Prof Thigh hilus Parsons of Cambrispe.

THE

Hlass 1/15157

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

ORIGINAL PAPERS.

SKETCHES OF THE IRISH BAR.-NO. VI.

Mr. O'Connell.

Ir any one of you, my English readers, being a stranger in Dublin, should chance, as you return upon a winter's morning from one of the "small and early" parties of that raking metropolis, that is to say, between the hours of five and six o'clock, to pass along the south side of Merrion Square, you will not fail to observe that among those splendid mansions, there is one evidently tenanted by a person whose habits differ materially from those of his fashionable neighbours. The halfopened parlour-shutter, and the light within, announces that some one dwells there whose time is too precious to permit him to regulate his rising with the sun's. Should your curiosity tempt you to ascend the steps, and, under cover of the dark, to reconnoitre the interior, you will see a tall able-bodied man standing at a desk, and immersed in solitary occupation. Upon the wall in front of him there hangs a crucifix. From this, and from the calm attitude of the person within, and from a certain monastic rotundity about his neck and shoulders, your first impression will be, that he must be some pious dignitary of the Church of Rome absorbed in his matin devotions. But this conjecture will be rejected almost as soon as formed. No sooner can the eye take in the other furniture of the apartment, the book-cases clogged with tomes in plain calf-skin binding, the blue-covered octavos that lie about on the tables and the floor, the reams of manuscript in oblong folds and begirt with crimson tape, than it becomes evident that the party meditating amidst such objects must be thinking far more of the law than the prophets. He is, unequivocally, a barrister, but apparently of that homely, chamber-keeping, plodding cast, who labour 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 humour, 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 so-his legal competency-his business-like habits-his sanguine 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 humour-and, 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 labours of the day. There he remains, until, by dint of strength or dexterity, he has carried every point; and from 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 morally straight line from the ancient kings of Ivera.* The discrowned family, however, have something better than the saddening boast 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

* One of the kingdoms of the county of Kerry.

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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 90th year. In the mean time 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 ascendancy 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 not peculiar to that great man. I observe that some of our statesmen of the present year have discovered that all the disasters of Ireland have been caused by an invisible establishment of Jesuits, and must 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 non-conformit 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 vigour 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 these not always on the best terms with each