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eminent that now exists. If I intended it to be anything but a hasty sketch, I should feel that I have been unjust to him. Some of his powers-his wit and irony, for example, in both of which he excels, and his cutting and relentless sarcasm, where vice and folly are to be exposed-have been altogether unnoticed; but his is the "versatile ingenium," and, in offering the result of my observations upon it, I have been compelled to select rather what I could best describe, than what I most the Manchester riots of 1819. As first Irish law-officer of the Crown, Plunket did not appear to advantage. When a bottle was flung at the Viceroy, in the theatre, Plunket hastily indicted the rioters for high-treason, and as hastily withdrew the indictment before trial. His bills of indictment were ignored, his ex-officio prosecutions defeated, and his Orange antagonists cheaply obtained the honor of political martyrdom. In 1827, when a new Premier was necessary, on the illness of Lord Liverpool, Canning was appointed, and thought so highly of Plunket as to offer him a peerage, a seat in the Cabinet, and the high office of Master of the Rolls in England. Plunket was actually appointed, but the English bar, declaring that Westminster Hall must supply the new Judge, intimated that they would not plead before Plunket. The end was that he became Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas in Ireland, instead of Master of the Rolls in England-and became a peer as "Baron Plunket, of Newton, County of Cork." By his speeches and his vote, he assisted in the Emancipation Bill of 1829; and when the Whigs took office, in 1830, Earl Grey made him LordChancellor of Ireland, a position which he retained until December, 1834, when Sir Robert Peel, on the change of Ministry, appointed Sir Edward Sugden (now Lord St. Leonards, and late Lord-Chancellor of England), an English barrister of great ability. In April, 1835, Plunket resumed the Irish Chancellorship, and retained it until June, 1841. The Melbourne Ministry, then within three months of its dissolution, wished to provide for Sir John Campbell, who had been in office nine years. His wife had already been appointed a peeress in her own right (Baroness Stratheden), but he desired for himself the retiring pension of four thousand pounds sterling always given to an ex-Chancellor. Accordingly, Lord Plunket, whose judicial career had been highly satisfactory, received a hint that he must retire! Plunket, recollecting how the English bar had refused him, was reluctant to see an English lawyer, who knew nothing of equity, named as his successor. He refused to retire, was informed that he would be dismissed if he did not, and finally resigned, stating the whole case in open Court, in his farewell address to the bar. He said he had no share in what had taken place, directly or indirectly, and entirely repudiated the change. Campbell, created a peer, heard a few motions as Chancellor, and went out, shortly after, on the large pension he had coveted. He is now Chief-Justice of England.-Lord Plunket retired into private life in 1841, and enjoys the four thousand pounds pension, and a large private fortune, earned by his professional labors.-M.

admired; and even if I had succeeded in a delineation of all the powers that raise Mr. Plunket above ordinary men, I should have had to add, that our admiration of him is not limited by what we actually witness.

We speculate upon his great attributes of intellect, and ask, "What might they not have achieved, had his destiny placed him in the situation most favorable to their perfect development? If, instead of wasting them upon questions of transitory interest, he had dedicated them solely to the purposes of general science to metaphysics, mathematics, legislation, morals, or (what is but spoken science) to that best and rarest kind of eloquence, which awakes the passions only that they may listen to the voice of truth-to what a height and permanence of fame might they not have raised him ?"

These reflections perpetually force themselves upon Mr. Plunket's admirers: we lament to see the vigor of such a mind squandered upon a profession and a province. We are incessantly reminded that, high and successful as his career has been, his opportunities have been far beneath his resources. and thus, judging him rather by what he could do than what he has done, we are disposed to speak of him in terms of encomium, which cords of his genius will remain to justify.

CHARLES KENDAL BUSHE.

THE name of Charles Kendal BUSHE is not so extensively known as that of Plunket beyond the immediate field in which his talents (which are of the first order) have been displayed. But in Ireland it is almost uniformly associated with that of Plunket, by those who descant upon the comparative merits of their most distinguished advocates. The latter is better fitted to the transactions of ordinary business, and, in a profession which is generally conversant with the details of common life, exhibits a dexterity and astuteness which render him the most practical, and, therefore, the ablest man at the Bar. He is always upon a level with his subject, and puts forth his faculties, as if they were as subservient as his limbs to the dominion of his will, in the most precise and minute adaptation to the purposes for which they may happen to be required. The self-control which his mind possesses in so high and rare a degree (and it is more difficult, perhaps, to men of true genius to descend from their native elevation than to persons of inferior endowments to raise their faculties to the height of a "great argument") has given him an almost undisputed mastery in the discussion of those topics which constitute the habitual business of the Bar. His hearers are not conscious that he is in reality exercising his great powers while he addresses them in the plainest speech and apparently in the most homely

way.

An acute observer would discover that his reasonings upon the most vulgar topic were the perfection of art, and that under the guise of simplicity he concealed the most insidious VOL. I.-6

sophistry, and subtleties the most acute. This seeming ingenuousness is the consummation of forensic ability; and however it is to be estimated in a moral point of view, there can be no doubt that at the Bar it is of incalculable use. Mr. Plunket is the chief sophist, and for that reason the most useful disputant in his profession; and it must be confessed that the deliberations of a court of justice do not call so much for the display of eloquence as for the ingenious exercise of the powers of disputation. I am far from thinking Mr. Bushe deficient in refinement and dexterity; on the contrary, he would be conspicuous for those qualities unless when he is placed in comparison with the great arch-hypocrite of the Bar. But who could be his rival in that innocent simulation which constitutes the highest merit of a modern lawyer? The ingenuity of Bushe is too apparent. His angling is light and delicate; but the fly is too highly colored, and the hook glitters in the sun. In the higher departments of oratory he is, perhaps, equal and occasionally superior to Mr. Plunket, from the power and energy of his incomparable manner; but in the discharge of common business in a common way, he holds a second, though not exceedingly distant place.

Mr. Bushe is the son of a clergyman of the established church, who resided at Kilmurry, in the county of Kilkenny, in the midst of the most elegant and most accomplished society in Ireland. He was in the enjoyment of a lucrative living, and being of an ancient family, which had established itself in Ireland in the reign of Charles the Second, he thought it incumbent upon him to live upon a scale of expenditure more consistent with Irish notions of dignity than with English maxims of economy and good sense. He was a man of refined manners, and of polished if not of prudential habits. His son Charles imbibed from him an ardent love of literature, and had an opportunity from his familiar intercourse with the best company in the kingdom, to acquire those graces of manner which render him a model of elegance in private life, and which, in the discharge of professional business, impart such a dignified suavity to his demeanor as to charm the senses before the understanding is addressed. His mother was the sister of Major

THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

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General Sir John Doyle, and is said to have been a highlycultivated woman.

Mr. Bushe received his education in the University of Dublin, and, I may add, in the Historical Society which was established by the students for the cultivation of eloquence and of the arts which are connected with it. Although it derived its appellation from the study of history, to which it was nominally dedicated, the political situation of the country speedily directed its pursuits to the acquisition of the faculty of public speech; through which every man of talent expected to rise into eminence, at a period when oratory was the great staple commodity in the intellectual market. This institution rose of its own accord out of the spontaneous ambition of the students of the University. So far from assisting its growth, the fellows of the college employed every expedient to repress it. In the true spirit of monks (and however they may differ in the forms of their faith, in their habits, and in the practical results in which their principles are illustrated and embodied, the monks of all religions are inveterately the same), the superiors of the University took the society under their baneful protection. They attempted to hug it to death in their rugged and hirsute embrace. The students, however, soon became

* The late General Sir John Doyle was private Secretary to the Prince of Wales for many years, when that profligate was taking a leading part in the "Road to Ruin." Doyle, who was then only a Major in the army, was an Irishman and had distinguished himself by some clever opposition speeches in the Irish House of Commons.-The Prince met him accidentally at a large party, was struck with his intelligence and vivacity, invited him to the Pavilion, at Brighton, and speedily offered him the most confidential post in his household. To his latest day, Doyle used to say that George, Prince of Wales, merited the title of "the first gentleman in Europe," and it should be noted that he who gave this opinion had spent all his life in the best society, at home and abroad. Doyle was a wit. The Prince had gone to the opening of Parliament, wearing diamond epaulettes on his military uniform. At dinner, Doyle said he had been among the crowd, who much admired the Prince's equipage, and that one of them, looking at the diamond epaulettes, said, “Tom, what amazing fine things the Prince has got upon his shoulders?" and the other had answered, "Ay, fine enough, and they will soon be on our shoulders." There was a

smile all around the royal table, for freedom of speech was fully allowed there, and the Prince laughingly retorted, "You rogue, that shaft could come from no bow but your own."- M.