Mr. Carew O'Dyer, sometime M. P. Jing-place at the Cemetery of Glasnevin for Drogheda. Phillips, it seemed, in Ireland. was in the habit of going to the Priory Why Charles Phillips ever left the whenever he pleased, and staying as Irish bar, where he had achieved some long as suited his convenience. During sort of reputation as an advocate, I one of these visitations the distinguished could never clearly understand. He host, who prided himself on having was having was under the impression, which I one of the finest cellars of wine in the believe to have been a complete delucountry, became weary, I suppose, of sion, that O'Connell was jealous of his guest, and the following dialogue him, and used his influence to prevent took place between them: his obtaining professional employment.

Curran, Master of the Rolls, loqui-But at one time they were great friends. tur. Charles Phillips, I am getting Phillips accompanied him on the memotired of your society. I begin to per-rable occasion when he shot poor ceive you repeat the same stories. Mr. Desterre. He described the scene

wish you
would go away out of my graphically.
house into your own, that is to say, if
you have got one.

The field, he said, was white with snow; the surrounding hills crowded by spectators, who, had Desterre been successful, had determined he should never leave the ground alive. O'Connell took him aside and whispered,

Phillips, briefless barrister, loquitur. I will go out of your house, Mr. Curran. I am only sorry I ever came into it. Your bad wine has destroyed the coats of my stomach, and your Charles, they don't know it, but I damp sheets have given me the rheu-am a dead shot; and if this man don't matism. kill me, I shall kill him. I can't miss If our readers will remember the him as he stands out against the white respective positions of the two men-ground." the one a great equity judge and the But for many years foremost orator of his day, the other a sucking barrister, without a brief or a guinea in his pocket-they will be able to appreciate the exquisite humor of this little passage of arms.

many years later on, O'Connell and he were not upon speaking terms; and he was fond of describing how the great agitator, meeting him one evening in the lobby of the House of Commons, came up to him with

But the pair were soon friends both his hands open, and said in his again, and nothing occurred to disturb silkiest manner, "Charles, I forgive their intimacy until the death of Cur- you from the very bottom of my heart. ran. The last note he ever penned I am tired of quarrelling with you; was to Phillips. It was an invitation let us be friends." Did you ever to dinner, and remarkable for not hear of such confounded impudence?" having in it a single superfluous word. said Phillips, telling the story. "It It was, I believe, at the suggestion of was I who had to forgive; he tried to his friend, that the remains of the take the very bread out of my mouth." Master of the Rolls were removed Sligo had the honor of being my from Paddington to their present rest-friend's birthplace, and he once tried

to represent the county. Of his early Another early friend of the Comcareer I know little more than was missioner's was the Rev. George communicated to me by himself; but Croly, author of "Salathiel" and many he had a wonderful memory, and spoke other works. They lived together in without much reserve of himself as one of the streets leading from the well as of his associates. He shared Strand to the river. Croly had some the same lodgings in Dublin, he told reputation as a preacher, and was then me, with Richard Sheil, who was the incumbent of a small but fashionafterwards Master of the Mint and ably attended chapel in Spring Garambassador at Florence, and for this dens. Finding his friend one Saturearly friend he seemed to have a sin- day morning unoccupied in their comcere affection. He used to describe mon sitting-room, he asked him to most comically his first love. write a sermon for the following day,

Sheil, it appeared, was unable for leaving the subject-matter to his own some time to make up his mind discretion. Phillips selected the whether he was sufficiently attached seventh commandment for his text, to a certain lady to justify him in ask- and composed a discourse which Croly, ing her to become his wife, and in this trusting to the genius of the author, state of indecision he would wander was rash enough to preach without a about muttering to himself, "Am I in previous perusal. The effect was relove with Miss B-, or am I not? markable. Many of the congregation I really don't know. For instance now, would I be sorry if Miss Bwere to die? Well, I do really think I would. Then I will ask her." He did ask her, and he was accepted.

went into hysterics on the spot, and a round-robin, with very influential signatures, was afterwards forwarded to the Bishop of London, calling upon him to revoke the Rev. Dr. Croly's license.

Another noteworthy instance of the effect of Phillips's oratory occurred when he was in practice at the Irish bar-his speech for the plaintiff in the case of Guthrie v. Sterne, when he obtained a verdict for £7,000, the largest amount ever awarded by a Dublin jury in a case of seduction. The result was disastrous to the unfortunate defendant, who, being unable to pay, and precluded by law from availing himself of the provisions of the insolvent act, spent his entire life in prison, where he was supported by the bounty of his old friend Mr. Ball,

Sheil, when he was in Parliament, went often to Brighton, where he occupied apartments in the house of one Mr. Pigg, a grocer, in the corner of Regency Square, who became so much alarmed by his lodger's habit of solitary declamation that, believing him to be mad, he had him watched by the police, and at last gave him notice to quit. I had an opportunity of ascertaining the accuracy of this statement from the worthy tradesman himself, whom I found in a blue apron, selling tea behind his counter, and who remembered perfectly well, he said, the "little Hirish lunatic," as he was pleased to call our ambassador at afterwards one of the Justices of the Florence.

Court of Common Pleas. This speech,

"Well, I should look upon it as a feather in my cap to be put in the same boat with Lord Byron, etc."

Phillips, testily, "Hang the feather in my cap; we shall see."

As I have not been able to find this critique in any of the collections published by the contributors, I am inclined therefore to believe that Phillips's inference is correct.

with some others which Phillips had delivered, were published in separate pamphlets by Mr. William Hone, and had an enormous circulation. Their sale amounted to 60,000 annually. I have looked through them; and while I admit they are distinguished by great elegance of diction, and contain some passages of real eloquence, they are disfigured by turgid declamation, and I doubt if they would go down But the eloquence which had stirred with a jury of the present day. But the gall of Scotch reviewers, and prowhen I recall Phillips's fine presence, duced so marvellous an effect upon Irish the impressiveness of his manner, and juries, did not on the other side of St. the sonorous tones of his voice, I am George's Channel tend to the orator's not at a loss to account for their effect. professional advancement. When he Such as these speeches are, however, transferred himself and his gifts to the they attracted the hostile notice of the English bar, Phillips selected the northEdinburgh Review, which, then in its ern circuit, and a more inauspicious infancy, was running amuck at all the choice he could not have made. There rising reputations of the day. A he was doomed to encounter a worse slashing article appeared on the sub-enemy than O'Connell. He was silenced ject of Irish oratory, in which they forever by the lion-roar of Brougham. are very severely handled. Phillips The story is that, having delivered a used to ascribe the authorship of this critique to Brougham, and was much given to speculate how, when a collection of his lordship's contributions should be published, the ex-chancellor him a terrible mauling, and covered would ever be able to look him in the face.

glowing and most pathetic speech in one of those cases where he was accustomed to shine, Brougham, who had the reply, fell upon the orator, gave

the speech with such ridicule that he never held another brief, and soon afterwards abandoned the circuit in despair. It was about this time that his prospects were of the gloomiest character. He continued to struggle on, but he was unable to establish himself in regular

I ventured to suggest that this was a contingency which might never occur, or, that if it did, Brougham might leave that particular article out of the collection. "But suppose now that Jeffrey pub-professional practice. lishes his contributions," said Phillips angrily, striking his blackthorn on the ground, "and Horner and Mackintosh and the rest, then the inference is inevitable that it was Brougham." "Why not Horner or Jeffrey?" "They had not the capacity."

He was pro

foundly ignorant of the requisite technical knowledge; he could never, as he often said, understand a legal proposition in his life. So he sank at last into a practitioner at the Old Bailey, where he secured an income adequate to his So precarious at one time had

wants.

become his position, that he thought of | adverted. Lord Brougham, then in emigrating. He had married, and the zenith of his fame, was probably lived in humble lodgings in Chancery the greatest man he had ever known, Lane. and he adored him accordingly. It is probable also that Brougham found him useful, for Phillips had many liaisons in the press, and the Chancellor was often

"I was sitting," he once told me, "with my wife, occupied by mournful reflections. I had changed my last sovereign to buy, to all appearance, in scrapes which required the ready what was likely to be my last dinner, when a knock came to the door, and lo! there stood an attorney's clerk with a brief and a two-guinea fee. Such was my humble beginning, and at the time I was thankful for it."

aid of a friendly pen. The faithful adherent was rewarded by the light of the great man's countenance. At Brougham's "splendid table ”—this is the epithet by which he describes it— Phillips made many acquaintances who Lord Campbell, in his "Lives of the were useful to him: and he received Chancellors," says there are four ways in due time a substantial reward in the of getting into business at the bar: by shape of a Commissionership in Bankhugging attorneys, by writing a law-ruptcy at Liverpool, a place worth book, by a miracle, and by the rope- £1,500 a year, which he afterwards exwalk. changed for one of lesser value in the It was the latter, which, being inter- Insolvent Debtors' Court in London. preted, means practice at the Old Bai-This piece of preferment came just in ley, Phillips selected; he had not suffi- time. He was getting old and past his cient knowledge to write upon any work, and he spent the rest of his life, professional subject, he was too poor to not occupied by the business of his hug attorneys; but he hugged the great court, in fervent adoration of his beneLord High Chancellor, which answered factor. Every day in the season, when his purpose better; he did more, he the Lords were sitting, it was his inadored him, and was at no pains to con- variable habit to pay this idol of his a ceal his adoration. Brougham accepted visit; if he did not find him at home in the incense and stood by the idolater. Grafton street, then he would wend Now it was through Lord Brougham, his way down to the House and interas he believed, that his literary reputa- view Brougham at the bar. I have tion had received a serious injury; it frequently been present on these ocwas the same hand which laid in the casions. When my lord saw Phillips's dust his hopes of professional advance- fine bald head, he would come over ment; and how Phillips could ever and shake him by the hand, whisper have brought himself to be upon a word or two in his ear, and return friendly terms with, still less to owe his to his place. It so happened that my advancement to, this arch-destroyer of lodgings lay directly in Phillips's route his prospects, I am at a loss to con- from Portugal street; and as he was ceive. I can account for it in no other fond of a walking-stick in the shape way than that proneness in his nature of some accommodating arm on which to hero-worship to which I have already he could lean, he would often call for

"Is the Prince at home?"

"No, sir; he left by the mail-train last night for Paris."

me for the pleasure, as he said, of my servant, with a dirty face and arms to company. When we arrived at Graf- match. ton street, if Lord Brougham was at home, he would take his leave of me without the smallest scruple. This happened so often that I made up my The Commissioner's countenance fell mind to play him a little trick on the as we proceeded to view the interior of first opportunity. When the door the mansion thus abandoned. We opened, I slid in past the servant and found it much in the same state as it gained the hall, whence no entreaties had been left by the august tenant. could dislodge me until I had been The bed had not been made, nor had presented to the great man, who the marble bath which the future Emgraciously gave me two of his august peror used on the morning of his defingers to shake, and then turned his parture, been emptied of its contents. back upon me. I need scarcely add In the room which he used as a study, that I was never more taken out in the a book lay open on the desk, with its capacity of walking-stick any more. margin copiously annotated; it was a While referring to Phillips's propen- treatise in French on the use of artilsity to hero-worship, I mentioned his lery; a note-book and a pencil lay devotion to the Bonaparte family, of beside it. The rooms were in confuwhich I remember a curious illustra- sion, and I observed several large deal tion, combined, however, with a pru- packing-cases scattered about on the dential regard to his own interest which floor addressed "à M. le Président de was amusingly characteristic of the la République Française." This was man. Very early in our acquaintance several days before the election took he asked me if I would like to see place which gave Louis Napoleon his Prince Napoleon's house. Replying in grip on France, and is an apt illustrathe affirmative, the the Commissioner tion of that reputed faith in his destiny tucked me under his arm, and led the with which the Emperor has been way to King street, St. James's. credited. While I was wondering how he had the entrée, he informed me he was the owner of the house in question.

Many years had passed over, and the doubtful tenant of the house in King street had become the Emperor of France. Phillips and I were seated

"Well," I said, "I hope your tenant pays his rent; they do say he is some-in Folthorp's library at Brighton, looktimes hard up." ing over the morning papers, when he

"He pays me £300 a year, and is pulled out a packet. the very best tenant I ever had; rent comes punctual to the day. But then," sinking his voice to a whisper, "I would not let him into the house until I had a guarantee from Lafitte, the Paris banker, for the rent."

"Look at this," he said. The object submitted to my inspection was a handsome gold snuffbox, with the letter N. in brilliants on the lid. "And this," he added, handing me an autograph letter from the Emperor, begging his

The door was opened by a maid- acceptance of the box as a proof of his