be older before it learned the curse and unhappy end of the reform that begins by blood. The French revolution had not then given its moral. It was still to the eyes of the multitude like the primal vision in the Apocalypse, a glorious shape coming forth in unstained robes, conquering and to conquer for the world's happiness; it had not yet, like that mighty emblem, darkened down through all its shapes of terror, till it moved against the world, Death on the pale horse, followed by the unchained spirits of human evil, and smiting with plague, and famine, and the sword.

"Some criticism has been wasted on the presumed deficiencies of Curran's speeches on those memorable trials. Throwing off the public fact that those speeches were all uncorrected copies, Curran was of all orators the most difficult to follow by transcription. His elocution, rapid, exuberant, and figurative, in a signal degree, was often compressed into a pregnant pungency which gave a sentence in a word. The word lost, the charm was undone But his manner could not be transferred, and it was created for his style. His eye, hand, and figure were in perpetual speechNothing was abrupt to those who could see him; nothing was lost, except when some flash would burst out, of such sudden splendour as to leave them suspended and dazzled too strongly to fol

low the lustres that shot after it with restless illumination. Of Curran's speeches, all have been impaired by the difficulty of the period, or the immediate circumstances of their delivery. Some have been totally lost. His speech on the trial of the two principal conductors of the conspiracy, the Shears's, barristers and men of family, was made at midnight, and said to have been his most masterly effusion of pathetic eloquence. Of this no remnant seems to have been preserved. The period was fatal to their authenticity. When Erskine pleaded, he stood in the midst of a secure nation, and pleaded like a priest of the temple of justice, with his hand on the altar of the constitution, and all England below prepared to treasure every fantastic oracle that came from his lips. Curran pleaded, not on the floor of a shrine, but on a scaffold, with no companions but the wretched and culpable men who were to be plunged from it hour by hour, and no hearers but the multitude, who crowded anxious to that spot of hurried execution, and then rushed away glad to shake off all remembrance of scenes which had agitated and torn every heart among them. It is this which puts his speeches beyond the estimate of the closet. He had no thought to study the cold and marble graces of scholarship. He was a being embarked in strong emergency, a man and not a statue. He was to address men, of whom he must make himself the master.

With the living energy, he had the living and regardless variousness of attitude. Where he could not impel by exhortation, or overpower by menace, he did not disdain to fling himself at their feet, and conquer by grasping the hem of their robe. For this triumph he was all things to all men. His wild wit, and far-fetched allusions, and play upon words, and extravagant metaphors, all repulsive to our cooler judgements, were wisdom and sublimity before the juries over whom he waved his wand. Before a higher audience he might have been a model of sustained dignity;-mingling with those men he was compelled to speak the language that reached their hearts. Curran in the presence of an Irish jury was first of the first. He skirmished round the field, tried every point of attack with unsuspected dexterity, still pressing on, till the decisive moment was come, when he developed his force, and poured down his whole array in a mass of matchless strength, originality, and grandeur. İt was in this originality that a large share of his fascination consisted. The course of other great public speakers may in general be predicted from their outset; but in this man, the mind, always full, was always varying the direction of its exuberance; it was no regular stream, rolling down in a smooth and straight-forward volume;-it had the wayward beauty of a mountain torrent, perpetually delighting the eye with some unexpected

sweep through the wild and the picturesque, always rapid, always glancing back sunshine, till it swelled into sudden strength, and thundered over like a cataract. For his noblest images there was no preparation, they seemed to come spontaneously, and they came mingled with the lightest products of his mind. It was the volcano flinging up in succession curls of vapour, and fiery rocks; all from the same exhaustless depths, and with the same unmeasured strength to which the light and the massive were equal. We had the fortune to hear some of those speeches, and repeat it, that to feel the full genius of the man, he must have been heard. His eloquence was not a studiously sheltered and feebly fed flame, but a torch blazing only with the more breadth and brilliancy, as it was the more broadly and boldly waved: it was not a lamp, to live in his tomb. His printed speeches lie before us, full of the errors that might convict him of an extravagant imagination and a perverted taste. when those are to be brought in impeachment against the great orator, it must be remembered, that they were spoken for a triumph, which they gained; that we are now pausing over the rudeness and unwieldiness of the weapons of the dead, without reference to the giant's hand that with them drove the field. Curran's carelessness of fame has done this dishonour to his memory. We have but the fragments of his mind, and are in

But

vestigating those glorious reliques, separated and mutilated, like the sculptures of the Parthenon ; while they ought to have been gazed on where the great master had placed them, where all their shades and foreshortenings were relief and vigour, -image above image, rising in proportioned and consecrated beauty; as statues on the face of a temple.

"His career in Parliament was less memorable. But the cause lay in no deficiency of those powers which give weight in a Legislative Assembly. In the few instances in which his feelings took a part, he excited the same admiration which had followed him through his professional efforts. But his lot had been cast in the Courts of Law, and his life was there. He came into the House of Commons wearied by the day, and reluctant to urge himself to exertions rendered less imperious by the crowd of able men who fought the battle of Opposition. His general speeches in Parliament were the sports of the moment, the irresistible overflow of a humorous disdain of his adversary. left the heavy arms to the habitual combatants, and amused himself with light and hovering hostility. But his shaft was dreaded, and its subtlety was sure to insinuate its way, where there was a mortal pang to be wrung. With such gifts what might not such a man have been, removed from the low prejudices, and petty factions, and de

He