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We cannot help believing that it is to the upper dowed wretchednees;" but why say so? Why classes of society that the origin of the evil is should the gentility of very genteel benevolence be attributable; and among them, its parent may be turned from its purpose by the nasty poverty—the found in pride-we would not say an ungenerous, foul and tattered condition of the recipients? Why but a mistaken pride, productive of an unwilling- should not wretchedness be at least, nominally, ness to receive the smallest assistance from the laid in lavender? Why cannot we have pleasant hands of an inferior, without the endeavor to return destitution? Now rags-real working-day rags, it. How salutary a sentiment under the control fluttering about unwashed flesh-are too true. of a sound judgment-how unsalutary when mis- Therefore, although we see the tatters of the studirected! The error was mainly in the head. dents-although we nose them, can we not, at the The dangerous consequences of introducing a least, sink the foul, frowsy truth, in some sweet, species of moral barter were unforeseen, and no conventional lie? Yes: we will not say " Ragged definite line was drawn between good offices cost-Schools." We will amend the sinful verity, and, ing the poorer man little, and those costing him laying down a counterfeit, will call them-" Acadmuch. Thus was the custom developed. How emies for Youths of Limited Circumstances." easy its conception, how rapid its growth, how Lord Ashley's friend-you, who will not subripe its maturity, when, lost to a sense of mutual scribe to the real thing; come, pull out your purse esteem, the poor man renders, and the richer pays to the name :for, a civility whose venal character defiles its purity, and robs it of its value!

"Lord Ashley's friendguineas!"

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And now, John Bull-you lover of a lie-as the thing is made respectable-as there are no " rags," canvas your friends and acquaintance; and although you know that you ask for the "Ragged Schools," sink the vulgar name, and beg subscriptions for the "Youths of Limited Circumstances."-Punch.

Thus neither is honesty nor civility suffered to be its own reward. Well might the (I believe) virtuous old man in "The Mysteries of the Forest" exclaim, "What! must I be paid for doing my duty?" Let us hope for the time when, under a second Lycurgan code, money will resume its proper level; when pour l'amour de Dieu and pour l'amour d'homme, will be tenfold more constraining motives to the relative discharge of moral duties, than heaps of silver or bags of gold; the WE regret to learn, that letters from the island time when there will be no more charges for of Bourbon destroy the hope which had been "fash," no more touching of the forelock, and entertained, as we informed our readers, of the "Please remember the boots, sir;" no more safety of M. Maizan, a young naval officer, who, money-seeking officiousness of your host's lacquey, at the close of the year 1844, undertook an exploras he tenders your hat and glove; no more the ing expedition into Central Africa-giving the half extended hand of the pew-opener, and the certain particulars of his melancholy fate. That "Would you like a seat nearer the desk, sir?"-gallant gentleman left Zanzibar, in April, 1845, the time-oh, Utopian dreamer!-when he who furnished with a firman of Sultan Said for the would offer to pay by money for an act of humanity, performed from no mercenary motive, would be rebuked as one who had offered an insult to his fellow-man, and an injury to society; the time when civility shall have lost its venality, and when love shall be shown for love, and not love for money!

THE VULGARITY OF RAGS.

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AT the last meeting of the Ragged School Union Society, Lord Ashley said- Many persons objected to these schools, on account of their name; and one friend of his own had told him that if the name were changed, he would give a large sum towards their support. Lord Ashley's friend -whoever he may be, whether of the clergy or the laity is a wise man; a man who knows the world, and all its learned double-meanings. Why can there be a doubt of it?—if we begin to label things with their proper names-if we call " rags" rags-dirt, dirt,-hypocrisy, hypocrisy-there is an end of the great business of society. For, we contend that it is the work of one moiety of the world to put off certain pocket-pieces, as though they were sterling coin; and the other half to take them with a grave, smug face, as current gold; though occasionally each party puts his tongue in his check, to show that at all events he is too clever not to see the counterfeit that passes for sterling money. Now, many people, like Lord Ashley's friend, do not choose to have their benevolence associated with raggedness-it is not respectable. Rags, to be sure, are the gowns of the pupils. They con their books in their "looped and win

principal chiefs-who, however, are, practically, very independent of his authority. Having learnt that a chief named Pazzy manifested hostile intentions towards him, M. Maizan remained some time on the coast; but, after having collected information as to the country through which he had to pass, he ventured to proceed-making a considerable circuit, to avoid the territory of his savage enemy. A march of twenty days brought him to the village of Daguélamohor-three days' journey only from the coast in a direct line; and here he waited for his baggage, which he had confided to an Arab servant. This servant would appear to have been in communication with Pazzy-and informed him of the road which his master had taken; for the chief, with some men of his tribe, came suddenly upon the latter at Daguélamohor, at the end of July, and surrounded the hut in which he had taken up his abode. Having dragged him out, and tied him to a palisade, they cut his throat and the articulations of his limbs, in the presence of another servant, who has since been redeemed from Pazzy by the Sultan-and has furnished these details to the French consul at Zanzibar. The last letter received by the consul from M. Maizan is dated from this village of Daguélamohor; and must have been despatched but a few minutes before that unfortunate young gentleman met his death.-We may mention, in this paragraph, that tidings from La Plata announce the death of M. Aimé Bonpland, the celebrated naturalist, and fellow-traveller of Baron Humboldt-so long held prisoner by Dr. Francia in Paraguayas having taken place in Corrientes; where, since his release, the philosopher has resided.

From Fraser's Magazine.

MR. SHEIL.

modern politics, they shall find it necessary to contradict all their former assertions and argue against all their former opinions. But the real orator of the highest class-he who has had a nobler end in view than forensic sophistry or mere clap-trap and cajolery-not only is admired at the time he utters his speech, but is remembered long after his temporary rivals are forgotten. His effusions are read and studied as models by successive aspirants to fame; they are admired by the poet as he admires his Milton, his Wordsworth, or his Tennyson; by the artist as he admires his Titian or his Turner; and it is to them also that the most valuable praise of all is accorded-that of pos terity. The practical men secure the present only, the men of genius enjoy both the present and the future.

have proceeded. The very faults of his style cease to be defects when regarded in connection with the pervading tone of his mind, and the leading features of his character.

EVERY public speaker who can arrest the attention and act upon the feelings of an audience, is, in the most loose or enlarged acceptation of the term, an orator; even in its strict and literal sense, the same definition would almost apply. But it is needless to remind our readers that there are almost as many gradations of excellence included in that general term as there are in similar ones used in reference to painting, or sculpture, or poetry, or acting. As the circle of public intelligence becomes expanded, by the greater spread of general knowledge among the people, and the more universal excitement of all classes in questions of a political or social nature in reference to legislation, the number of public speakers who Mr. Sheil is a man of genius, and, making excite attention and maintain a hold upon the feel- allowance for some defects which shall be hereings of the people, becomes almost indefinitely after adverted to, an orator of the highest order. multiplied; the intellectual quality of their Whether his speeches be read in the closet years speeches is deteriorated in proportion as their prac- after they were delivered, or whether they be tical utility is increased; and it becomes more and heard with all the advantage of that burning elomore difficult to settle the old and often-disputed quence, that brilliancy of diction, that fiery imquestion, "What is an orator?" Several speak-petuosity of action, which have now become ers have already been included in this series, and almost associated with the name of Sheil, they are more will probably follow, whom it would have still the same powerful, beautiful, soul-stirring been absurd to place upon the list of those, so few works, still models of the finest rhetorical art. in names, but so brilliant in performances, who, by Scarcely any terms of admiration would be too the common consent of mankind, by the testimony strong as applied to some of his speeches, while of history and the evidence of their works, happily even those which do not rise to the highest pitch undestroyed, are recognized as being the great of excellence have, nevertheless, so decided and so masters in the art of oratory. Yet, on the other distinctive a character, that they may be at once hand, the individuals so excluded exercise a direct known to be the production not only of a superior and powerful influence over their fellow-country-mind, but of the particular man from whom they men scarcely paralleled, and certainly not exceeded, by the higher order of public speakers. Their utilitarian value fully compensates to the general mind for their want of artificial enhancement. The public, perhaps, would care little to know what were the brilliant excellencies of Mr. | Sheil or Mr. Macaulay, or what a critical analysis would discover of their defects, if the plan of the writer gave them that information on the condition that in the exercise of a somewhat hypercritical judgment, he left them in ignorance of the oratorical qualifications of Lord John Russell, or Sir Robert Peel, or Mr. Cobden, or even Lord George Bentinck, men with whose names the whole country is ringing. Yet a speech from Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Brougham, Mr. Sheil, Mr. Macaulay, or Mr. Disraeli, or from Mr. Fox and some of the most distinguished platform speakers, wholly differs not merely in the degree but also in the nature of its excellence from those of the more practical orators they who really lead the public mind. The one is a study for the intellect and a pleasure to the imagination, for its intrinsic excellence or beauty, while the other derives its interest from extraneous causes, ceasing with the excitement of the hour; such as the position of the speaker, the nature and position of the subject he is handling, and, generally, from the exciting political causes which every year of struggling perpetuates. But the men of the higher order have their ultimate reward. The others have the applause of the present hour alone. Their lumbering speeches are duly reported in the newspapers, in their inglorious rivalry which shall produce the greater number of columns of print; but after the lapse of a week they are forgotten, or only remembered that they may be quoted at a future time against themselves, when, in the mutations of

Mr. Sheil's parliamentary reputation is now of about fifteen years' standing. For that period he has reigned without a rival as the most brilliant and imaginative speaker, and the most accomplished rhetorician, in the house of commons. That assembly-heterogeneous as are the materials of which it is composed-possesses a marvellous instinct in the discovery and the appreciation of oratorical talent. It is their interest that they should have among them those who can occasionally charm them from the plodding realities of legislation, and the dull lucubrations of the practical men. Therefore, they are always alive to excellence, and stamp it at once. Not very long since a new member, a Mr. Cardwell, made a remarkably valuable speech on a question of a practical nature, full of powerful reasoning, concentration, and mastery of the facts. Till the evening when he made that speech, he was comparatively unknown; but he had not been on his legs a quarter of an hour, before the unerring instinct of the house (which operates as closely upon good business speeches as on the most eloquent) discovered that, in his degree, he was a superior man, and the cheering with which he was greeted at the close of his address was the stamp they set on his ability. Sir Robert Peel was among the listeners, and in a few weeks afterwards Mr. Cardwell became a minister. If, in these days of statistics and sophistry, a modest and undistinguished individual was thus singled out, à fortiori, it could not have been long before such an orator as Mr. Sheil was elevated to the highest point in the admiration of the house, at a time

when high oratory was more valued. He came horse of an ambitious party, the cause had come at but to be heard and to be triumphant. Heralded last to be regarded as "respectable." English by the hyperbolical praise of his Irish admirers, statesmen and orators-men who in a few years his first speech was looked for with a curiosity not became the rulers of the country-succeeded those unmingled with doubt. But he passed the ordeal great and eloquent Irishmen in whom the advocacy successfully, and from that hour has been regarded of Roman Catholic freedom from civil disabilities as one of the most distinguished and remarkable had always been regarded as justifiable-nay, a of the many great orators which his country, fer- matter of duty. In the mean while, all the legal tile in genius as in natural riches, has ever pro- dexterity of Mr. O'Connell had been devoted to duced. the construction of an artful but comprehensive scheme of agitation, by which the people of Ireland might be organized and an unanimous call be made on the English parliament for emancipation. This organization went on, with more or less suc cess, for years. Under the name of the Roman Catholic Association it rose from the most insignificant revival (after a temporary dispersion) in the year 1823, until it assumed that gigantic shape which ultimately terrified the government of England into an undignified submission. It was in that year, 1823, that Mr. Sheil and Mr. O'Connell, who were destined at no very distant time to be the great leaders of the association, first met, under circumstances somewhat romantic, at the house of a mutual friend in the mountains of Wicklow. There a congeniality of object overcame the natural repulsion of antagonist minds, and they laid down the plan of a new agitation. That their meeting was purely an accidental one made the results which followed still more remarkable.

Our mention of the Hibernian admirers of Mr. Sheil reminds us that we have something to say of that gentleman beyond what is prompted by a recollection of his speeches in the house of commons. For, unlike most of our most distinguished men, Mr. Sheil was famous as an orator long before he entered parliament. His eloquence had not been the least important element in causing that unanimity of feeling among the people of Ireland which ultimately led to the great political and religious revolution of 1829. There are very few instances on record of men who have become famous as speakers at the bar, or at the hustings, or at public meetings, having equally stood the test of the house of commons. It is one of Mr. Sheil's many claims on our admiration, that having been an energetic, enthusiastic, and successful leader in a great popular, or rather a great national movement, he should have had the taste and tact to so subdue his nature in the very hour of triumph, as afterwards to adapt his speaking to the tone most agreeable to the house, and to charm Their first efforts were received with indifference them as much by the fire of his eloquence as by the by the people; but in a very few weeks the assodelicacy of his rhetorical artifices, without the aid ciation was formed, and the rolling stone was set of those stronger and more stirring stimulants to in motion. To those who are curious in such the passions which form the very essence of suc- matters it will be instructive and amusing to obcessful mob-oratory. In very few instances indeed serve the parallel circumstances of the origination has he even discarded these voluntary fetters on of the Roman Catholic Association by some six or the exuberant vigor of his patriotism and nation-seven enthusiasts at a bookseller's shop in Dublin, ality.

and that of the anti-corn-law league, by a few merchants at Manchester, or at Preston-for the cotton-heroes of the late campaign have not yet determined at which place the nucleus was formed.

Not as an orator merely will Mr. Sheil assist to rescue this age from the charge of mediocrity. Thirty years ago he first began to be known and appreciated as a poet-when he was only looking forward to the bar as a profession, and long ere We have alluded to the natural repulsion of visions of applauding millions, or of high minis-antagonist minds. Contrast more marked could terial office, or a place in the councils of his sovereign, ever crossed his ardent and aspiring soul. As the author of the tragedies Eradne and The Apostate, Mr. Sheil already occupied a high place among the writers who were then his contemporaries-a place not very much unlike that now held by Talfourd. In the intervals of those productions, and for some time afterwards, he contributed to the periodicals of the day, and had altogether, even at the early age of twenty-two, made himself that kind of reputation for originality and a high order of talent which floats about society and interests, by some means or other, more certain in their action than perceptible, the general mind in the career of particular individuals. Still, although there were at all times vague predictions that he would" do something" some day or other, no one seems at that time to have suspected that he contained within him the powers which soon afterwards made him second but to one man as a leader of the Irish people, and ultimately have enabled him to compete with the most illustrious men of the day in those qualifications which ensure parliamentary success.

But with the time came the man. The Roman Catholic question had of late years assumed a great parliamentary importance. The stalking

scarcely exist than that which was exhibited by the two great leaders of the association. That their mental qualities were so different, and the sources of the admiration which each in his sphere excited so opposite, may be held to be one of the causes of the great success the association achieved. If Mr. Sheil was great in rhetoric-if his impassioned appeals to his countrymen and to the world stood the test not merely of Hibernian enthusiasm, but also of English criticism, Mr. O'Connell was greater in planning, in organization, in action, and he had in his rough and vigorous eloquence a lever which moved the passions of the Irish people. He perhaps had the good sense to see that as an orator, in the higher sense of the term, he could never equal his more brilliant and intellectual colleague. His triumphs lay in the council-chamber on the one hand, and in the market-place or the hill-side on the other. It was in the forum or on the platform that the more elevated and refined eloquence of Mr. Sheil, adorned with all the graces of art, charmed while it astonished a higher and more cultivated audience. Thus they never clashed. While all Europe rang with the fame of the "peaceful agitator," who had taught his countrymen to use the forms of the con stitution to the subversion of its spirit and objects;

every scholar, every statesman, every lover of the beautiful in oratory as an art, had already learned to admire that new, thrilling, imaginative, yet forcible style of eloquence, which ever and anon, amid the din and clamor of noisier warfare, sounded the spirit-stirring tocsin of nationality and religious liberty, breaking forth like intermittent lightning-flashes amidst the thunders of the agitation. Mr. Sheil, on the other hand, looked up to Mr. O'Connell for his indomitable energy and perseverance, his craft, cunning, caution, his thorough nationality and identification with the feelings of the people, and would as little have thought of substantially opposing his decision or resisting his general control over the proceedings of the association, as the other would have attempted to vie with him in eloquence. So they went on together, side by side, though really exercising so distinct an influence, with scarcely any of that jealousy or rivalry which has so often stifled similar undertakings in their very infancy. If Mr. Sheil's ideas of agitation were more grand and comprehensive; if he would fain have gone by a more direct and manly but more dangerous road to the intelligence of the English parliament and people; if, in his anxiety to impress on the world a deep and startling conviction of the union and nationality of the Irish people, and their absolute, even their slavish devotion to their leaders; if in this his superabundant energy and velocity of purpose, he would have drawn the association into the meshes of the law, there was Mr. O'Connell at his right hand to repress and guide, to steer clear of the rocks and shoals, to accomplish by that crafty prudence and keen dexterity in escape which savors so much of political cowardice, those objects which, in the other case, would have been realized by a more manly display of political audacity. Mr. Sheil might be the braver man at the boarding-pike or the gun, but Mr. O'Connell was the safer at the helm.

daily causes of instinctive antagonism that must have arisen, is a miracle only to be accounted for by the influence which a popular movement always exercises on its leaders, so long as they are all pressing forward towards the same goal.

The Mr. Sheil, who now sits and speaks in the house of commons, who is a right honorable member of her majesty's privy council, and was not, so very many years ago, one of the most ornamental, if not quite the most useful, of the members of the whig cabinet, is, however, a very dif ferent personage, indeed, from the young, enthusiastic Irishman, barrister, poet, orator, agitator, whose fiery spirit fused into one silver flow of brilliant eloquence so many pure elements of democratic power. Except at intervals, when the old habit recurs, or when some tempting opportunity presents itself to urge the wrongs of Ireland without compromising his new associates, Mr. Sheil is one of the most quiet, silent, unobtrusive members of the house of commons. Indeed, he has become so identified with the whigs, that you scarcely remember him even as an Irishman, still less as one of those who, for so many years, defied the whole parliamentary power of the empire. He has of late years thrown himself almost entirely into the conventionalities of the house of commons, and has undergone mutation from a popular leader into a partisan. This is said in no spirit of disparagement; on the contrary, however "Young Ireland" may affect to scorn such apparent lukewarmness and subserviency to circumstances, it is really one of Mr. Sheil's most solid claims to our respect. Nor is his oratorical power diminished when, on occasion, he deigns to resort to it. On several occasions he has delivered speeches on great questions not affecting Ireland alone, but the whole empire, which, for vigor, beauty of imagery, boldness of conception, and sarcastic power, will vie with the best of those made in the very heat and fervor of his patriotism. It is not that his strength is diminished, but that it is more under the regulation of his taste and judgment.

To Mr. Sheil was owing the idea of at once teaching the people of Ireland union and a sense of their strength, while obtaining an universal expression of their wish for emancipation, by Some of the speeches-harangues they would means of simultaneous meetings throughout Ire- bear to be called-made by Mr. Sheil at the meetland, in every parish in the kingdom, for the pur-ings of the Roman Catholic Association, will bear pose of petitioning parliament to concede the comparison with the most memorable ever called Catholic claims. He would have gone further. forth by the spirit of democracy. Almost from the He would have had a form of prayer prepared, first day he appeared on the platform of the assoby means of which, in every chapel in Ireland, the ciation, the attention of the political world, indeed people might simultaneously join in an appeal to of all thinking men was fixed upon him. Those Heaven for the advancement of what they had who could not be present to witness the powerful been taught to believe was a sacred cause; that aid lent to his burning words by his striking and millions of men and women might breathe the same original action, still saw unquestionable genius in aspiration to their Creator, at the same moment the exquisite language, the novel metaphors, so throughout the length and breadth of the land. bold yet so well controlled, the forcible antithesis, The conception, apart from its impropriety in a the luxuriant imagery, the unapproachable sarcas religious point of view, was a grand one, and tic power, and, above all, in an irrepressible spirit strongly illustrative of its author's character. It of patriotism, an indignant sense of insulted nawas an idea more likely to occur to an enthusiastic tional honor, that bore onwards the stream of his and ardent imagination like that of Mr. Sheil, than thoughts with a wild and reckless abandonment, to the more practical mind of Mr. O'Connell; who perilous at every fall, yet, torrent-like, free again again was much more at home in framing a reso- at a fresh bound and rushing far away in flashing lution or organizing an association, or holding a beauty. By the side of the deep, steady current meeting, in such a manner as to evade the law. of Mr. O'Connell's eloquence, slow moving like a It was his successful boast that there was no act mighty river, the rapid flow of Mr. Sheil's pure, of parliament through which he would not drive a clear, poetical diction, gave a delightful and recoach-and-six. Mr. Sheil had a poet's conception freshing relief to the mind. Take up the proceedof agitation and organization; Mr. O'Connell's ings of those meetings, and the very sentences, so was that of a lawyer., Characters more opposed short and exquisitely framed, seem as it were to could scarcely have been brought together; that gleam and glitter. Never was sedition clothed in they harmonized so well, notwithstanding the many more seductive language, or democratic principles

made more fascinating to the most fastidious intel- speeches to which we more particularly refer were lect. In his strong conviction of the justice of his delivered at intervals between 1823 and 1829. cause, he would certainly at times broach doctrines Bad as the reports of these speeches are, still as to the means to be employed, which it required their intrinsic worth, their powerful eloquence, all the moral weight of Mr. O'Connell and his and exquisite beauty, make themselves felt through timorous prudence to counteract. But if the fiery ever so debased a medium. Perhaps the most reand impetuous young advocate of a people was markable of his speeches-the most original and sometimes thus hurried on, by the ardor of his characteristic of his peculiar mind-were those he imagination, to lengths which his calmer judgment made at the different aggregate meetings of the would have hesitated to confront, it was so clearly Roman Catholics which took place at intervals only the irrepressible enthusiasm of the poet-agita- during the agitation for emancipation. Then he tor, not the significant appeal of the designing had a wider field and a more inspiring audience demagogue, that the poison of the thought had its than even at the meetings of the Association; antidote along with it in the chosen and beautiful for, at the latter, the cautious spirit of O'Connell words through which it was conveyed. But, with prevailed almost without restraint; the jealous eye all their faults, and in spite of the meagre and im- of the government watched, with lynx-like preperfect reports of them which appeared in the cision, every movement of so dangerous an organinewspapers and the published proceedings of the zation; and even the enthusiasm and valorous Roman Catholic Association, those speeches spread fancy of a Sheil were restrained within the limits the reputation of Mr. Sheil far and wide-wher- of a technical construction of the liberty of publio ever public opinion was aroused on the Roman speech. But the aggregate meetings were more Catholic question-a question which, to the oppo- a matter of open public constitutional right, and nents as well as to the supporters of the Roman there the enthusiastic and indignant orator revelled Catholic claims, was growing to be one of the most in the wild freedom of conscious power and irrevital importance. Their faults were, indeed, many. The politician might be able to find excuses in the singular position of the then leaders of the Irish people, and the momentous nature and exciting interest of the contest, for the occasional bursts of anti-English feeling, the exultation over English faults and follies, the unconstitutional tone of many of those orations, by which the suppressed hatreds of centuries were arrayed against the comparatively innocent statesmen and people of a single age; the poisoned arrows of the rash rhetorician might rebound from the mail of principle in which the Protestant legislator encased himself, confident in its strength against all but the artillery of popular enthusiasm poured in by the more crafty and designing genius of O'Connell. But the critic, fastidious in eloquence, could not forgive, in one whose genius he was compelled to admire, the frequent violations of good taste which the rising orator had not then learnt to avoid-the use, without selection or abstinence, of metaphors, whose extravagance could not be excused, however their boldness might be felt or their force acknowledged, and the sacrifice to political passions of the symmetry and poetical harmony of what, but for those errors of a luxuriant fancy, might have been grand models of oratorical perfection for all time, each, for its eloquent history of national wrongs, an epic, not spoken only to listening thousands, but recorded as at once a delight and a warning to millions yet to come. And, indeed, we do not A very short period found him in the House of overrate the political value of those speeches while Commons. As soon as the Emancipation-bill thus looking back at their faults. Time has oblit-qualified him, as a Roman Catholic, to sit, his amerated their immediate effects, there are not many bition, or the tactics of the Association, led to his who remember to have heard them; and, of the being put forward for the county of Louth. He multitudes who read them and felt their power at was unsuccessful; and was ultimately content to the time they were delivered, the majority have slip into Parliament for a nomination boroughforgotten, in the excitement of subsequent contests, that of Milburne Port. In 1831, on the 21st of the great moral influence which they once exer- March, he made his first speech in the House of cised. But history is already recording their Commons, on the second reading of the Reformresults, and, happily for his own fame, and for the bill. He had not long proceeded with his address gratification of his countrymen, he who delivered ere the House perceived, and acknowledged by them is yet strong, ay, still stronger in those powers which he possesses in such rare perfection, toned down and chastened as they now are in their exercise, by increased intercourse with mankind, and the natural effect which time and the absence of all causes of excitement have produced on an ardent and irritable temperament. The

sistible impulse. The full force and beauty of those speeches can now scarcely be appreciated but by those who were so fortunate as to hear them. They left an impression which has never been effaced by even the more perfect and chastened productions of the maturer mind of the ora tor. One of his greatest triumphs was on the occasion of that miracle-morally, still more than politically, a miracle-the Clare election. Nor should we forget to mention, among his great orations, his speech at a great meeting, (at Carlow, if we remember rightly,) where, taking the first chapter of Exodus for his theme, and with the Bible in his hand, he quoted with a solemnity and effect electrical on the sympathies of a religious and enthusiastic people, the words of the inspired writer, and founded on them an impassioned appeal to his countrymen to persevere in their career-to press onwards to the goal appointed for them, heedless of the fears of the timid or the sugges tions of the compromising. Words are inadequate to convey the effect of this speech: nor was the speech one of words only; it was the action, the fine harmony between the thoughts and the expression, when the feelings were wrought up to the highest pitch of tension in the enthusiasm inspired by the cause, and the sympathy of the multitude around; all these drew forth the hidden strength of his nature till he poured the full force of his fervid soul into his solemn theme.

their cheers, that they had in him, as in Mr. Macaulay, a mine of oratorical wealth, and a perpetual source of the highest gratification. His reputation for power and originality as a speaker had preceded him; and the utmost anxiety was manifested to hear his maiden essay. In this respect he was differently situated from his eloquent rival. From

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