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 |