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agitation might lead, they thought, to a fatal result. And the consequence was, that he abandoned the idea of making any preparation for it, and dismissed the thought of it altogether from his mind.

But the distinguished patroness of the institution, Mrs. Peter La Touche, of Bellevue, still clung to the belief that her favourite preacher would yet be able to fulfil his engagement, by pleading at the appointed time for her favourite institution. Its funds were nearly exhausted; and if a desperate effort were not made to save it, she knew not how it could be maintained. Day after day she visited the invalid. She saw his state of weakness and exhaustion, and that he could scarcely raise himself in his bed; and this on the day preceding that for which the sermon was advertised. Still, with a wilfulness for which we can see no excuse, she persisted in her determination that the Dean, and no other, should appear as her advocate in the pulpit.

Sunday arrived; still no amendment. At eleven o'clock her carriage was at his door, and she herself was at his bedside. Up to this moment she had not ventured to divulge to the Dean her expectations; she then, for the first time, made them known. "In an hour," she said, "the church will be filled-the orphans will be there-will their friend, their father, desert them? You are ill-I know it; very weak; but come-just show yourself-it will be enough, and God will bless you!" She prevailed. The invalid was dressed, and borne to her carriage. They arrived at the church just in time; the service was concluded; the anthem had begun. With difficulty was the sufferer assisted into the pulpit. He there sank upon the seat. His appearance could not be mistaken. He himself thought that he was dying, and few in the congregation expected to see him come down alive. What wonder, then, that when he rose, as with a last effort-a triumph of mind over strength exhausted-and extended his arms with beseeching earnestness, as if to shelter the orphans below, who had long regarded him as their earthly parent, from the miseries which threatened them; what wonder, we say, that a sympathetic thrill should per. vade the hearts of the beholders, and that they were electrified into a sudden burst of benevolence, which rescued the objects of the charity from the destitution which impended over them, and more than realized the lady patroness's expectations! We believe the sum collected on that occasion exceeded one thousand pounds.

But, with all our respect for the late Mrs. Peter La Touche, who was one of the best of women, we cannot but gravely reprehend an act which so seriously compromised this great man's existence.

In private life he was playful and amiable, and in the bosom of his own family, one of the most devoted and affectionate of men. Children had a great attraction for him; and his own, in particular, he loved with peculiar fondness, and would sometimes be found playing amongst them, even like a little child.

We have heard those who had known him in private society, describe him as a pleasing companion; and, while he enjoyed, with a keen relish, the wit and the humour of his distinguished associates, as never for one moment forgetful of his professional character, and always ready with a dignified rebuke for any sportive sallies that savoured of profaneness or irreligion. Indeed, we have heard it said that his presence sometimes cast a shade over the hilarity of those who were prone to indulge in a fescinnine licence upon subjects respecting which any levity would be unpardonable, and who dreaded the severity of his rebuke, if old habit should so prevail over their discretion as to bring them under his reprehension.

On one occasion, at a large dinner-party where Curran and other choice spirits of the age were present, his spirit was moved by one who so far forgot himself as to indulge in open mockery of the truths which Kirwan so deeply revered; and, as the offence was committed in the presence of the company, he on the spot administered the well-deserved castigation. Curran, perceiving the unhappy culprit quite prostrated, immediately sprang to the rescue; and, commencing in a strain of mock humility, declared himself, in common with other scribes, and their friend the fallen pharisee, unfit for the society of saints and angels. Then, turning to Kirwan, he observed, "When I listen to you, most potent, grave, and reverend senior, I marvel much what inducement could have ever led a man so holy, to associate with a being so unsanctified as myself. Oh, righteous sir, be thou separate from sinners. Go, follow the

example of your Master in the Gospel; away to the temple; scourge the moneychangers; or hie thee to the mountain alone, and pray. This, I submit, is advice according to the Scriptures." "But," replied Kirwan, "we find also in the holy Scriptures, that our Divine Master sometimes eat and drank with publicans and sinners. Think you it was that he sought honour or pleasure in such society? No: but in order, as occasion offered, to reprove, and exhort, and call them to repentance; and he left with his servants this injunction, that they should follow his steps. So, learned sir, marvel no longer at my presence here; for, as Christ dined with publicans and sinners, even for the same reason do I dine with you."

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Upon the eve of a very hotly-contested election in Dublin, he received a note from his archbishop, Dr. Fowler, desiring to see him. He instantly obeyed the summons. Upon his arrival, his grace, in the presence of many of the elergy, immediately addressed him as follows:-"I wish to remind you, sir, that the election is at hand, and to inform you that I have reckoned upon your vote for the Tory candidate, who is a friend of mine." "I should be at all times sorry," Kirwan replied, "to oppose your grace's wishes, on slight grounds; but to comply with them in this instance is not in my power, having already promised to vote for my friend, Mr. Grattan, of whose principles I approve.' "Then, sir," exclaimed the angry archbishop, you must either break your promise to Mr. Grattan, or break with me." Kirwan could ill conceal the disgust and indignation which this speech aroused within his bosom. He, however, commanded himself, and said calmly, "The alternative, my lord, which you offer, appears to me unjust and hard; still, I must accept it; and endeavour to soften my regret for the loss of your grace's good opinion, by the recollection that I could only have retained it by the sacrifice of my honour and self-respect." Whether the shaft so keenly barbed broke upon, or penetrated into, the hide of the prelatical rhinoceros, we have not heard; but Kirwan came off from the contest unscathed. His bones were not broken—although he never afterwards was able to recover his diocesan's favour.

Of the petty annoyances to which he was exposed from this very rough and arrogant churchman, let the following specimen suffice. One day, at a large dinner-party, the archbishop said to him, "I disapprove, sir, of your extempore preaching, and insist upon your discontinuing this unorthodox practice. Write your sermons, sir, like the other clergyman of my diocese, and bring them with you into the pulpit." "Well, my lord," said Kirwan, "I have no objection. Your will shall be religiously observed. Nor do I think what you so condescendingly direct, will, in any degree, diminish the effect of my preaching; for, although the sermon may be there, your grace, I presume, has not the intention of compelling me to look at it."

Is it possible to look back upon the state of the church in that day, without a deeply indignant feeling that it should have been so abused? Patronage in the hands of men who thought only of their personal or party interests! Merit and ability, such as that of this great preacher, depressed and slighted! And men exalted to the highest places, in whom no one quality could be found which could for a moment justify their elevation! Surely the institute must have possessed a vast recuparative power to have survived such scandalous profanation. And how deeply thankful should we be for the vast improvement which has since taken place, and which is now visible, either more or less, in every department of its administration! But to what has this been owing? Undoubtedly, to no other cause, humanly speaking, than an increasing respect for true religion; and this may be said to date its origin from the era when this great man gave an interest to pulpit ministrations which they had not known before. Immediately he proved what could thus be done, others rose up by whom his example was followed; it might be at an humble distance; but still with energy and effect. The late Peter Lefanu, the late Archdeacon Kings. bury, the late Archbishop of Dublin, the late Dean Graves, the late B. W. Matthias, the late James Dunne, the late Dr. Burrowes, not to talk of a host of others, were evidences of the awakening interest in spiritual things which now began to assert itself above the latitudinarianism of the age, and the frivolities of fashionable dissipation. Religion, which had been relegated to obscurity, now came into vogue. Various societies rose up, having the dissemination of evangelical righteousness for their object. Public opinion thus became enlisted in the good cause. "Whatsoever things were pure, whatsoever things were

lovely, whatsoever things were of good report," began to be regarded with an earnestness proportioned to their importance. And had Kirwan only lived a few years longer, it would have been impossible for any government to neglect so good and so great a man. If, therefore, he was the victim of a vicious system of patronage, to him more especially belongs the merit of having originated that movement by which, in its practical working, it has been so sensibly improved.

Of the churches in which he officiated, and which were filled by fashionable audiences, the vast majority of whom came to be amused or delighted, it is no doubt, most true, that the appearance was very often such as but ill-beseemed the house of God. The censorious railed against his preaching as a theatrical exhibition of mere human eloquence, unsuited to places of public worship. But, whatever may thus be said, no one ever stood in his presence, when fulminating those denunciations by which profligacy was denounced, and pressing those incentives by which humanity was awakened, and man taught to feel his relation to his fellow-man, and

"That we have, all of us, one human heart,"

without having his moral consciousness stirred to its very lowest depths within him, and the connexion brought home of the utter worthlessness of earthly things, compared with things which are eternal. Thus, many of even the most apparently careless and irreligious persons, who came merely to hear, remained to pray; and left the church with incipient convictions, which afterwards, in many instances, ripened into sincere conversion.

We have said that no record remains of those wondrous appeals, the tradition of the effects of which has alone come down to us. This is the more surprising, as it is well known that they were very carefully pre. pared; and the writer of this paper has heard the late James Dunn, who knew him well, affirm, that Kirwan himself never scrupled to declare that those bursts of apparently extemporaneous eloquence, which seemed in their delivery to be sudden inspirations of the moment, were the very portions of his discourse most premeditated, and which had cost him the most labour. We do not say, we do not believe, that in every instance this was the case; but it is an undoubted truth that severely strict preparation was the rule, sudden improvisation the exception. We marvel, therefore, how it has happened that nothing now survives him but the volume of sermons published after his death, and which are a compilation from fragmental notes and hints, contained in manuscripts which were found amongst his papers, and exhibit rather the disjecta membra of his oratory, in which organic life and power are extinct, than such compacted, articulated, and systematic discourses, as those in which Cicero and Demosthenes yet live, and he would have recognised as a perfect representation of the divine originals to which he owed his fame, and which, had life been spared him, it was his full intention to have given to the world.

But there are, occasionally, passages scattered throughout this volume, which, if we may judge ex pede Herculem, fully sustain his high reputation.

Perhaps the strongest evidence of the greatness of his powers, was Grattan's enthusiastic admiration of them. He literally worshipped Kirwan as an orator, while he revered him as a Christian minister, and loved him as a friend. He almost exhausted language in describing, in the Irish House of Commons, his transcendent excellence, when he denounced the government of the day, for leaving such a man so scantily provided. Through life he was his most steadfast adherent, and after his death continued to his family the kindliest and most gratifying attentions. Indeed that great orator, and most amiable of politicians, appeared in nothing more amiable, than in the persevering goodness which prompted him to show respect and regard to the widow and the orphan children of the man who had been himself so much more than a husband to many widows, and so much more than a father to many orphans.

But he will be deemed a partial judge. Let us, then, take the evidence of one to whom no such partiality can be attributed; one who scanned him with a keenly critical and curious eye, and whose estimate of him is as much reduced below the standard of his most ardent admirers, as, with any regard to candour, it was possible to make it. Let the following document, of which the author is unknown, speak for itself. We give it as it was communicated to us, by one

of the nearest relatives of the Dean, who found it, as he informs us, in a number of the Patriot newspaper, a publication long since extinct, but well remembered by many of our readers:

"SKETCH OF THE REV. W. KIRWAN.

"This is a man whose image must not play merely on my superficial senses. While it seems to pass before my eyes, let me embody my idea of him on paper, that I may afterwards recur to the first strong impression, when the original has faded into a phantom of remembrance.

"Mr. Kirwan exemplifies the remark, that a man of eminent merits and talents, and who is confessedly such, is not ugly with the most irregular features. The lines of his face are acute and angular It is not that waving outline which sinks and swells with easy undulation. It is not in his cheeks, nor in his chin, where you need look for (what Johnson calls) the convexity of contentment, and even his celestial eye has something in it sharp and scrutinizing. Fashion appears at present to prefer those purblind eyes, where the lids contract the sight into shrewdness rather than sagacity, fitted chiefly to pore over the insect or the manuscript. But more to be admired is that august and ample range of eyes, which, like those in the portrait of Shakspeare, open widely on the book of nature. Their majestic orbs roll from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven; and the light of the soul meets the light of the sun without blenching.

"Mr. Kirwan's eyes often flash with the fire of fancy, and at times even with the flames of frenzy. The result of his countenance is neither smoothness nor suavity; but rather the point and pungency of satire. When he sheathes his visage in a smile, there is something of mockery in that smile; yet, rigid as his features undoubtedly are, it is a hardness which admits the polish of the world, and seems highly to have received it. There is an ugliness that is genteel, and one that is vulgar.

"He makes much of a slight figure. The same spirit which dilates the metaphor seems to inflate the man. While his whole frame enlarges in its dimensions, his audience swarm and are straitened; and the greatest lords of the conclave, the mighty seraphim of the senate, reduce their shapes immense, and are diminished to atoms. He rises, not with an air of self-annihilation, but with an air which announces his relationship to man, rather than to God. I cannot much admire a certain spruce familiarity of manner which has crept into the pulpit, a foppishness of preparation, an easy arrangement of little accommodations, and an abundance of handkerchief, which makes us at a loss to conclude whether the gentlemen deem themselves before their glass, or before their Maker. Mr. Kirwan has not much of this, but rather more than I should require in the grave, authentic, authoritative ambassador of heaven.

"He seems, very early, to put himself coolly into a passion, that his energies may, as soon as possible, be stretched to that tone which unites vigour of conception with hardihood of expression, and gives confidence alike to his audience and to himself. That gifted elocution which is, of itself, nothing more than copious barrenness, appears in him to have been elaborated to a great degree of excellence, by study and meditation. His words do not pour forth from mere laxity of intellect; when he seems most precipitate, he is most studiously correct. He drives like Phaeton, with the prudence and foresight of Apollo.

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Excellence is the reward of labour, perhaps of labour only-the sweat of the brow, or the throe and travail of the mind. When a complicated piece of music is executed with flying fingers, we forget the painful acquisition of those numberless little movements, which repetition has, at length, made mechanical; and in the currency of the harangue, the orator only can remember the pains which accomplished it, the patience with which he moulded the metaphor, the labour with which he scaled the climax. Mr. Kirwan's labours are both of the body and the mind.

"His voice is neither uniform nor full-chested; it is not an angelic voice, which when ended, leaves us still listening, still fixed to hear; and yet it serves him well. "His eloquence is in general too brilliant for sublimity, and his language too figurative for pathos. His fancy is, indeed, a firework, which bursts into a thousand stars, that sparkle with metaphorical magnificence, and spangle the whole mental horizon. But that sublime which thunders and lightens on the top of the mount, or moves along in those masses of light and shade that fill the soul with a passing glory, or overshadow it with an awe, arresting every faculty, and even stifling exclamation that pathos where modest art hides itself, and strives only to decorate nature; where infantine simplicity sits upon the lips, and the natural idea, that springs from the native ingenuousness of the heart, is seen naked, through the plain and pellucid expression; he has not that sublimity, nor that pathos; and yet I do not say that he is not often pathetic, and often sublime. He is rhetorical, rather than oratorical-pungent, rather than pathetic;-his vehement fancy kindles every

sentiment into a passion, and his energetic action hurls the glowing idea into the hearts of his hearers. His action is indeed very ardent, very impressive; the product of a sanguine temperament, much sensibility, and much self-assurance.

"But were I now asked what is the characteristic or discriminating trait of this celebrated preacher, I would not say that it is his face, or his figure, his voice, his gesture, or his gesticulation, his vivid fancy, or his vehement invective. No; neither, nor all; but it is the possession of that wonderful quality, without which, even men of talents must ever remain in vulgar mediocrity-without which no man ever was a great man, no character can ever emerge into glory; it is the possession of that divine breath, which, in a favoured few, is superadded to the breath of life, fills them with double soul, and accumulates around some grand purpose all the energies of human nature. To such men the universe is annihilated, and nothing remains but the object, and the mounting mind, which aspires to its attainment; which descries the possibility of things afar off, and finds the means in the daring. It is that heroic quality which cut the Gordian knot with the sword of Alexander, burned the paper with the pen of Rousseau, and, with the voice of a Grattan, all but accomplished the redemption of a nation.

"It is enthusiasm-divine, ineffable, inimitable enthusiasm. It is this quality which shines on this man's countenance, amplifies his figure, and vivifies action, which, without it, would be mere theatrical mummery. What wonders has not this exotic enthusiasm already produced! It has enchanted a great city into charity-charity, that all-atoning virtue, which has most miraculously swallowed up all the rest; it has dazzled the public eye, arrested the public ear-alluring the attention, impressing the heart. A great light shines suddenly around us journeying on our way, but who except the preacher has been converted! It has made worship, if not a duty, at least a pastime, and introduced strange noise and bustle into the still sanctuary of the house of God. The mob and the military which surround this house, the career of coaches, the glitter of dress, the assembled congregation of amateurs, the busy whispers which fill up the pauses of the orator, where it is found difficult to repress involuntary acclamation-all this seems to shed a glare of festivity around the pulpit, which I think in some measure profanes it, wholly dispels the dim religious light," and makes us ask, if this be an asylum from the world, where we can "commune with our own hearts, and be still."

"But the purpose of this preacher's eloquence surpasses human praise; and when he retires within the recesses of a heart which I believe to be as good as is declared, and counts up, with glorious avarice, the enormous sums which his exertions have obtained for those who were ready to perish; when he considers the hours of happiness which thence derive to his own bosom, let him fall down before God in a transport of gratitude.

"I have exaggerated the faults of this great man-I have undervalued his excellencies; praise is always too general, and censure too particular."

We do think that our readers will thank us for having thus rescued from oblivion a document of so much force and beauty as that which we have now submitted to them. The writer, whoever he was, was a very accomplished and able man; and he looks through his subject with a scrutinizing eye, and a predetermination to spy out whatever of defect could be discovered, or wherein the great man fell short of absolute perfection. Like the Athenian, who was tired of hearing Aristides called "the Just," he seems to have been piqued by the reputation of the preacher, who was almost universally deemed the greatest of living orators. Whatever commendation, therefore, is given, is extorted from him as an acknowledgment which he could not withhold; while, as he himself candidly admits at the conclusion, the censure is exaggerated. And yet, take it all in all, is it less than almost the very highest praise?

When Kirwan ceased to be a Romanist, he only did so to become a Catholic. He never felt or acted as if his office was sectarian. He was fonder of contemplating the points of agreement than those of difference, between the church to which he conformed, and other religious denominations; and regarded himself as called rather to act upon society in the mass, by making war upon its common wickedness and corruption, than to enter upon, or elucidate, those speculative niceties which discriminate from each other, and hold in mutual repulsion, the different denominations of professing believers.

And, in point of fact, those differences were at that time latent-the several old denominations retaining their respective forms more from habit than from principle or conviction so that the churches were as crowded by believers of all sorts (the Roman Catholics alone excepted), to hear this extraordinary man, as any one place of worship, or convcnticle, would be, by those exclusively

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