habeas corpus to bring him up before the court. It was immediately served upon the provost marshal (Major Sandys.) This was the keeper of a torture house, whose name is but too notorious in the annals of the times. He returned for answer that he would obey no orders but those of the Commander in Chief of the garrison. The court directed the sheriff to take him into custody and bring him before them: he was not to be found, but Tone was found with his neck deeply wounded and weltering in his blood.

It was said that on the preceding evening (Sunday) he had been officially informed that his sentence was confirmed and his request denied, and had therefore done this execution on himself; some said with a razor, some with a pane of glass because he had no razor. Of this I can know nothing. It was said that he spoke afterwards; I never heard of any friend that heard him speak after this wound. It was however stated that he observed he was a bad anatomist, in having missed his end.

However this might be, it was but of a piece with all the rest of Ireland's fatal story. For never did fear or necessity extort from her oppressive rulers an act that looked like grace, or policy dictate a transient show of lenity, but some demoniac spirit interposed, and shaped it into treachery and cruelty. It was so of old, it was so with Byrne, it was so with Bond, it was so with Orr, it was so at the massacre of the Curragh of Kildare, it proved so too with Tone.

I will not say that he was murdered-1 would not slander by saying what I do not know, not even a murderer by trade. That he chose the manner of his own death was rendered plausible by many circumstances. His sentence was not warranted under the circumstances of the case by any law civil or military. The mode of punishment then, was only intended to disgrace him and the uniform he wore; or to expose his aged parents to a repetition of the insults and exultations of the government rabble, his trial having followed close upon the execution of a brother, taken like him in arms. He might perhaps have feared the loss of lives in some vain attempt to rescue him. Nor could this act be called a suicide in the criminal sense that Christians view it, but rather resembled the expedient of the soldier who, when about to be tortured by savages, disappointed their ferocity by giving them his head. The end was that he lingered for a week, and then died as he lived, great of heart and mind.

That Curran must have succeeded in rescuing him from the hands of the military tribunal and its sentence, is most evident; and considering the circumstances of the times and the chances and changes that fall out in periods of desultory policy, when vengeance, fear, or personal rivalry, and other disavowed or unseen motives take the reins in turns, it was not improbable that Tone's VOL. II. 32

life might have been saved, even in spite of his determined purpose to accept no favour. The civil war was ended; the government had treated with the directors of the union, and the men who formed the alliance with the French. Lord Cornwallis had openly censured the crimes and cruelties of the Orange faction, and professed to act upon a system of moderation and amnesty. Even Napper Tandy, the most proscribed of all that bore arms or rebelled, had been exchanged for a British general, and sent back to France in a British vessel, to enjoy his rank and pay as a French general for the remainder of his life. He had been specially, and by name, excepted out of the amnesty act, and so great had been the avidity to have his person and his life, that not only great rewards were set upon his head, but a British plenipotentiary violated the honour of the diplomacy and the rights of nations, taking upon himself the office of constable, and imposing upon the senate of a free and neutral city the office of gaolers. When it is considered that this man, after lying so long in foreign dungeons and in irons, was brought to Ireland, tried and convicted, and every thing but executed, and afterwards given up on the simple requisition of Napoleon, how much reason was there not for Curran to hope that he might save the life of this brave man ?

Some have asked why Curran, if he felt the wrongs of Ireland as he described them, contented himself with talking, leaving to others the post of danger-how he, if his affections were so engaged, and his sentiments so decided, could flutter like the moth round the taper and come off unhurt; and also, how, after that illomened union that extinguished in blood the constitution of his country, he could submit to kiss the hand of the oppressor, and kneel or stoop for favour. I have already shown that he was not unhurt, but assailed, and wounded even in the tenderest part; and if he was not consigned with other men of patriotic virtue to a dungeon or a hulk, it was most probably because his seat in parliament exempted him from the operation of the law that suspended the habeas corpus act. To censure him for accepting the station of a Judge and Privy Counsellor, in an administration headed by Fox and Grey, is to say, that those who do most for their country are to have least of its indulgence.

And now a word touching the Edinburgh Reviewers before I take my leave. To dispute their talents would be to disparage my own judgment. Their writings have been long my chief literary recreation. Their luminous conceptions, and polished style, have given them a sway, which, like all other power if abused, may become dangerous and despotic; and when it verges towards that point it becomes a civic duty to sound the tocsin of alarm.

I do not however profess to enter the lists as a champion against such formidable adversaries; I should rather submit, and even pay

6

them black mail, than wage an impotent war, and indeed the combat would be every way too unequal between one Whose sword hangs rusting on the wall' and so many knights of fame,

"Ten of them are sheathed in steel,
With belted Sword, and spur on heel;
Who never quit their harness bright,
Neither by day, nor yet by night;
They lay down to rest,
With corslet laced,

Pillowed on buckler cold and hard:

They carve at the meal

With gloves of steel,

And they drink the red wine through the helmet barred.'

I shall therefore content myself with an appeal to the good sense of these gentlemen, who are the fittest to correct their own errors, if any they have fallen into; but still, in doing this, I shall use the like freedom by them as they do by others.

I think then that their strictures upon some passages of this biography have been too fastidious, or, to borrow a sprightlier phrase of their own, 'too smart and snappish.'

I think they have not viewed the story of the birth, and birth place of Curran's eloquence, of poor Apjohn and Duhigg, and the victory over the devil of temple bar, with their accustomed candour or discrimination. Had they known more of the men and manners they were censuring, they would never have supposed that this story was taken down by the author from his father's lips: indeed, they would smile at their own innocent mistake.

They say it is not the very best style of wit or talk that they have met with. But who has said it was? Its beauty, if it has any, is that it is entirely without such pretension, and is related simply as a part of the history of John Philpot Curran. The observation, or question of his friend was, whether his gift was from art or nature, or whether his eloquence was born with him. And the answer was, the history of its origin, showing how much it was owing to accident and circumstances; and when Curran was thus cheerfully complying with the desire of his friend, he was too unaffected, and too natural to think of making a display; he gave it as it came, and as it was.

As to the story of Mr. Boyse, I think that there also these accomplished critics have misconceived both the moral and the fact....Did their good feelings never teach them, that true and genuine affection, because it shuns all exhibition, will be fain at times to hide itself under the show of bluntness?

Indeed this censure is so forced, that it seems to have involved the learned commentators in some confusion of ideas, not very usual with them; for they say that all this might be very well between the two friends, but it was dreadfully too theatrical for a pri

vate society. In our fastidious country,' they say, we really have no idea of a man talking pathetically in good company, and still less of good company sitting and crying to him. Nay, it is not very consistent,' they add, with our notions, that a gentleman should be most comical.' The expression of the author hardly warranted this observation. He was speaking of the variety of his father's conversation, which abounded in those magical transitions, from the most comic turn of thought to the deepest pathos; for ever bringing a tear into their eye before the smile was off the lip.' From these and other passages, these gentlemen are led to suspect, that the Irish standard of good conversation is radically different from the English. For my own part, having spent half my life in Ireland, and the other half in various other countries, and having seen some good company both in England and Scotland, I am much at a loss to find upon what these observations are founded; I have generally found least said about good company, in good company; and those to please the most who dealt the least in precepts of book conversation. I am now an American, and equally distant, with the exception of a very little arm of the sea, from the one and the other island, and the way we unsophisticated Americans think upon these subjects is this; we find that God has given to man two distinct characters, by which, though all the rest were lost or effaced, he might be defined and distinguished from the brute creation- the smile and the tear.'Here then are two schools of conversation-too rival gymansia, one on each side of the channel of Saint George. The disciples of the one neither admit of laughter or of tears or if they do, it must be serio-comic mirth, or pathos of that nature, that cannot excite a

tear.

The other school, abandoning the whole transnatural regions, to their more refined and attic neighbours, assemble round the festive board, and as the wine flows, and the blood and spirits circulate, they make the course of their humanities. By laughter they prove, if not that they are gentlemen, at least that they are men. And if any unexpected touch of pathos brings the tear into their eye, their philosophy is that of nature, which traces the cause through the effect. They acknowledge a power beyond themselves, and find the literæ humaniores written in their hearts, by him who made the laws essential to their moral and material frame: and they acknowledge him who made the tear to flow, to be the same who made the water issue from the rock.

be

The world must judge, then, which is the better school. If there any law it must be international. For my part, if this be the only, or radical difference between the rival standards, I do not wonder, that before the comeing of Lionel Duke of Clarence, the English in their language and apparrell, and all their manner of

liveing, had submitted themselves entirely to the Irish.' And the compliment is perhaps better than was intended to the Irish school.

As regards the danger of bad imitation, let these accomplished critics beware how their own kibes are galled, for though it be given to few to imitate the Scotch reviewers in their extensive knowledge, and great range of thought, or in the strength and clearness of their diction, yet every art and science has its jargon, and the cant of criticism about taste and good conversation is what the parrot may learn, and the cuckoo sing, to the great disturbance of whatever is genuine, natural, or manly.

What kind of person would John Philpot Curran have been, if he had formed himself upon these straight-lined rules. Would Homer have been worshipped as a god, or would he not, if they prevailed, be kicked out of good company, as in that barbarous age when he first sung his ballads through the streets of the Greek cities? Would not Shakspeare be the next victim of this rage? and Tully, whose jocularity was his right arm, whose pleasure was to show his wit among his friends, and who confesses that he loved his own jokes best, and that they were but quicquid in buccam venerit,' whose jests filled three whole volumes: how would he be censured for being so vastly comical?'

There is perhaps one way to reconcile and draw advantage from their differences, by bringing about a friendly commerce.

Let the North Britons consign to their Hibernian neighbours what they have to spare of the mental philosophy, and their systems ideal and non-ideal, and of their semi-voluntary operations of the intellect, and the Irish in return supply them with their surplus heart and soul, and let this be hereafter called the channel trade. But it is time to quit these trifles, and render justice to that dignity which belongs to these writers whenever they assume their proper attitude and station.

These things,' they say, speaking of Curran's wit, &c. are of ' little consequence. Mr. Curran was something better,' &c. p. [239.] Such manly language would atone, if atonement were due, for all the censures upon the wit, the style, or the manner of Curran ; and Ireland owes to these authors this acknowledgment besides, that when the minions of despotism, so long combined against her, perverted her cause, and sided with her tyrants, they still respected the country of 'feeling hearts and eloquent tongues.' And though they should not be converted to the Irish standard of wit or conversation, I trust that upon more acquaintance they will find reason to admit, and to assert, that virtues of a higher kind than either taste or genius lie buried in the graves of Irish traitors.

But on this subject I shall trust myself no further, I have already detained the reader too long from better matter; I have spoken more of myself than perhaps I ought, and more of Ireland than I