PEN-AND-INK SKETCH OF DANIEL

O'CONNELL.

From 'Sketches of the Irish Bar.'

If any one 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,1 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 neighbors. The half-open parlor shutter and the light within announce that some one dwells there whose time is too precious to permit him to regulate his rising with the sun. Should your curiosity tempt you to ascend the steps and under cover of the dark to reconnoiter 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 calfskin 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 amid 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 labor 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 specter, and are already braindeep in the dizzy vortex of mortgages and cross-reminders and mergers and remitters, while his clients, still lapped in 1 One of the principal squares in Dublin. There O'Connell resided for about thirty years.

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 not be 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 arm 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 counselor's bursts of jovial and familiar humor, or, when he touches on a sadder strain, his prophetic assurance 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 render him not merely the advocate, but the partisan of his client, his acuteness, his fluency of thought and language, his unconquerable good-humor, 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 the 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 into 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 counselor 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 labors of the day. There he remains until, by dint of strength or dexterity, he has carried every point; and 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 daybreak 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.

His frame is tall, expanded, and muscular, precisely such as befits a man of the people; for the physical classes ever look with double confidence and affection upon a leader who represents in his own person the qualities upon which they rely. In his face he has been equally fortunate; it is extremely comely. The features are at once soft and manly; the florid glow of health and a sanguine temperament is diffused over the whole countenance, which is national in the outline, and beaming with national emotion. The expression is open and confiding, and inviting confidence; there is not a trace of malignity or guile; if there were, the bright and sweet blue eyes, the most kindly and honest-looking that can be conceived, would repel the imputation. These popular gifts of nature O'Connell has not neglected to set off by his external carriage and deportment; or perhaps I should rather say that the same hand which has molded the exterior has supersaturated

1 This sketch was written in 1823, six years before Catholic Emanciadtion was an accomplished fact.

the inner man with a fund of restless propensity which it is quite beyond his power, as it is certainly beyond his inclination, to control. A large portion of this is necessarily expended upon his legal avocations; but the labors of the most laborious of professions cannot tame him into repose. After deducting the daily drains of the study and the courts, there remains an ample residuum of animal spirits and ardor for occupation, which go to form a distinct, and I might say a predominant character-the political chieftain.

The existence of this overweening vivacity is conspicuous in O'Connell's manners and movements, and being a popular, and more particularly a national, quality, greatly recommends him to the Irish people-" Mobilitate viget -body and soul are in a state of permanent insurrection.

See him in the streets and you perceive at once that he is a man who has sworn that his country's wrongs shall be avenged. A Dublin jury—if judiciously selected-would find his very gait and gestures to be high treason by construction, so explicitly do they enforce the national sentiment of "Ireland her own, or the world in a blaze." As he marches to court, he shoulders his umbrella as if it were a pike. He flings out one factious foot before the other as if he had already burst his bonds and was kicking Protestant ascendency before him, while ever and anon a democratic, broad-shouldered roll of the upper man is manifestly an indignant effort to shuffle off "the oppression of seven hundred years."

This intensely national sensibility is the prevailing peculiarity in O'Connell's character; for it is not only when abroad and in the popular gaze that Irish affairs seem to press on his heart. The same Erin-go-bragh feeling follows him into the most technical details of his forensic occupations. Give him the most dry and abstract position of the law to support-the most remote that imagination can conceive from the violation of the Articles of Limerick, and, ten to one, he will contrive to interweave a patriotic episode upon those examples of British domination. The people are never absent from his thoughts.

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN.

(1751-1816.)

THE phenomenal succession of talent in the Sheridan family, extending over two hundred and fifty years and through at least six generations, should furnish supporters of the theories that have been advanced in favor of the law of heredity with at least one strong argument. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the greatest scion of this extraordinarily talented family, was the son of Thomas Sheridan, an actor, elocutionist, and lexicographer. His father, the grandfather of our subject, was a noted wit, a classical scholar, and an intimate friend of Dean Swift. Of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's three granddaughters, one became the Duchess of Somerset, another the Countess of Dufferin, and the third the Hon. Mrs. Norton. And then, in the direct line, came Lord Dufferin, the brilliant author and distinguished diplomatist.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan was born in Dublin in 1751. At school he earned for himself the character of a dunce, and when later he was sent to Harrow he manifested a greater capacity for school boy pranks than for the acquisition of knowledge. When he was eighteen his father removed him from Harrow, and the boy's education was finished under his care.

At that time, the city of Bath, in the West of England, was at the height of its fame as a resort of the beau monde, and when the Sheridan family removed to that city the young man was not long in acquiring that intimate knowledge of the many-sidedness of human nature which stood him in such good stead in the writing of the plays which made him famous. Bath was also the scene of his courtship, probably one of the most romantic recorded outside of fiction.

The lady was a daughter of Mr. Linley, a celebrated composer, and was herself a vocalist of the first order and possessed of great personal charms. She had a crowd of admirers, and Sheridan's passionate courtship of her was in secret. Already Mr. Long, an elderly and wealthy Wiltshire gentleman, had proposed for her, and had been accepted by her father; but on Miss Linley telling him. the real state of the case he generously withdrew his suit and took upon himself the responsibility of breaking off the match. For this Mr. Linley sued him and obtained £3,000 ($15,000). Another lover of Miss Linley's was a person named Matthews, a married man, who prosecuted his suit rather rudely. She complained to her lover, and he remonstrated with Matthews to no effect. To escape his rudeness Miss Linley determined to leave Bath and abandon her profession. Her idea was to take refuge in a convent in France, and thither Sheridan started with her and a female companion. When they reached London they were privately married.

Matthews, however, still continued his persecution, now in the form of slanders upon Sheridan, some of which appeared in a Bath newspaper. This brought about first one, and then a second, duel. In