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man at the Irish bar. His great fortune, however, has not had the effect of impairing in him the spirit of acquisition. He exhibits, indeed, as acute a perception of pecuniary excitement as any of his less devout brethren of the coif.

Sergeant Lefroy will, in all likelihood, be shortly raised to the Bench.* He has already officiated upon one occasion as a judge of assize, in consequence of the illness of some of the regular judges, and gone the Munster circuit. His opinions and demeanor in this capacity are not undeserving of mention they have attracted much attention in Ireland, and in England have not escaped observation. Armed with the king's commission, he arrived in Limerick in the midst of those dreadful scenes, to which no country in Europe affords a parallel. All the mounds of civil institutions appeared to have been carried away by the dark and overwhelming tide, which was running with a tremendous current, and swelling every day into a more portentous magnitude. Social order seemed to be at an end. A wild and furious population, barbarized by a heartless and almost equally savage gentry, hau burst through the bonds by which its madness had been hitherto restrained, and rushed into an insurrection, in which the animosities of a civil were blended with the ferocity of a servile war. Revenge and hunger employed their united excitations in working up this formidable insanity. Reckless of the loss of an existence which afforded them no enjoyment, the infuriated victims of the landlord and the tithe-proctor extended to the lives of others the same estimate which they set upon their own; and their appreciation of the value of human breath was illustrated in the daily assassinations, which were devised with the guile, and perpetrated with the fury, of an Indian tribe. The whole country smoked with the traces of devastation-blood was shed at noon upon the public way - and crimes even more dreadful than murder made every parent tremble.

* He is now [1854], Chief-Justice of the Queen's Bench, having been ap pointed in 1852, when Mr. Blackburne was made Chancellor.-M.

The agrarian disturbances of 1821, chiefly arising out of the demands on the Catholics for tithes, to support the rich Protestant Church.-M.

Such was the situation of the county of Limerick, when the learned Sergeant arrived to administer a remedy for these frightful evils. The calendar presented almost all the possible varieties which guilt could assume, and might be designated as a hideous miscellany of crime. The court-house exhibited an appalling spectacle. A deep and awful silence hung heavily upon it, and the consciousness that lay upon every man's heart, of the frightful crisis to which the county seemed rapidly advancing, bound up the very breath of the assembly in a fearful hush. The wretched men in the dock stood before the judicial novice in a heedless certainty of their fate. A desperate independence of their destiny seemed to dilate their broad and expanded chests, and their powerful faces gave a gloomy token of their sullen indifference to death. Their confederates in guilt stood around them with much stronger intimations of anxiety in their looks, and, as they eyed their fellow-conspirators in the dock, seemed to mutter a vow of vengeance for every hair that should be touched upon their heads. The gentry of the county stood in the galleries with a kind of confession in their aspect, that they had themselves been participant in the production of the crimes which they were collected to punish, but which they knew that they could not repress.

In this assembly, so silent that the unsheathing of a stiletto might have been heard amidst its hush, the learned Sergeant rose, and called for the piece of parchment in which an indictment had been written. It was duly presented to him by the clerk of the crown. Lifting up the legal scroll, he paused for a moment, and said: “Behold! in this parchment writing, the causes of all the misery with which the Lord has afflicted this unhappy island are expressed. Here is the whole mystery of guilt manifestly revealed. All, all is intimated in the indictment. Unhappy men, you have not the fear of God before your eyes, and you are moved by the instigations of the Devil." This address went beyond all expectation the wretches in the dock gazed upon their sacred monitor with a scowling stare-the Bar tipped each other the wink-the parsons thought that this was a palpable interference with my

lord the bishop-the O'Gradys thrust their tongues into their cheeks, and O'Connell cried out, "Leather!"

I have no room to transcribe the rest of this remarkable charge. It corresponded with the specimen already given, and verified the reference to the fabulist. So, indeed, does every charge delivered from the Irish Bench. Each man indulges in his peculiar propensities. Shed blood enough, cries old Renault.* Be just, be humane, be merciful, says Bushe. While the learned Sergeant charges a confederacy between Beelzebub and Captain Rock, imputes the atrocities of the South to an immediate diabolical interposition, and lays at the Devil's door all the calamities of Ireland.

*This mild-tempered gentleman may be remembered as one of the characters in Otway's very tragic tragedy of "Venice Preserved."-M.

THOMAS GOOLD.

THE French Revolution had scarcely burst upon the world, and its portentous incidents were still the daily subject of universal astonishment or dismay, when there arose in the metropolis of Ireland a young gentleman, who, feeling jealous of the unrivalled importance which the Continental phenomenon was enjoying, resolved to start in his own person as an opposition-wonder. He had some of the qualifications and all the ambitious self-dependence befitting so arduous a project. Nature and fortune had been extremely kind to him. He was of a respectable and wealthy family. His face was handsome; his person small, but symmetrical and elastic, and peculiarly adapted to the performance of certain bodily feats which he subsequently achieved.

As to his general endowments, he was, upon his own showing, a fac-simile of the admirable Crichton. He announced himself as an adept in every known department of human learning, from the prophetic revelations of judicial astrology, and the more obsolete mysteries of magic lore, up to the lightest productions of the amatory muse of France. He professed to speak every language (except the Irish) as fluently and correctly as if he had been à native born. He played, sung, danced, fenced, and rode, with more skill and spirit than the masters of those respective arts who had presumed to teach him. He had a deep sense of the value of so many combined perfections, and acted under the persuasion that he was called upon to amaze the world.

His friends, who had perceived that beneath his incomprehensible aspirations there lurked the elements of a clever man,

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recommended the Bar as a profession in which, with industry, and his £10,000, for he inherited about as much, and a rising religion, for he was a Protestant, he might fairly hope to gratify their ambition, if not his own. He assented; and submitted to pass through the preliminary forms—rather, however, under the idea, that at some future period it might suit his views to accept the chancellorship of Ireland, than with any immediate intention of squandering his youthful energies upon so inglorious a vocation. He felt that he was destined for higher things, and proceeded to assert his claims. He never appeared abroad but in a costly suit of the most persuasive cut, and glowing with bright and various tints. He set up an imposing phaeton, in which with Kitty Cut-a-dash, of fascinating memory, and then the reigning illegitimate belle of Dublin, by his side, he scoured through streets and squares with the brilliancy and rapidity of an optical illusion. He entertained his friends, the choicest spirits about town, with dinnėrs, such as bachelor never gave before-dishes so satisfying and scientific, as to fill not only the stomach, but the mind —claret, such as few even of the Irish bishops could procure, and champaigne of vivacity exampled only by his own. He furnished his stable with a stud of racers; and, if I am rightly informed, he still, half-laughing, half-wondering at his former self, recalls the times when mounted upon a favorite thoroughbred, and flaming in a pink-satin jockey-dress, he distanced every competitor, and bore away the Curragh cup.*

I have spoken of his dancing. Tradition asserts that it was not confined to ball-rooms. I am told that at the private theatre in Fishamble-street, a place in those days of much fashionable resort, he was known to slide in between the acts, in the costume of a Savoy peasant, and throw off a pas seul in a style of original dexterity and grace, which, to use an Irish descriptive phrase, "elicited explosions of applause from the men, and ecstatic ebullitions of admiration from the ladies." He was equally remarkable for his excellence in the other manly ex

* The principal races in Ireland take place upon the Curragh of Kildare — at once an equivalent for Doncaster and Newmarket, Epsom and Ascot, with Goodwood and-the rest.-M.