let us haste to snatch, while yet we may, such notices of him as survive in cotemporary annals, or the memories of those who were privileged to witness the almost superhuman efforts of this most gifted of Irish preachers.

He was the son of Patrick Kirwan, a gentleman of good extraction in the county of Galway, and was born at Gortha, his father's residence, in the year 1754. His maternal ancestor was a Blake, a descendant of the Menlo family of that name. Both the Blakes and Kirwans belonged to "the Galway tribes ;" a designation, Hardiman tells us, "first invented by Cromwell's forces, as a term of reproach against the natives, for their singular attachment to each other during their troubles and persecutions, but which the latter afterwards adopted as an honourable mark of distinction between themselves and their cruel oppressors." They were thirteen in number, "and were made famous," the same authority tells us, "by their trading faithfully, discharging their credit, good education, charity, and hospitality at home and abroad.”

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"The Kirwans," Mr. Hardiman tells us, "are genuinely Irish, and may be traced as far back as Hermion, the second son of Milesius." The Blakes are of British origin. Debrett says "they are traditionally descended from Ap-Lake, one of the knights of King Arthur's round table;" and he adds, that, in the reign of Henry II., one of this family accompanied Strongbow, and, after many exploits, built himself a castle at Menlo, near Galway, from whom the Blakes of Galway are descended."

Such was the stock from which the preacher sprung, whose renown was soon to add lustre to his race, while his magic powers entranced his auditories, and won the applauses of an admiring country. Of his earlier years we have but few memorials. In his youth, the state of society in Galway was but little favorable to the cultivation of the higher faculties, and he could not have seen much either to direct or encourage him to the attainment of intellectual objects. Of fun and frolic there was more than enough. To scenes of wild and rollicking intemperance, although he might not participate in them, he could not have been a stranger. And, gifted as he was with such uncommon sensibility, his firmness must have often been put to the test by the extravagancies or eccentricities of those around him. One little anecdote illustrative of this, we give, as it has been furnished to us by a relative, upon whose correctness we implicitly rely, and who relates it, as it was well known and currently reported in the family. "When about nine years old, he was on a visit to an uncle, who, like most Galway gentlemen of that day, considered the use of the pistol a grander essential in the education of youth, than the use of the globes. Standing one morning with this gentleman before the hall-door, the cry of mad dog' reached them, from some persons near the lodge gate, and soon they perceived the rabid animal approaching by the long, straight avenue which led to the spot whereon they stood. His uncle quickly entered the house, and in a moment returned with a loaded pistol, which he placed in his hand, exclaiming, at the same time, 'shoot that dog or he will kill you.' The child, naturally fond of animals, and particularly of dogs, looked doubtingly at his relative, and murmured something about the poor dog and cruelty. His uncle in a few words assured him that the dog was in the greatest torture, that he could not recover, and that it would be a mercy to kill him. 'Besides,' added he, he is coming up to bite you, and then he will go into the yard and bite the poor women and children there, and you will go mad, and die in agony;' and saying this, he retreated into the hall, and shut the door, leaving his nephew outside, as he afterwards said, to try his nerve.' The child remained motionless, with the pistol in his hand, and his arms hanging by his side, his eyes fixed steadily upon the dog, which was fast

approaching; nor did he move until the animal was within a few feet of where he stood, when, slowly raising the pistol, he shot him dead. No sooner, however, was the animal stretched lifeless at his feet, than the innocent and affectionate child burst into an agony of grief, the most passionate and uncontrollable."

Such was the youth who was soon to be transferred to the Jesuits' College at St. Omer's, there to receive the rudiments of his education. We believe there is no one who denies to the fathers of that well-known body, much skill in the art of teaching; and there can be very little doubt, that, whatever neglect young Kirwan experienced at home, he now had opportunities of acquiring the elements of science and literature, of which he abundantly availed himself, and the advantages of which he experienced in after life. It was, he often afterwards observed, in the classic shades of that venerable seminary, that he imbibed the noble ambition of benefiting mankind.

At the age of fifteen, he embarked for the Danish island of St. Croix, in the West Indies-a cousin-german of his father, who had large possessions there, having taken him under his protection. Could he have reconciled himself to such a lot, his fortune might now be said to be made; but the climate disagreed with him; and the spectacles of oppression and cruelty, to which no familiarity could reconcile him, were so abhorrent to his sensitive nature, that he returned, after a residence of about five years, in disgust, to Europe.

It was shortly after his return, when he was about twenty years of age, that an incident occurred, which strikingly evinced the high-wrought sensibility and energy of his character, and which, possibly, awakened within himself, for the first time, a conciousness of his own transcendent powers.

As he was passing through the town of Galway on horseback, in company with some friends, he and his party found themselves, unexpectedly, in a crowd assembling to witness the execution of a man convicted of murder; and before they could well ascertain the cause of the concourse, it grew so dense that retirement became impracticable, and he was compelled, sorely against his will, to be a spectator of the awful and revolting scene which ensued. The culprit, who soon appeared upon the scaffold, bellowed and blasphemed with outrageous violence, to the dismay and consternation of two affrighted ecclesiastics by whom he was attended, and who, having previously used every means in their power to awaken him to a sense of his condition, seemed to give up their task in mute despair; and, in this fearful condition, the wretched man was about to be hurried into eternity. The swelling heart of the future preacher almost burst its narrow bounds. His melting eye and quivering frame bespoke the intensity of the excitement by which he was agitated. He sprang from his horse, rushed through the guards, and, before his friends could recover from their amazement, he was beside the murderer upon the scaffold, who looked upon him with a strange bewilderment, and seemed to regard, as a messenger from the other world, the apparition by whom he was accosted, and who, in words and tones which made themselves be heard, warned him of judgment to come. "Idiot! madman!" he exclaimed, seizing the astounded convict by the ears, "Hear!""the God of Heaven is merciful! Covered as you are with guilt, he would yet snatch you as a brand from the burning! Your Saviour liveth to make intercession for you, as he did, upon the cross, for the penitent malefactor! See there," said he, pointing to heaven, towards which the eyes of the fascinated convict almost mechanically followed his directing hand; and he then gave impassioned utterance to the first burst of that burning eloquence which, in after years, wrought such miracles upon his hearers; but never a greater one than at that moment, when it penetrated the stony heart of the blaspheming murderer, whose prayers, and tears, and convulsive sobs, evinced the effect which had been produced upon him, and who met his death, confessing his misdeeds, and looking for forgiveness, with trembling hope, to the merits and the sufferings of the Redeemer. His maternal uncle was, at the period of which we write, titular Primate of Ireland, and by his advice he repaired to the University of Louvaine, where he prepared and qualified himself for holy orders. That he must have succeeded in winning the respect of the authorities, would appear from the fact, that he was selected to fill the chair of natural and moral philosophy; which he continued to do to the entire satisfaction of his superiors, until, in 1778, he was induced to relinquish it by the offer of the chaplaincy to the Neapolitan ambassador at the court of London.

There it was that he had an opportunity of witnessing displays of oratory, such as he had never heard before. Burke was then in the meridian of his fame; and if the Irish ecclesiastic did not feel a throbbing of national pride at the senatorial triumphs of his great countryman, the cloister must have extinguished the ardour of a temperament which could once have borne kindred evidence to the fire within. But it was not so; the priest was no ascetic. His mind was more conversant with the humanities of literature, than the knotty problems of theology; and the mens divinior with which he was gifted, found its most congenial exercise in the atmosphere of thought and feeling, which bore upon the moral and social concerns of his fellow men. Already he had made himself felt in the pulpit as an attractive and impressive preacher. The frequenters of the Ambassador's Chapel often bore testimony to the richness and the vigour of the discourses which he delivered there, some of which, we believe, were printed, although no copies of them can now be found. But he was evidently only in course of training for the greater efforts which he was afterwards to make, and lost no opportunity of improving himself in style and elocution, by studying the best models which could be found, and familiarising himself with those hidden springs of emotion, by the skilful touching of which vast assemblies are moved and captivated, and without a knowledge of which the orator is but a vain and pompous rhetorician, and "fights as one that beateth the air."

"Homo sum, et nihil humani a me alienum puto," was a heathen maxim which he never forgot, amidst all the perplexing disquisitions of the schools. Nor did the enlarged philanthropy of such a sentiment find the less grace or favour in his eyes, because he thought he could see its sublimest realization in the precepts and the example of his Lord and Saviour.

We e are not favoured, either by himself or any member of his family, with the train of thought, or the course of study, which led to his departure from the Church of Rome. Doubtless it was such as satisfied a sound understanding and an awakened conscience; for, if anything may be regarded as certain, respecting this great man, it is that he was wholly above sordid or mercenary considerations. That the convictions must have been stern and overbearing, which, after two years of meditation and retirement, in the bosom of his own family, led him to encounter the charge of apostacy, by embracing the communion of the Church of England, is most true; and probably the complete sincerity of his persuasions is best manifested, by his own entire satisfaction with them, throughout the whole tenor of his after life, and his aversion from engaging in the strife of controversy, to which he was naturally disinclined, and which, he might have thought, would interfere with his usefulness in the peculiar line of duty to which he felt a call, and had pre-resolved that his life should be devoted. Brutal ignorance and infuriate bigotry will always view, through the baleful and lurid, light of their own prejudices, the man who, dissenting from them upon grounds of reason and scripture, feels himself under a moral constraint to depart from their communion. He may neglect or contemn every precept they profess to hold in honour, and even become an open infidel, without incurring the same amount of reproach as will surely be visited upon him if he become a strict and conscientious professor of an obnoxious mode of faith, which they regard with "jealous leer malign," in proportion as its solemn beauty, and its scriptural truth, are calculated, by their contrasted worth and loveliness, to show their system of error and of superstition to disadvantage. Of all this Dr. Kirwan was aware, when, in the year 1787 he resolved to encounter the reproaches with which he was certain of being assailed, and, by an open profession of his change of mind, provoke the wrath of the bigots, who would rather see him die an insincere professor of what he regarded as an unscriptural creed, than live in that more excellent way" which was in strict accordance with his awakened convictions.

The following letter, addressed by him to a friend in Galway, immediately upon his conformity in St. Peter's church, in this city, will be perused with no little interest by the reader ;

"From a private letter of Dean Kirwan, on his conforming to the Protestant religion, to a friend in Galway.

"DEAR SIR-The 24th of the present month formed an era in my life; it gave me to the Established Church. I went through the usual ceremonies in the hands of