of the law than the prophets. He is, unequivocally, a barrister, but apparently of that homely, chamber-keeping, plodding cast, who labor hard to make up by assiduity what they want in wit-who are up and stirring before the bird of the morning has sounded the retreat to the wandering spectre-and are already brain-deep in the dizzying vortex of mortgages and cross-remainders, and mergers and remitters; while his clients, still lapped in sweet oblivion of the law's delay, are fondly dreaming that their cause is peremptorily set down for a final hearing. Having come to this conclusion, you push on for home, blessing your stars on the way that you are not a lawyer, and sincerely compassionating the sedentary drudge whom you have just detected in the performance of his cheerless toil.

But should you happen, in the course of the same day, to stroll down to the Four Courts, you will be not a little surprised to find the object of your pity miraculously transferred from the severe recluse of the morning into one of the most bustling, important, and joyous personages, in that busy scene. There you will be sure to see him, his countenance braced up and glistening with health and spirits*-with a huge, plethoric bag, which his robust arms can scarcely sustain, clasped with paternal fondness to his breast-and environed by a living palisade of clients and attorneys, with outstretched necks, and mouths and ears agape, to catch up any chance-opinion that may be coaxed out of him in a colloquial way, or listening to what the client relishes still better (for in no event can they be slided into a bill of costs), the counsellor's bursts of jovial and familiar humor, or, when he touches on a sadder strain, his prophetic assurances that the hour of Ireland's redemption is at hand. You perceive at once that you have lighted upon a great popular advocate; and if you take the trouble to follow his movements for a couple of hours through the several Courts, you will not fail to discover the qualities that have made him his legal competency-his business-like habits-his san

SO

* O'Connell was a man of lofty stature, strong build, general good health, and accustomed to a great deal of exercise. His three months' imprisonment in Richmond Penitentiary, after the State Trials of 1844, may be said to have broken up his strong constitution. The prisoned eagle pined for want of its wonted free range over mountain, plain, and valley.-M.

VERSATILITY AND UBIQUITY.

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guine temperament, which renders him not merely the advocate but the partisan of his client-his acuteness-his fluency of thought and language-his unconquerable good-humorand, above all, his versatility.

;

By the hour of three, when the judges usually rise, you will have seen him go through a quantity of business, the preparation for, and performance of which, would be sufficient to wear down an ordinary constitution, and you naturally suppose that the remaining portion of the day must of necessity be devoted to recreation or repose: but here, again, you will be mistaken for should you feel disposed, as you return from the Courts, to drop in to any of the public meetings that are almost daily held for some purpose, or to no purpose, in Dublin, to a certainty you will find the counsellor there before you, the presiding spirit of the scene, riding in the whirlwind, and directing the storm of popular debate, with a strength of lungs, and redundancy of animation, as if he had that moment started fresh for the labors of the day. There he remains until, by dint of strength or dexterity, he has carried every point; and thence, if you would see him to the close of the day's "eventful history," you will, in all likelihood, have to follow him to a public dinner, from which, after having acted a conspicuous part in the turbulent festivity of the evening, and thrown off half a dozen speeches in praise of Ireland, he retires at a late hour to repair the wear and tear of the day by a short interval of repose, and is sure to be found before dawn-break next morning at his solitary post, recommencing the routine of his restless existence. Now, any one who has once seen, in the preceding situations, the able-bodied, able-minded, acting, talking, multifarious person I have been just describing, has no occasion to inquire his name: he may be assured that he is, and can be, no other than "Kerry's pride and Munster's glory," the far-famed and indefatigable DANIEL O'CONNELL.

Mr. O'Connell was born about eight-and-forty years ago, in that part of the united kingdoms of Ireland and Kerry, called Kerry.

He is said to be descended in a mathematically and *This sketch appeared in 1823. Daniel O'Connell, born August 6, 1775, died on the 15th of May, 1847, in his seventy-second year. He was of a long

morally straight line from the ancient kings of Ivera, one of the kingdoms of the county of Kerry. The discrowned family, however, have something better than the saddening boast lived family, for his uncle Maurice, from whom he inherited Derrynane abbey, was 97, at his death, in 1825; and another uncle, General O'Connell, in the French service, and grand-cross of the order of St. Louis, died in 1834, aged 91. He was then not only a general in the French, but oldest colonel in the English service, and the present military tactics of Europe emanated, in 1787, from a military board in which he was the lowest in rank, but highest in ability. In Easter Term, 1798 (a few months before the "Rebellion"), O'Connell was called to the Irish bar, and his ability and industry soon obtained him business. In 1802, he married his cousin. He opposed the Union, and in 1809, commenced his public agitation for Catholic emancipation. He became a leader of the Catholic Board, and when that body was put down by the Irish government, while others silently submitted, O'Connell assumed the leadership and published the first of his annual letters to the people of Ireland, headed with the motto, from Childe Harold,

"Hereditary bondsmen, know ye not,

Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow,"

At aggregate and other public meetings of the Catholics, he was the chief speaker and doer, for years. In 1815, he was forced into a duel with Mr. D'Esterre, one of the city of Dublin corporation, and the assailant fell. A subsequent misunderstanding with Mr. (the late Sir Robert) Peel, then Secretary for Ireland, led to a challenge, but the duel was prevented by the arrest of O'Connell, on his way to Calais, whither Peel had gone, as beyond the jurisdiction of British law. At that time, O'Connell determined never again to become a combatant. From 1815, until 1831, when he left the bar, his professional income averaged from six thousand to eight thousand pounds sterling a year, and on his uncle's death in 1825, he succeeded to landed property estimated at four thousand pounds sterling per annum. He was, beyond all doubt, the best general lawyer in Ireland. In 1821, on the visit of George IV. to Ireland, he played the courtier- -more genially than gracefully. In 1823, he founded the Catholic Association, in conjunction with Mr. Sheil-organized the catholic rent, by which the battle of the people was fought at the election hustings-formed one of a deputation to England, to adjust the catholic claims-committed the error of consenting to accept emancipation, clogged with "the wings" (i. e. state payment of the catholic clergy, and confiscation of the forty shillings sterling elective franchise) was baffled by the intolerants-ventured in 1828, on the bold expedient of contesting the Clare election, against a popular member of the Wellington cabinet-was elected, and thereby forced Wellington to concede Emancipation, in 1829-had a seat in parliament until his deathwas of great weight as a public man, by reason of his eloquence, tact, and influence, carrying forty Irish members with him in a division-aided the Melbourne ministry against Peel- —was offered and declined a seat on the judicial bench, as Master of the Rolls in Ireland-carried on the "Repeal” agitation,

HIS ORIGINAL DESTINATION.

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of regal descent to prop their pride. His present ex-Majesty of Ivera, Mr. Daniel O'Connell's uncle, has a territorial revenue of four or five thousand a year to support the dignity of his traditional throne; while the numerous princes of the blood, dispersed through the dominions of their fathers, in the characters of tenants in fee-simple, opulent leaseholders, or sturdy mortgagees in possession, form a compact and powerful squirearchy, before whose influence the proud "descendants of the stranger" are often made to bow their necks, in the angry collisions of county politics. The subject of the present notice is understood to be the heir-apparent to his uncle's possessions. These he must soon enjoy, for his royal kinsman has passed his ninetieth year. In the meantime he rules in his own person an extensive tract among the Kerry hills-of little value, it is said, in point of revenue, but dear to the possessor as the residence of the idol of his heart, and in truth almost the only tenant on three fourths of the estate

*

"The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty.”

Mr. O'Connell was originally intended for the Church, or, more strictly speaking, for the Chapel. He was sent, according to the necessities of the time, to be educated at St. Omer; for in those days the wise government of Ireland would not allow the land of Protestant ascendency to be contaminated by a public school of Catholic theology. Dr. Duigenan was compelled to permit the detested doctrines to be freely preached; but to make the professors of them good subjects, he shrewdly insisted that they should still, as of old, be forced to cross the seas, and lay in a preliminary stock of Irish loyalty at a foreign university. But the dread of indigenous theology was during all this time-was prosecuted for presumed overt-acts, in 1843, and condemned, with others, after a trial which lasted twenty-five days-was convicted-had the judgment reversed, by the House of Lords, after he and his friends had been three months in prison, and, soon after, saw his own moderate policy opposed by the bolder leaders of the "Young Ireland" party, whereby his own popularity declined-suffered from declining health-went to Italy, and died at Genoa, before he could reach Rome, "the City of the Soul" to so earnest a Catholic as he was.-M.

* Maurice O'Connell did not die until 1825, two years after this sketch appeared.-M.

not peculiar to that great man*. I observe that some English statesmen have discovered that all the disasters of Ireland have been caused by an invisible establishment of Jesuits, and mus continue until the omnipotence of Parliament shall expel the intruders- a felicitous insight into cause and effect, resembling that of the orthodox crew of a British packet, who, having discovered, during a gale of wind, that a Methodist preacher was among the passengers, at once made up their minds that the fury of the tempest would never abate until the vessel should be exorcised by heaving the nonconformist overboard.

I have not heard what occasioned Mr. O'Connell to change his destination. He probably had the good sense to feel that he had too much flesh and blood for a cloister; and the novelty of a legal career to a Catholic (for the Bar had just been opened to his persuasion) must have had its attractions. He accordingly left St. Omer, with its casuistry, and fasting, and vesper-hymns, to less earthly temperaments; and having swallowed the regular number of legs of mutton at the Middle Temple, was duly admitted to the Irish Bar in Easter term, 1798. The event has justified his choice. With all the impediments of his religion and his politics, his progress was rapid. He is now, and has been for many years, as high in his profession as it is possible for a Catholic to ascend.

Mr. O'Connell, if not the ablest, is certainly the most singular man at the Irish Bar. He is singular, not merely in the vigor of his faculties, but in their extreme variety and apparent inconsistency; and the same may be said of his character. The elements of both are so many and diverse, that it would seem as if half a dozen varieties of the human species, and

* Patrick Duigenan, LL.D, remarkable even amid Irish absolutism and ultraProtestantism, for his defence of arbitrary power and his rank intolerance. He was the bosom friend and abettor of Lord Clare, the chancellor of Ireland, and was his adviser and agent, in public matters, for many years. Dr. Duigenan was born in 1735, of humble parents and died in 1816. Called to the bar, he became King's advocate in, and subsequently Judge of, the Prerogative Court, in Dublin. He was also vicar-general of the Arch-diocese of Armagh, Member of Parliament, Doctor of Laws, and a Privy Councillor. He was a pamphleteer of more fecundity than force, and one of the most violent anti-Catholic partisans of his day.— M.