won his way to the distinctions of the senate, and wrested from pedigree the highest honors and offices of the constitution. It was a glorious spectacle to behold the hope of the peerage entering such an intellectual arena with the peasant's offspring —all difference merged in that of mind, and merit alone deciding the superiority. On such contests, and they were continual, the eye of every rank in the community was turned: the highest did not feel their birth debased by the victories of intellect; and the humblest expected, seldom in vain, to be ennobled in their turn. Many a personage sported the ermine on a back that had been coatless; and the garter might have glittered on a leg that, in its native bog, had been unencumbered by a stocking. Among those who were most distinguished when Mr. Curran came to the bar, and with whom afterward, as chief justice, he not unfrequently came in collision, was Mr. John Scott, afterward better known by the title of Lord Clonmel. This person sprang from a very humble rank of life, and raised himself to his subsequent elevation, partly by his talents, partly by his courage, and, though last, not least, by his very superior knowledge of the world. During the stormy administration of Lord Townsend, he, on the recommendation of Lord Lifford, the then chancellor, was elected to a seat in the House of Commons, and from that period advanced gradually through the subordinate offices to his station. on the bench. In the year 1770, and during the succeeding sessions, he had to encounter, almost alone, an opposition headed by Mr. Flood, and composed of as much effective hostility as ever faced a treasury bench. His powers were rather versatile than argumentative; but when he failed to convince, he generally succeeded in diverting; and if he did not, by the gravity of his reasoning, dignify the majority to which he sedulously attached himself, he at all events covered their retreat with an exhaustless quiver of alternate sarcasm and ridicule. Added to this, he had a perseverance not to be fatigued, and a personal intrepidity altogether invincible. When he could not overcome, he swaggered; and when he could not bully, he

fought. "All the light artillery," says Hardy, "and total war of jests, bon mots, pointed sarcasms, popular stories and popular allusions, were entirely his own." Successful as Lord Clonmel was in his political career, he by no means looked back on it with satisfaction. It is recorded of him that he said, on his death-bed, "As to myself, if I were to begin life again, I would rather be a chimney-sweeper than connected with the Irish government." The asperities of his public conduct were, however, invisible in private. He was stored with anecdote-seldom, certainly, very delicate in the selection; but his companionable qualities were well seconded by the fidelity of his friendships; and it is true of him that he never made an insincere profession or forgot a favor. "He had," says one who knew him well, "many social virtues, and, in convivial hours, much affected wit and pleasantry, with a cordial civility of manners. To his great honor be it recorded that he never forgot an obligation; and as his sagacity and knowledge of mankind must have been pre-eminent, so his gratitude to persons who had assisted him in the mediocrity of his fortune was unquestionable, and marked by real generosity and munificence." On the bench, indeed, and in some instances with Mr. Curran, he was occasionally very overbearing; but a bar such as I have described was not easily to be overborne ; and, for some asperity to a barrister of the name of Hackett, he was, after a professional meeting of the body-at which, though chief justice, he had but one supporter-obliged to confess and apologize for his misconduct in the public papers! The death of Lord Clonmel is said to have originated in a very curious incident. In the year 1792, Mr. John Magee, the spirited proprietor of the Dublin Evening Post, had a fiat issued against him in a case of libel, for a sum which the defendant thought excessive. The bench and the press were directly committed; and in such a case, had a judge tenfold the power he has, he would be comparatively harmless. The subject made a noise-was brought before Parliament—and was at last, at least politically, set at rest by the defeat of the chief

justice, and the restriction of the judges in future, in such cases, to an inferior and a definite sum. Discomfited and mortified, Lord Clonmel retreated from the contest; but he retreated like a harpooned leviathan-the barb was in his back, and Magee held the cordage. He made the life of his enemy a burden to him. He exposed his errors, denied his merits, magnified his mistakes, ridiculed his pretensions, and, continually edging without overstepping the boundary of libel, poured upon the chief justice, from the battery of the press, a perpetual broadside of sarcasm and invective. "The man," says Doctor Johnson, challenging Junius "the man who vilifies established authority is sure to find an audience." Lord Clonmel too fatally verified the apothegm. Wherever he went, he was lampooned by a ballad-singer or laughed at by the popu lace. Nor was Magee's arsenal composed exclusively of paper ammunition. He rented a field bordering his lordship's highly improved and decorated demesne: he advertised, month after month, that on such a day he would exhibit in this field a grand Olympic PIG-hunt, that the people, out of gratitude for their patronage of his newspaper, should be gratuitous spectators of this revived classical amusement; and that he was determined to make so amazing a provision of whisky and porter, that if any man went home thirsty it should be his own fault. The plan completely succeeded: hundreds and thousands assembled; every man did justice to his entertainer's hospitality, and his lordship's magnificent demesne, uprooted and desolate, next day exhibited nothing but the ruins of the Olympic pig-hunt. The Rebellion approached-the popular exasperation was at its height-and the end of it was, that Magee went mad with his victory, and Lord Clonmel died, literally broken-hearted with his defeat and his apprehensions.

The chief justice, toward the close of his life, was delicate in health, and frequent reports of his death were circulated. On one of these occasions, when he was really very ill, a friend said to Curran, "Well, they say Clonmel is going to die at last. Do you believe it?” "I believe," said Curran,

"he is scoundrel enough to live or die, just as it suits his own convenience."

The sketch of this remarkable man can not be more appropriately terminated than by the following scene, the accuracy of which is vouched by Mr. Rowan, at whose trial he had presided as chief justice. The colloquy is said to be an average specimen of Clonmel's manner, and conveys a strange character of the times in which such conduct could have been hazarded by a judge. This memorable trial (of which more anon) was stormy and exciting, and not the less hateful to Clonmel, because occasioning one of Curran's most magnificent orations, perhaps his very best. Seeing a report of the trial advertised, the chief justice instantly summoned the publisher to his private residence, on whose appearance Clonmel commenced:

“Your servant, Mr. Byrne. I perceive you have advertised Mr. Rowan's trial."

BYRNE. "The advertisement, my lord, is Mr. Rowan's; he has selected me as his publisher, which I think an honor, and I hope it will be profitable."

LORD C. "Take care, sir, what you do: I give you this caution; for if there are any reflections on the judges of the land, by the eternal G—!! I will lay you by the heels."

BYRNE. "I have many thanks to return to your lordship for the caution. I have many opportunities of going to Newgate, but I have never been ambitious of the honor, and I hope in this case to stand in the same way. Your lordship knows I have but one principle in trade, which is, to make money of it; and that, if there were two publications giving different features to the trial, I would publish both. There is a trial published by Mr. M'Kenzie.”

LORD C. I did not know that; but, say what you may on the subject, if you print or publish what may inflame the mob, it behooves the judges of the land to notice it; and I tell you, by the Eternal, if you publish and misstate my expres'sions, I will lay you by the heels. One of Mr. Rowan's ad

vocates set out with an inflammatory speech, misstating what I said, and stating what I did not say. I immediately denied it, and appealed to the court and the gentlemen in it, and they all contradicted him as well as myself. Those speeches were made for the mob, to mislead and inflame them, which I feel it my duty to curb. If the publication is intended to abuse me, I don't value it; I have been so long in the habit of receiving abuse that it will avail little. But I caution you how you publish it; for if I find any thing reflecting on or misstating me, I will take care of you!"

BYRNE. "I should hope Mr. Rowan has too much honor to have any thing misstated or inserted in his trial that would involve his publisher."

LORD C. "What! is Mr. Rowan preparing his own trial?" BYRNE. "He is, my lord."

LORD C. "Oho, oho! that is a different thing. That gentleman would not have been better used by me, standing in the situation that he did, had he been one of the princes of the blood."

BYRNE. "My lord, Mr. Rowan being his own printer, I stand only as his publisher; you know he will publish his own trial."

LORD C. "Even as his publisher, I will take care of you, and I have no objection to this being known."

BYRNE. "I return your lordship MANY THANKS!!'

Another, but a very different character, at that time in high eminence at the Irish bar, was the justly celebrated Walter Hussey Burgh, a man reverenced by his profession, idolized by his friends, loved by the people, honored by the crown, and highly respected even by those who differed from him. The history of no country, perhaps, hands down a character on its records upon which there exists less difference of opinion than on that of Hussey Burgh: as a man, benevolent, friendly, sincere, and honest; as a barrister, learned, eloquent, ardent, and disinterested; as a senator, in power respected by the opposition, and out of it by the ministry; he