right; but something claiming kindred, not with the passions of the moment in which it originates, but with the great body of general and admitted truth; or if doubtful, only doubted by persons denying the authority of the great names which he calls as his vouchers. In Sheil, too, there are not unfrequently stinging sarcasms which not only were calculated to inflict severe wounds on the objects of his satire, but what was infinitely worse, to call into active life the malignant passions both of those whom he amused and those whom he attacked. Sheil's arti

cles, in short, are too like association speeches. There can be no doubt that his political position, struggling at the time for emancipation, made much of this very natural, and perhaps, therefore, very excusable; but from our own feelings we can judge those of others, and we own that we still feel pain and grief at the insults such men as Moore and Sheil have, to the great injury of their reputation and of the permanent effect of their works, indulged in against every one whom it answered a temporary purpose to abuse.

We have no doubt that in such cases as we allude to, such men as Moore and Sheil are, in reality, but indulging a lively imagination, and are engaged in what to them are as really works of fiction, and, therefore, as subject to their own caprices of the hour, as their "Selims," and "Evadnes." The offence is not in the feelings which they experience, but in those they are likely to excite. In Mr. Curran's "Sketches,"* there is not one single word with which any one can reasonably quarrel; there is not one single proposition which, whether you agree with it or not-and we often do not agree with him-you must not admit to be fairly stated. It is really a curious fact, considering the state of Ireland at the time when these "Sketches" were written, to observe that, republished after an interval of thirty years, there is not in his part of the work one word to alter or omit, though every where strong political opinions are firmly and manfully expressed, with no other reserve but what arises from the ordinary suggestions of gentlemanly feeling.

The papers reprinted in the volumes

before us were first published in the years 1822, 1823 and 1824. When it was determined by Mr. Colburn to reprint them, Mr. Curran availed himself of the opportunity afforded by the publication to make some additions to what had been originally published. We believe that what appeared in the Magazine is preserved unchanged; but there is prefixed a memoir of the late Chief Baron Woulfe, written within the present year, and a record of some conversations with Chief Justice Bushe, noted down in 1826.

In our account of the book, the easiest course is to follow the author's arrangement in the present publication. In the sketches written in 1823, with the persons who are the subjects of his portraiture each day brought before his eye and before his mind, written also in a period of great political excitement, the style is more vivid than in the picture of Woulfe. To our

selves, who cannot throw our mind back into those days of old contests, even in imagination, and to whom the strange passages of Irish history which occurred in our day are, in truth, a forgotten dream, greater pleasure has been afforded by this sketch of Woulfe, drawn up fifteen years after his death, than by the papers describing the living actors of Mr. Curran's earlier sketches. It is written in a calmer tone, and with great beauty brings out, one by one, as they rise up to recollection, the distinguishing peculiarities of a friendlost too early, and who, but for this memoir, would have soon passed away from the memory of all but a few, and died without his fame.

Woulfe was born in 1786, received his earlier education at Stonyhurst, graduated in the University of Dublin, and was called to the Irish bar in

1814.

Mr. Curran's acquaintance with him commenced in 1813, when both were fellow-students at the Middle Temple.

"I cannot," says Mr. Curran, “refrain from stating with, I hope, excusable pride, that our acquaintanceship was no sooner formed, than he not so much selected, as seized upon me as his friend, and that the cordial grasp, once given, was never relaxed, until his hold upon all things in this life was gone from him for ever.

"When I became acquainted with Woulfe in London, I found him standing very high in the opinion and predictions of his associates there, among the most intimate of whom I may name the late Mr. Sheil, the late William Wallace, afterwards the writer of the continuation of Sir James Mackin-tosh's History of England, the present Judge Ball, and Mr. Thomas Wyse, now the British Minister at Athens. All the qualities which were, in after life, to recommend him to a wider circle, were already conspicuously developed his social, joyous temperament, his freedom from all selfishness, his hatred of baseness, his admiration of worth, his kindly, circumspect regard for the feelings of others, his perfect candour, and, among his mental attributes, his sound and manly tastes, and, most of all, the high order of his reasoning powers."-pp. 5, 6.

Curran and Woulfe were so much together, that but few letters passed between them. It may be said, too, that men whose minds are fully engaged bave little time for letter-writing. In Sheil's Life, lately published, his biographer tells us that he wrote none but absolutely necessary business letters. One or two letters of Woulfe's, however, remain among his friend's papers. Of these, one, written from Inspruck in 1815, is here published; from that letter we extract a characteristic sentence:

"The towns in Italy have a much more civilised aspect than those of France; they all possess footpaths; the shops are as rich, and the houses better. The climate is certainly very delicious, but there is not so much delight in it as travellers tell us. This I am certain of, that the sensation of comfort, which can only exist in a cold climate, more than counterbalances the most luxuri

ous relaxation of the Italian air. You cannot conceive how I enjoyed the first piercing night on the Tyrolese Alps, when I found myself wrapped up between two featherbeds; and if the animal enjoyment of both these sensations is equal, ours possesses this political advantage over theirs, that, being only possessed by those persons who are in easy circumstances, it engenders industry; whereas theirs, being within the reach of everybody, begets indolence. In truth, labour is incompatible with the enjoyment of it. Not so with ours-it is not only acquired by labour, but may be enjoyed in the very act of labour.'"-pp. 10, 11.

It is only when one thinks of abridging such a narrative as this, that one feels how beautifully and how gracefully it is written. It can only be read in the book itself. Woulfe's health VOL. XLVI.-NO. CCLXXIII.

was from the first uncertain. There was no inability to bear bodily or mental fatigue; there was delicacy of frame, freedom and elasticity of movement. This our author has to state before he states the infirmity of constitution which made him, through the greater part of his life, subject to disease in one form or other. How is this to be stated? in what way best brought before the mind? How would Goldsmith-how would Scott have exhibited it? In such things the hand of the artist appears. Read now the passage that follows:

:

"In his frame there was no apparent delicacy; it was slight, but all his movements free and healthy and so of his countenance; though the features were rather thin and sharp, the expression was usually animated, often joyous, occasionally grave and thoughtful, but never depressed. As I write, I remember that, about this period, a small party of his friends (he not being present) amused themselves by going through some of the leading varieties of the canine species, and discovering a fanciful resemblance between each of them and some member of the bar. Matches for the bull-dog, and spaniel, and cur, were easily found. There was more discussion in finding the fittest representatives of the lurcher and poodle, and so on; but when the greyhound was named, and Shiel on the instant cried out 'Woulfe,' the likeness of the kind they were searching for, even to something curious in the details, was at once admitted. In both there was the tall and slender frame-the keen eye, the pleasing elongated face; both were so calm and gentle when at rest, both so quick and bounding when excited.”—pp. 12, 13.

Can any description be happier? It brings Woulfe perfectly before our eyes before our eyes, who were long familiar with him; but we have no doubt that to entire strangers it will have the same effect. In artistic power, the passage is equal to Goethe.

In the year 1817, the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs gave Woulfe. serious alarm. The apprehended danger, however, was greater than the event justified, and his professional studies and pursuits were not interrupted. In 1819 he published a remarkable pamphlet on the Catholic question. The pamphlet was admired by Bushe and by Plunket. Lord Grenville, to whom it was sent by Plunket, pronounced it to be, "in his opinion, the ablest piece of political writing that had appeared since the days of Burke."

2 B

Woulfe's pamphlet we have never seen, but the extracts here given justify Lord Grenville's praise. The character acquired for him by the pamphlet aided him in his after career; but is said by Mr. Curran to have been likely to have done him some disservice with the attorneys. Any occupation unconnected with the immediate studies of his profession leads the shrewd attorney to distrust the competency for the business of his profession of a barrister supposed to know anything else, or to think of anything else. It would appear that Woulfe sometimes, contributed to periodical publications. An article, in which he reviewed Godwin on "Population," in Campbell's Magazine, is mentioned; and he wrote an essay, which was entitled, "Amendment of the Laws of Real Property in England," which he proposed printing either in a separate volume, or in a series of essays in the New Monthly. It was not felt to have the popular interest which would render the latter mode of publication a prudent speculation for the proprietor of the Magazine. Mr. Curran expresses his agreement with this decision. We suspect that it was a mistake in the conduct of that publication, that topics really engaging the public mind were avoided. We have not a doubt that such papers as Woulfe would have produced on such subjects would have greatly aided the circulation of any publication in which they appeared. It is a mistake to think that each reader of any of this class of publications reads each article in it. Secure on each subject the best writers, wherever that is possible, and this renders almost certain an increased circulation. Assume real information on any subject to be given, and you have secured purchasers for the work in which it appears. Interruptions of one kind or other interfered with his getting this essay out as a book, till other works appeared which dealt with the subject so much in the way he proposed, as to make him give up the project.

Plunket, about two years after the date of Woulfe's pamphlet, became attorney-general, and made Woulfe prosecuting counsel on the Munster circuit, which increased his annual income by a sum between £700 and £1,000 a-year. His progress was, after this, one of uninterrupted success -nothing in any way to distinguish

one year from another, except the variations of his health, till his death, in 1840.

Woulfe made a few speeches on political subjects in the Catholic Association, and at aggregate meetings. We should be glad they had been preserved. How far these or his speeches in Parliament influenced the bodies to which they were addressed, we are unable to say. When at the bar, his appeals to juries were often very successful.

Mr. Curran mentions Woulfe's having given up the assistant-barristership of the county of Galway, which was worth £900 a-year. His health was declining. He held, with the barris tership, another office that of crownprosecutor giving an income of the same amount. His health he found unequal to the duties of both, and he retained that which interfered least with his ordinary chances of professional employment. He, perhaps, also remembered, when he made the choice, that the office which he continued to keep was not incompatible with his holding a seat in Parliament, which was an object which he probably then contemplated. He soon afterwards became member for the borough of Cashel. In 1836 he was solicitor-ge neral for Ireland, and in the next year attorney. In 1838 he became chief baron.

In a memoir of Chief Justice Bushe, in the eighteenth volume of this Journal, it is stated, apparently on good authority, that when, on the death of Chief Baron Joy, the right to fill the office left vacant devolved on Woulfe -the Attorney-General- he urged on the Government the fitness of appointing Baron Pennefather, proposing to resign his own claims, and take the office of puisne baron, which Baron Pennefather's promotion would leave vacant; and that it was only on finding it impossible to effect this arrangement that he accepted the place of Chief Baron. This fact, so highly to Woulfe's honour, is not stated in Curran's memoir. For Woulfe it would have been fortunate had it been accomplished; for the duties of Chief Baron-then considerably greater than at present were soon found too much for his health; and at the time of his death, within two years of his promotion, he was occupied in making an ar rangement for his retirement.

We do not know whether any formal life of Chief Justice Bushe has been written; but it was impossible that, of a great man so long before the public, there should not be many incidental notices. In Mr. Wills's "Lives of Illustrious Irishmen," his character is sketched by a faithful and friendly hand. The same writer has publish, ed a little essay on "The Evidences of Christianity" by the late ChiefJustice Bushe-an essay of very remarkable power and beauty.* In the eighteenth volume of this Journal there is a sketch of Bushe's life and fortunes, written while he was still Chief Justice, and in which are several extracts from his speeches while yet at the bar. In Finlay's "Miscellanies" we have him described while still Solicitor-General. Lord Brougham has preserved a record of his conversations when he visited London to be examined before some Parliamentary Committee or Royal Commission. Sheil's "Legal and Political Sketches," one of the best and most brilliant chapters is devoted to Bushe; and in Mr. Curran's life of Wallacet will be found his estimate of some of the peculiar characteristics of Bushe's mind. We refer to all and each of these, satisfied that many of our readers will look at the books, and thank us for the references. But we must for ourselves say, that the little book published by Mr. Wills, which we mention in the hope of bringing it before some of our readers to whom it may be new, and the record of Bushe's conversations with Mr. Curran here preserved, have given us what we believe to be a truer picture of Bushe than any or all the

rest.

In

His narrative of these conversations is thus introduced by our author :—

"Upon one occasion of my life, I had not a single opportunity, but opportunities continued for several days, of appreciating the late Chief Justice Bushe's captivating powers as a tête-à-tête companion.

"Just after the close of the summer circuits of the year 1826, I went, by invitation, to stay for some time with him at his old ancestral place of residence, Kilmurry, in the county of Kilkenny. He was, according to his annual custom, passing his long vacation

there, surrounded by a numerous family cir ele. I had the good luck to be the only stranger, and thus came to be at his side, and to have him all to myself, for many hours daily. At first he used to retire after breakfast to finish off some judgments that he was to deliver in his court in the ensuing term; but this occupation lasted for only four or five days, and then he felt himself to be (as he said) in the delicious state of being perfectly solutus curis for the remainder of the vacation. Every day at one o'clock a pair of horses were brought to his hall door for us. From the heat of the weather (it

was the hot summer of 1826') we always moved along merely at a walking pace; secure, however, from the same state of the weather, against any annoyance from sudden showers. We seldom returned to Kilmurry before five o'clock. Then came dinner, and at no long interval tea; and the moment tea was over, the Chief Justice rose, and proposed to me a stroll with him through the grounds. We had no occasion to keep to the gravel walks; the grass was as dry as the carpets we had left; and accordingly his habit was to push on at once for the fields, and plunging into them, and crossing, and recrossing them, to prolong the stroll often till the approach of midnight.

"On the second or third evening of my visit, the conversation turned on Boswell's 'Life of Johnson,' which, by the way, the Chief Justice said, 'was to him the most delightful of books, first, because he found everything in it so charming in itself; and next, because he no sooner finished it, than he forgot it all, and so could return to it, toties quoties, and be sure to find it all as charming as before, and almost as new."pp. 77, 78.

The conversation led our author to try how far he could enact the part of committing to paper the conversations of the two or three preceding days. They were jotted down in pencil, without the slightest thought of publication:

"In thus giving publicity to these fragments of Charles Kendal Bushe's familiar conversation, I should be doing a grievous injustice to the memory of that accomplished man, if I were to intimate that, in themselves, they can convey any but the faintest idea of what that conversation was. They may lead his surviving intimates to recognise him, but they never can enable a stranger to him to know him. Even if I could offer a literal transcript of every word that fell from him, how much would still be

Woulfe's pamphlet we have never seen, but the extracts here given justify Lord Grenville's praise. The character acquired for him by the pamphlet aided him in his after career; but is said by Mr. Curran to have been likely to have done him some disservice with the attorneys. Any occupation unconnected with the immediate studies of his profession leads the shrewd attorney to distrust the competency for the business of his profession of a barrister supposed to know anything else, or to think of anything else. It would appear that Woulfe sometimes contributed to periodical publications. An article, in which he reviewed Godwin on "Population," in Campbell's Magazine, is mentioned; and he wrote an essay, which was entitled, "Amendment of the Laws of Real Property in England," which he proposed printing either in a separate volume, or in a series of essays in the New Monthly. It was not felt to have the popular interest which would render the latter mode of publication a prudent speculation for the proprietor of the Magazine. Mr. Curran expresses his agreement with this decision. We suspect that it was a mistake in the conduct of that publication, that topics really engaging the public mind were avoided. We have not a doubt that such papers as Woulfe would have produced on such subjects would have greatly aided the circulation of any publication in which they appeared. It is a mistake to think that each reader of any of this class of publications reads each article in it. Secure on each subject the best writers, wherever that is possible, and this renders almost certain an increased circulation. Assume real information on any subject to be given, and you have secured purchasers for the work in which it appears. Interruptions of one kind or other interfered with his getting this essay out as a book, till other works appeared which dealt with the subject so much in the way he proposed, as to make him give up the project.

Plunket, about two years after the date of Woulfe's pamphlet, became attorney-general, and made Woulfe prosecuting counsel on the Munster circuit, which increased his annual income by a sum between £700 and £1,000 a-year. His progress was, after this, one of uninterrupted success -nothing in any way to distinguish

one year from another, except the variations of his health, till his death, in 1840.

Woulfe made a few speeches on political subjects in the Catholic Association, and at aggregate meetings. We should be glad they had been preserved. How far these or his speeches in Parliament influenced the bodies to which they were addressed, we are unable to say. When at the bar, his appeals to juries were often very suc cessful.

Mr. Curran mentions Woulfe's having given up the assistant-barristership of the county of Galway, which was worth £900 a-year. His health was declining. He held, with the barris. tership, another office-that of crownprosecutor giving an income of the same amount. His health he found unequal to the duties of both, and he retained that which interfered least with his ordinary chances of professional employment. He, perhaps, also remembered, when he made the choice, that the office which he continued to keep was not incompatible with his holding a seat in Parliament, which was an object which he probably then contemplated. He soon afterwards became member for the borough of Cashel. In 1836 he was solicitor-general for Ireland, and in the next year attorney. In 1838 he became chief baron.

In a memoir of Chief Justice Bushe, in the eighteenth volume of this Journal, it is stated, apparently on good authority, that when, on the death of Chief Baron Joy, the right to fill the office left vacant devolved on Woulfe

the Attorney-General - he urged on the Government the fitness of appointing Baron Pennefather, proposing to resign his own claims, and take the office of puisne baron, which Baron Pennefather's promotion would leave vacant; and that it was only on finding it impossible to effect this arrangement that he accepted the place of Chief Baron. This fact, so highly to Woulfe's honour, is not stated in Curran's memoir. For Woulfe it would have been fortunate had it been accomplished; for the duties of Chief Baron-then considerably greater than at present were soon found too much for his health; and at the time of his death, within two years of his promotion, he was occupied in making an ar rangement for his retirement.