of so vast a nature as to supply him on the most unexpected emergencies. When he was in the right, his reasoning was irresistible; he leavened the whole argument with a weighty, manly logic, which penetrated the mass of details, and pressed them forward in a compact body to reach the conclusions he required. When he was in the wrong, his powers of sophistry were so great as to leave the court betimes in a dismal state of perplexity, and to astonish the bar by his logical subtlety, and the extraordinary readiness with which he could take advantage of the least weakness in an adversary's argument. No person could discover what part was studied and what thrown off in the heat of discussion, for the most involved processes of thought were exhibited by him on principles and cases which were now broached for the first time, and could not be anticipated. Few are gifted with this first and most valuable quality of advocacy. In most advocates the transition is so marked that the least critical taste can discover the line of demarcation which separates prepared reasoning from the suggestions of the moment. In him the change was wholly imperceptible. Mr. Sheil very felicitously describes the triumphs of his understanding as an equity lawyer. I look on Mr. Plunkett's going through a long and important argument in the Court of Chancery to be a most extraordinary exhibition of human intellect. For hours he will go on with increased rapidity, arguing, defining, illustrating, separating intricate facts, laying down subtle distinctions, prostrating an objection here, pouncing upon a fallacy there, then retracing his steps, and restating, in some original point of view, his general proposition, then flying off again to the outskirts of the question, and dealing his desultory blows with merciless iteration, wherever an inch of ground remains to be cleared. And during the whole of this, not only does his vigour not flag for a single moment, but his mind does not even pause for a single second for a topic, an idea, or an impression. This velocity of creation, arrangement, and delivery, is quite astonishing; and what adds to your wonder is, that it seems to be achieved without an effort. Mass after mass of argument is thrown off, conveyed in phraseology, vigorous, appropriate, and luminous, while the speaker, as if the minister and organ of some hidden power that saves him the cost of laborious exertion, appears solely anxious to impress on others his own reliance on the force of what seems to come unsought. This singular command over his great powers, coupled with his imposing exterior and masculine intonations, gives extraordinary weight to all he says. From his unsuspected earnestness of tone and manner, you would often imagine that his zeal for his client was only secondary to a deeper anxiety that the court should not violate the uniformity of its decisions by establishing a precedent fraught with anomaly and danger, while the authoritative ease and perspicuity with which he states and illustrates his opinions, give him the air, as it were, of some high legal functionary appearing on behalf of the public, not so much to debate the question before the court, as to testify the law that should decide it.' There was one fault in the reasoning of Mr. Plunkett, arising from the fulness of that quality which he had in common with the great lawyer of Rome,- Non ut causam, sed ut testimonium dicere putares,'-which was, that he seemed to be less the advocate than the witness. His earnestness sometimes led him to substitute impressions for conclusions, to state as indisputable and irrefragable what all but himself perceived to be based on no solid foundation. This arose from the versatility of his mind, and the variety of his resources; for, before one topic was fully exhausted, he struck into a new argument, which the most trifling remark of an opponent was sufficient to supply. Had he confined himself to the main points, and sifted them through all their bearings, he could not have fallen into this error; but his intellectual abundance was so vast, that he cared not to seize on the most minute distinction, and lavish on it a portion of that power which, if confined to the material questions, would have been overwhelming. Burke had a similar fault, but his was the exuberance of multifarious learning and a discursive fancy-Plunkett's of superfluous logic and too rapid argument. Like him, too, he sometimes distracted by the velocity of his movements, and the variety of his missiles; he created a panic as if he had made a practicable breach, but after the confusion had subsided, and the smoke had cleared away, it was discovered that the fortress remained still untouched. As an orator, he ranked in the very highest class. The eloquence which has long passed with our neighbours as peculiarly our own, has the same relation to legitimate Irish oratory as a transparency bears to a painting. There are no delicate touches, no hues imperceptibly fading into each other-the whole is lit up with one universal glare of swollen diction and exaggerated sentimentoutlines and tints are forgotten in the common blaze which illuminates all. The flowers and fruits, it is said, of the intellect abound; but it is the profusion, not of a well-ordered garden, but an uncultivated jungle-unprofitable from its very plenty, rank from its very fragrance. Much of this we do not deny, but it applies with as much force to English as to Irish speakers. There is not in Ireland, and never has been, any school of which these faults are characteristic; on the contrary, our real eloquence was marked with as much sobriety, order, and practical power, as that of any other people. In a British parliament, to which everything savouring of Irish oratory was distasteful, Mr. Plunkett nobly supported the national character by his superiority over the most eloquent men of the day. The House of Commons was then a very trying assembly to an Irishman. Nothing good could come out of Galilee. Depreciat ing judgments were passed on our most dis-, integrity of the Establishment. The Estabtinguished orators;-Flood was a miserable lished Religion is the child of freedom. The failure-Grattan's manner was ridiculed as Reformation grew out of the free spirit of that of a harlequin-Curran was extrava- bold investigation; in its turn it repaid the gantly luxuriant. It remained for Mr. Plun- obligation with more than filial gratitude, kett to master all these obstinate prejudices, and contributed with all its force to raise the and silence all objections by the command- fabric of our liberties. The Church need ing grandeur of his powers. What astonished not be apprehensive. It is a plant of the the House of Commons beyond all measure, growth of three hundred years. It has was how his argumentative power could be struck its roots into the centre of the State, sustained. Its operation, observed a con- and nothing but a political earthquake can temporary, never for a moment ceases, but overturn it. While the State is safe, it must sweeps on without intermission from the be so; but let it not be forgotten, that if the commencement to the close. Profound rea- State is endangered, it cannot be secure. soning is the breath of his mental existence, The Church is protected by the purity of its or rather the vital stream, into which all his doctrines and its discipline; the learning other qualities as a speaker resolve them- and piety of its ministers; the exemplary selves. And in all this there is no appear- discharge of every Christian duty; the digance of art or effort; the most perplexed and nity of its hierarchy; the extent and lustre involved processes of reasoning are thrown of its possessions; and the reverence of the off with the same degree of ease that others public for its ancient and unquestioned do the language of colloquial conversation. rights. It anything could endanger its safeHe was eminent for his great clearness ty, it would be the conduct of intemperate and compactness, for the dignified simplici- and officious men, who would erect the ty of his style and manner, and the general Church into a political arbiter, to prescribe elevation of his views, and that, too, at a rules of imperial policy to the throne and the time remarkable for first-rate minds. His legislature." language was full of nerve and energy; it If this be compared with Burke's famous had the plus lacertorum, minus carnis' panegyric, we think every lover of sound the thew and sinew of eloquence, with few taste will consider it less florid and ambiof its rhetorical encumbrances. It had free- tious, and far more pure and correct, both dom, force, and facility; sometimes it was in conception and language. But there were familiar, but that rather increased than di- occasions when his severity of style relaxminished the effect. He was never op-ed, and he was seduced by a metaphor. pressed with the weight of his matter, mas- Once commenting on the rule of law which sive as that was. Marching forth to the raises a presumption that, after a long and field in that ponderous armour, he still mov- undisturbed possession, the title was origied with the agility of one who bears but a nally a good one where the conveyance had scrip and sling-now balancing the weighty been lost under which the estate passed, and spear of argumentation, and now scattering so could not be produced, he said, 'Time around him the galling arrows of irony and is the great destroyer of evidence, but he sarcasm. His dexterity was never impeded is also the great protector of titles. He by his strength, nor was his strength imped- comes with a scythe in one hand to mow ed by the velocity of his movements, which down the muniments of our possession, while were directed in succession to every view he holds an hour-glass in the other, from of the subject. All secondary ornaments he which he incessantly metes out the portions scrupulously rejected, or at least never of duration that are to render the muniments sought for them. Those foreign lights no longer necessary.' Lord Brougham, in which are brought forward for the purpose his speech on legal reform, noticed the apof shining and display, rather than natural- posite beauty of this metaphorical illustraly springing from the matter in discussion, tion. This deflection from the chaste and were abandoned for the more solid parts of severe is not often found in Mr. Plunkett. advocacy, which, though less captivating He preferred rather to dive than to soar-to and popular, are more sure to facilitate conviction. When he did indulge in figures of speech, which was very rare, they never interfered with the substantial object, but were rather fused into and incorporated with it, than adventitious beauties that fascinated the ear while they obscured the sense, and interrupted his march to the destined. Few ever possessed a sounder understandend. Let us take the following description ing, or were so seldom obstructed in the use of the Church :-of it by headlong enthusiasm on the one search for profound arguments than brilliant images-for the sterling gold than the superficial glitter. He did not devote himself to dazzle, to study fine words as a substitute for things, to string together rhetorical flowers to delight for a moment and be forgotten. 'Religion is degraded when it is bran-side, or a stubborn love of authority on the dished as a political weapon, and there is no other. He studied perspicuity and simplicimedium in the use of it. Either it is justi- ty, and always aimed at making an impresfied by holy zeal and fervent piety, or the sion more by the surpassing force and clear. appeal to it becomes liable to the most sus-ness than the long and learned elaboratepicious imputation. I consider the safety of ness of his reasoning. Without any ostenthe State as essentially interwoven with the tation of a more than ordinary reflection, the profoundest contempt for all kinds of de-ice, so that it is unnecessary to extend our clamatory beauty, with little of the tender ohservations. He and Lord Plunkett are the and pathetic, it is extraordinary that he two most accomplished men that ever sat should have exhibited one of the finest mod- on the Irish bench. They started in life els of modern oratory. But this surprise together; their hostility to the Union made will vanish when we contemplate his other both equally conspicuous; throughout the merits. We have heard a good judge say vicissitudes of life they have maintained a that he rarely persuaded, because he had no strict and inviolable attachment, with which passion. In the usual acceptation of the nothing has ever been supposed to interword, which is only another name for pre- fere; and one never speaks of the other but cipitancy, he was not passionate, for he was with reverence for his genius and powers. too cool and practical to be led away by It remains to say a few words of Lord what passes for the unrestrained enthusiasm Plunkett as a public man. Impartiality, the of genius. He had passions, but, like well- greatest of all virtues in a public writer, we trained troops, they were impetuons by rule, have endeavoured to bring to the considerand in their boldest flights never forgot the ation of his lordship's character. If all podiscipline to which they had been accustom-litical enemies were generous, or even just, ed. When he began to speak, a common and all political friends reasonable, our task observer would have thought him awkward, might be less difficult, and the cotemporary a trait which was also peculiar to Grattan; who could rise above transient animosities, but after a short time he was changed into and anticipate the tone of history, might gain another being. Like a chariot-wheel that some credit from both. Ours, we fear, must takes fire by the rapidity of its motion, he be a less magnanimous reception. The irriwas borne along, forgetful of himself and of table friends of his own party will at once everything around him, and thinking only of ascribe such candour to the imperfect adthe subject. But, amidst all this whirl and missions of a partial witness. But, with all confusion, his judgment never forsook him; this discouragement, we shall not be deterred the noble dignity of a great mind was still from fearlessly stating our opinions. Lord there. He was impassioned, but never pre-Plunkett exhibited a rare skill in playing that cipitate or imprudent. There was about varied game of skill and hazard, the life of him a native grandeur which excited the ad- a public man. He had not, we fear, suffimiration even of his enemies; and, as a cient elevation of sentiment to merit the mind akin to his own once observed, 'Every man must abandon the hope of resembling him in the flow of his masterly elocution, in the quickness and multiplicity of his conceptions, in the unartificial and diversified structure of his diction, in the alertness of his escapes from objections which almost seemed insuperable, in the fresh interest he infused into topics which seemed to be ex-ing them. We now speak of his general hausted, and in the unexpected turn he gave conduct, for we remember with lively gratito parliamentary conflicts which had already tude his zeal and courage on the Catholic exercised the prowess of veteran combat- question. He never put himself prominently ants.' At the bar, but particularly on jury forward before the public eye, except at contrials, he and the Chief Justice were almost junctures when he was sure to gain, and always opposed, and so was their eloquence. could not possibly lose. By judiciously The Chief's was the very reverse of the availing himself of those rare moments, he Chancellor's. The style of the former had established for himself a high character for in it all that "delight which is analogous to patriotism. When the crisis was past, he gracefulness in motion, to melody in a se- never risked the reputation he had won. The ries of sounds, or to beauty in the most beau- falling off of a prudent man from such untiful of all objects-the human form. He profitable virtues as patriotism is too comwas the most perfect specimen of that full-mon an occurrence to deserve much notice, ness in oratory from which nothing could be or justify much reprobation; but, on the othtaken without destroying its symmetry, and er hand, the adherence of men through the of which those who assist their mental ope- various chances of life to the convictions of rations by material helps will have the best their earlier years deserves some praise, idea by taking in their hand a sample of the when a lax political morality seemed to be finest grain. Unlike his rival, he was rich the golden rule of human conduct. With in the figures of the old rhetoricians; but his the great mass of mankind, the test of intetropes and metaphors were gentle, and, like grity in a public man is consistency. The little graceful knolls in a fine champaign, test may be defective, but it is perhaps the served to relieve the driest details. Han- best that any except a very acute or very dling almost every branch of forensic elo- near observer is capable of applying, and, quence, he brought into each such a felicity on the whole, approximates to correctness. of performance, that, as Johnson said of If these principles be applied to Lord PlunGoldsmith, he always seemed to do best that kett, the result must be in his favour. He which he was doing. We have elsewhere undoubtedly was consistent, and at a time, remarked on the qualities of the Chief Just-too, when inconsistency had not only ceased name of a very virtuous man, such as Romilly was. He did not betray or oppress his country; on the contrary, he rendered her many and important services; but he risked little for her. Nothing, we believe, could ever induce him to support arbitrary or despotic measures; but he was most careful never to give offence by strenuously oppos. to be a disgrace, but assumed the shape of a necessity, and men were no more taunted with it than being black at Timbuctoo. He steadily adhered to the Whig party when their fortunes were low, and there was no hope of change; and though he might have been more energetic, and taken a more active part in the great questions which they agitated from time to time to advance public liberty, yet he was not the less a firm and devoted Whig. Once did he deviate from his party, and that was on the Manchester riots, when he adopted the views and opinions of Lord Grenville, who ever seemed to him the perfection of political wisdom. We now take our leave of Lord Plunkett. His name will fill an ample page in Irish history, and his fame as an orator will stand high in the records of British eloquence. Ireland has just reason to be proud of him. THE EXILE'S DEPARTURE. SHE shook her idle canvass free, And a fresh breeze sang behind. Her captain scann'd the windward sky, Yet one stood near, whose eye would brook A pale, health-seeking exile, he No wonder if the mist of grief If hope's warm fire, a season brief, Thou leavest tearful faces, friend! God yield ye helpful winds, thou ship! May health-inspiring spirits bring MEMOIRS OF AN ITALIAN EXILE.* BY ELI BLACKGOWN, D.D. CHAPTER X. The Guard-room. 'Diverse lingue, orribili favelle, Parole di dolore, accenti d'ira Voci alte e fioche e suon di man con elle.' FOND as I have always been of a night ramble, I found the air of the streets exhilarating and cooling. It was past twelve o'clock, and the city of Parma lay as noiseless and tranquil as if the storms of revolútionary passions had never raged in its bosom. No living being was stirring about, and the dead stillness of the hour was only interrupted by the heavy tolling of the midnight bell from the Minster belfry, to which the chorus of the minor steeples responded in a monotonous and lingering chime around. Yet, though the very houses seemed asleep,' something there was to remind me of the warlike attitude that the enfranchised town bad assumed. The sentinels, numerous even under the ancient régime, when, as under every other despotic government, the hated apparatus of armed force meets you wherever you turn, were now redoubled at every post. The young militiamen, who had been entrusted with the care of public tran quillity, seemed not a little proud of their functions, and strove to make up for their want of a gilt-buttoned jacket by the stately military step with which they strutted to and tossed their muskets on their shoulders as fro, by the fierce clash with which they the homeward-bound peaceable citizen drew near, and by the lusty voice with which they thundered forth their blustering Chi va là?' 'Italia e libertà!' I shouted back with equal firmness, for such, I had been made to understand, was the war-cry, without which it would hardly have been safe to venture out of doors. And after having been thus challenged perhaps fifty times, and nearly as many been ordered in a blunt and growling accent, by those amateur factionnaires, to cross over the way, and not come near the sentinel; after having met, and been stopped, and reconnoitred by half-a-dozen patrols-petty inconveniences of newly-established liberty-I arrived without any other serious accident at the Town Hall. Four glaring flambeaux lighted the entrance of that old Farnesian building, by the aid of which I was recognized by the sentinels, and enabled to gain a ready admittance. My first appearance on the threshold of the guard room did not fail, as I expected, to create a certain sensation. A hundred per haps of my juvenile acquaintance, and many more utter strangers, crowded around me; and what with the heat of the room, and the warmth of their welcome, and the eagerness of their embraces, I was well-nigh stifled on the spot. But the rage of that first greeting * Continued from p. 169. being over in good time, I was helped to a lofty seat at the top of a long oaken table at which they were reclining, and allowed to take a wide, rapid survey of the party. It was as strange and motley a group of odd countenances as it ever fell to my lot to behold. Through the rolling clouds of a steaming atmosphere I descried, one by one, the faces of some of my college friends and playfellows. Their features were still the same; yet there was something so bold, so glaring, so ludicrously stern and savage in their looks, that I was at a loss to conceive how the interval of two short months could have operated so strange a metamorphosis. The dreaming, romantic poet, the sedate, laborious bookworm, the perfumed dandy, the reckless voluptuary-in fact, all those peculiar traits that develope themselves in that hotbed of the human character, the school-had now merged into one universal mould-they were all, or would be, soldiers. The coats buttoned up to the chin, the total disappearance of shirt-collars, the tricolour scarfs, the broad-swords, pistols, and poniards with which, even among the joys of that friendly meeting, their childish fondness did not permit them to dispense, the cigar and the punch-bowl, under the influence of which some of the uninitiated were to be seen fainting and sickening, and above all, the large crops of moustaches, whiskers, and beards-beards of every colour, shape, and description-a reaction against the mean jealousy of the late governments, who had declared war against those useless, perhaps, but still harmless and natural appendages of a manly countenance, alarmed by the romantic republican appellations by which some of those fashions were ushered into the world, as emblems of national associations everything, in short, about their look, garb, gesture, and mien, contributed to give my old schoolfellows a swaggering air, mighty fine, no doubt, and admirably fitting the warlike times we had so prosperously entered into, but which struck me, at the first glance, as supremely absurd. But mingled with the well-known faces of my comrades there were others, either totally new, or ominously familiar to me; men whose addresses I would, only a few weeks before, have resented as a mortal affront, whose contact I would have shunned as contagion, and whom I now saw seated or standing side by side with the best of my friends, throwing their arms round each other's neck, and pledging each other's health in large bumpers, with a sort of bacchanalian intimacy. act of flagrant injustice, by which they were held out as martyrs and victims of the ancient government, and acquired sacred titles to their countrymen's sympathy and gratitude. In any, even in the best regulated communities, there is always a set of men which public economists have designated under the rather vague appellation of surplus population. In every country that has been settled more than one hundred years, land is failing the inhabitants. Domestic and foreign quarrels, plagues, and famines, though more busy than ever, appear inefficient and slow. The stubborn human race, that' durum humanum genus,' eludes all agents of destruction. The meanest wretch clings to the roof of his fathers, claims his right to the soil, and hangs on society. He looks upon himself as the victim of the injustice of fortune. He ascribes his failures to a general conspiracy of the whole community against him. Önce fallen, he never hopes, never strives to recover. He curses the hard times in which he was born; he sinks into dejection and dissipation, waiting for sudden vicissitudes to come to his rescue; he expects the earth to be stricken out of its path for his sake. Placing thus his expectations in public changes and revolutions, no wonder if he does his best to hasten them. The number of individuals of this description is considerable in Europe; more so in all countries which, deprived of colonial commerce, obtain no relief from a system of periodical emigration. They are ruined noblemen, half-pay officers, bankrupt merchants, and other men of all descriptions, whose existence is a problem-a meddling, fretting, murmuring race, great haranguers, great alarmists, ominous prophets, seizing upon any pretext, real or apparent, of discontent, stirring, poking, and blowing, until they have kindled a few sparks into a general conflagration. The sight of these individuals now converted into a class-into an active, numerous, powerful class, amazed me. I saw at one glance, that the day had come when brute force and reckless daring were to assume at least a temporary ascendency over all moral and intellectual advantage; that a revolution, however unimportant, has always the effect of bringing society back to its primitive level, of substituting natural for artificial distinctions, of throwing every individual into the scale, without any chance of outweighing his fellow-beings but by personal qualifications. I soon consoled myself by the thought that such an anomalous state of things could not endure; that real valour can never be found unaccompanied by moral worth: that Huzza for republican equality!' thought I. the first hour of danger would scare those I had yet to learn that, indifferent as those vile braggarts from their nobler associates. persons' reputation might have been before In the meanwhile I mentally thanked my the thirteenth of February, they had redeemed good father for the care he had taken of my their character either by rare exploits during physical education, for the field-sports and the tumults of that memorable day, or by the manly exercises in which my youth was extraordinary zeal which they had since spent, and in consequence of which I could evinced in the cause of the revolution, | fairly consider myself a match for any man or otherwise owed their popularity to some at any trial of strength or dexterity. 1 |