neither had temper, neither had consideration. Just demands were exaggerated by the one, and more than fiercely repelled by the other. There was no apparent room for either persuasion, or compromise between a vaunting intolerance, and prejudice without moderation. For nearly six centuries the history of this unhappy people was but the vicissitudes of a sullen submission, desultory outrage, defiance, terror, and proscription. The mind was familiarized to the form of a social community connected with the insecurity and excesses of savage life; and when there was not famine, plague, or rebellion to devastate, a civil hatred, perverse and malignant, inflamed both parties, and poisoned all the sources of social happiness without affording, like the shock of battle, the prospect of a termination of hostilities. Such was the scene on which GRATTAN was called to enter.

To a man who sought only that unprincipled notoriety which gratifies a vulgar ambition, such circumstances would have afforded facilities towards the attainment of a turbulent fame. The combustible materials were there in profusion, to offer to the torch of the incendiary the chance of a mighty conflagration; but GRATTAN was neither the coarse-minded demagogue, nor the great bad man, who could make the ruins of his country the path to a vicious eminence. All his views embraced her interests, and terminated in her improvement; and if he wished to raise himself, it was upon her exaltation. Thus he encircled in the throne of his ambition the cause of four millions of human beings, and would have bound them in a prosperous and moral confederacy honourable to themselves, and useful to the British Empire. He wished them to be free, because rational freedom is the only soil of the virtues : the graces of refinement may give a florid complexion to a despotic state, but the glow and current of health invigorates that nation only which breathes the atmosphere of a free Constitution. Such was the country whose tongue the orator of Ireland had first studied, whose history he had first read— such was England, and the practice of his public life was a comment upon his admiration of her well-constructed glory. His anxious life was devoted to the great task of assimilating

the country of his birth, to that of his affectionate regard; it was not a nominal union that he laboured to effect, but one of the heart and of the sentiment; reciprocal, moral, improving, an interchange of good offices, a blending of interests, a coalescence of strength.

To accomplish his object, he brought into the field of public action, original powers, great industry, great political discernment, a dauntless spirit, and a mind tenacious of its purpose. To give these qualities effect, he cultivated public speaking with an almost incredible ardour. The genius of eloquence had never a more indefatigable disciple. The abstract sciences never gave a more intense exercise to the faculties of Archimedes, or of Newton, than that which GRATTAN displayed in attaining the art of addressing a public assembly. His own mind was of a reasoning and philosophical cast, but he knew that his audience was a susceptible one, and he rightly judged that the voice of truth would be most prevailing, when it consulted the temperament of its audience. He succeeded in combining a manly and animated style of reasoning, with a great display of imaginative power; and, accordingly, the efforts of the orator produced the sensation favourable to the virtuous designs of the statesman.

It is probable the power which he realized over the public mind, surpassed his own early hopes. The popular impression which his matured style of speaking created, can hardly be conceived by those, who witnessed only the exertions of his old age. That union of the severest logic, with the more liberal and popular qualities (that make men fascinate multitudes) which he displayed, could only have been the result of judicious cultivation upon the happiest temperament of genius. He was not an orator of that class, who decry industry, and scorn the labours of knowledge. No: he devoted his days and nights to the education of his talents-ambitious of no superficial renown, unsatisfied but by solid glory.-But laborious as he was, his logic had none of the pedantry of the schoolman, ⚫ and his imagination was free from the ostentation of the rhetorician. The one was vigorous reason liberally wielded; the other an intellectual fire, which seemed only the glowing of

thought that kindled in its progress. In looking at a subject, he was not content with a confined view, or a hasty glance; he chose elevated ground, and gave it a deliberate inspection. He took in all its bearings, with what might be called, a comprehensive precision; and therefore his treatment of a great subject was equally remarkable for a breadth of design, and a lucid arrangement of parts.-While his soul seemed to burn with the most intense feeling of his subject, his method, severe but not formal, embraced every topic in order, and gave to each its due attention. He did not dwell upon points beyond their value, or after he had said all that was necessary for their enforcement; nor did he return upon his steps and embarrass his hearers and himself by repetition, nor alarm them by discrepancies; all was connected, clear, progressive; without feebleness, without distracted energy. His elocution was not a mountain stream that foams and frets in a rocky channel, where sometimes it shows only scanty rills, and again bursts away in a torrent. That could better illustrate the eloquence of CURRAN, erratic and unequal; but GRATTAN's had more of the copious and majestic river, deep-grandly reflecting clear images -always placid, and always irresistible. In his most tranquil moments, attention was chained to his words; but when he poured himself forth in the full ardour of his intellect, the advocate of a principle was forgot in the admiration of a superior intelligence. He could sketch character with a rapid and powerful hand-when it seemed to arise naturally out of his subject to illustrate and enforce argument by authority. This gave a living animation to his harangues, and made them more valuable when the conflicts of the day should have been forgotten; because man and his nature, his public virtues and the vices of his ambition, ever continue to attract rational curiosity, although the scene on which they were originally exerted, has ceased to exist.

The language of GRATTAN was forcible and peculiar : he was fond of point and antithesis; but this was the natural result of a talent that delighted in bold, yet nice distinctions. It is said that he copied the style of Tacitus; but it is more probable that a similarity of genius led to the coincidence.

There is in GRATTAN that same power of tracing, in a few words, the outline of a character, and the condensed thought which give fulness and force to the balanced periods of the great historian. He was altogether a spirit worthy of being commemorated by the writer, whom he is said to have imitated. Had he lived in the reign of Tiberius, the Roman Senate would have contained one virtuous and fearless Senator-one who was not born to be a courtier, even in the palace of Trajan.

In the presence of his country, he saw no other hope, no other fear: that one great object absorbed all inferior considerations. He gave it the service of his intellect, and the devotion of what he himself so justly termed, a "desperate fidelity." In that cause he laboured, sorrowed, and rejoiced : but, he looked at her interests in connexion only with those of justice, civilization, and universal humanity. Hostile to all the principles that pamper and exclude, his policy was the simple recognition of Christian sentiment, as it ought to animate the conduct of States and the relations of society. It was calculated to draw into the closest compact of strength the elements that go to form nations, and to remove the most painful and least profitable task of History-the narration of their civil discords. Such was the cause to which the long and splendid career of his life was given, and to which he dedicated his expiring breath. Though sometimes assailed by a cruel ingratitude, he abated nothing of his zeal, because it was founded on principle, and not dependent upon the errors or passions of mankind. His mind always looked serenely upon its own course; intrepid and daring, as it was gentle and courteous. Though fierce and dangerous, when wantonly provoked in the performance of his public duty, it was his cause, and not himself that inspired the indignant vindication; for he never so worshipped ambition as to sacrifice upon her altar the graceful charities of life, or the mild glory of the domestic virtues.

LOUIS PHILIP's promise, in 1830, regarding the Guillotine.July 14, 1836.

In order the better to understand the regal virtues which the revolution of July has encircled with the splendours of a Throne, let us turn back a page or two in the recent history of France.

We find that on the 8th of October, 1830, M. DE TRACEY moved that the punishment of death be abolished in France. In this he was supported by General LAFAYETTE, M. GIROD de l'Ain, M. KERATRY, and other distinguished Deputies. General LAFAYETTE emphatically observed, in allusion to the infliction of that punishment for political offences, "those who ask for the adjournment of this proposition, have not had the misfortune to see their families dragged to the scaffold. I am, for my part, the enemy of the punishment of death; and, above all, the enemy of the punishment of death in political matters." M. GIROD de l'Ain, after an able and convincing argument, proposed that the punishment of death be abolished. He said a project of a law will be presented to the Chamber, during the Session, to determine the punishments which ought to be substituted for the punishment of death, in the cases to which it is now applied." Subsequently an address, supplicating him to prepare a law for the abolition of the punishment of death, was carried by a majority of 225 to 21; which was received by the KING in a manner which left no doubt on the minds of the supporters of the address, that he sincerely meditated the abolition of that punishment.

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On the 17th [of August that year,] King Louis PHILIP received a deputation from St. Brieux, capital of the Côtes du Nord. M. Charles LUCAS, Advocate in the Royal Court of Paris, one of the deputation, addressed the KING in a speech which concluded in the following words :-" Permit me, Sire, to express a personal wish-namely, that we owe the abolition of the penalty of death to the reign, to which we are already indebted for the abolition of war." The KING said, in his answer, that he had not forgotten the brave battalions of the Côtes du Nord, with whom he had fought at Genappe; and that if there still remained in the department some of those