a glowing
heart, brilliant faculties, and an aspiring spirit, must struggle, in a
country filled with the pride of independence, and yet for ages in the
condition of a province. Some part of his pathos in this sketch was
probably borrowed from his own early difficulties; and I heard, poured
out with the touching vehemence of painful reality, probably the very
meditations which had preyed upon the heart of the student in his
chamber, or darkened his melancholy walks in the cloisters of the
Temple. But he suddenly started on a new train of thought; and
reprobated with the loftiest rebuke, that state of the law which, while
it required two witnesses for the proof of treason in England, was
content with one in Ireland. This he branded with every name of
indignant vituperation, frequently adopted, according to his habit, from
the most familiar conceptions; yet, by their familiarity, striking the
mind with astonishing force. He called it "playing at pushpin with the
lives of men"--"the reading-made-easy of judicial murder"--"the 'rule of
three' of forensic assassination;--given, a villain, multiplied by a
false oath, the product, an execution!" He now revelled in the boldest
extravagances of imagery and language, expressions which, written, might
resemble the burlesque of a public jester, or the wildness of a
disturbed mind, but which were followed by the audience, whom he had
heated up to the point of passion, with all but acclamation. Still he
revelled on. His contrasts and comparisons continued to roll out upon
each other. Some noble, some grotesque, but all effective. After one
dazzling excursion into the native history, in which he contrasted the
aboriginal hospitality and rude magnificence of the old Irish chieftain,
the Tir-Owen or O'Nial, with the chilling halls of the modern absentee;
he suddenly changed his tone, and wandered away into a round of
fantastic, and almost frolicsome pleasantries, which shook even the
gravity of the bench. Then, suddenly checking himself, and drawing his
hand across his brow to wipe away a tear--for even the hard-headed
lawyer was not always on his guard against the feeling of the moment--he
upbraided himself, and the bystanders, for the weakness of being
attracted by any lighter conception, while the calamities of Ireland
were demanding all their sympathies. And even this he did in his
characteristic manner. "Alas!" said he, in a voice which seemed sinking
with a sense of misfortune, "w