denounced it. In the following year the Catholic Board, at the suggestion of O'Connell, called upon Grattan to place himself under their direction, and upon his refusal took their petition out of his hands, and entrusted it to Sir Henry Parnell.

It was touching to see the old statesman thus superseded in the cause he had served so long, yet rising without one word of complaint, of recrimination, or of bitterness, to support his younger colleague. The more moderate party still made him their representative, and nothing in his whole career is more admirable than the good taste and the self-abnegation which he manifested throughout. He made it a rule, as he said, 6 never to defend himself at the expense of his country,' and he displayed the same zeal and the same eloquence as when his popularity was greatest. The ill-feeling was at one time so strong that, after his election for Dublin in 1818, he was assaulted by a mob in the streets. All parties were heartily ashamed of the act, and the Roman Catholics and the Orangemen reciprocally charged each other with the guilt. Notwithstanding this ebullition, there can be little doubt that he rose higher and higher in the estimation of the educated of all parties, and that the moderation and the exquisite tact he manifested exercised a most powerful influence upon Parliament. O'Connell adopted an entirely different course; but, as we shall see, O'Connell's object was, in all probability, a different one; and even when opposing Grattan, he extolled his patriotism in the highest rerms. A living historian has noticed, on the authority of Sir R. Peel, a curious indication of the veneration with which

' Grattan himself, when asked by some English friends about the cause of the riot, answered: 'It was religion-it was religion-and religion broke my head.'

Grattan was at this time regarded The members who had sat with him in the Irish House of Commons were accustomed in the English House always to address him with a 'Sir,' as they would the Speaker, and this custom was followed by Lord Castlereagh at a time when he was the leader of the House.'

To the Catholic question Grattan devoted the entire energies of his latter years. With the exception of one very brilliant and very successful speech in favour of immediate war with France, in 1815, he never spoke at length on any other subject. In 1819 he was defeated by a majority of only two; and in 1820 he went over to London, to bring the subject forward again, when the illness under which he had for some time been labouring assumed a more violent and deadly character. He lingered for a few days, retaining to the last his full consciousness and interest in public affairs. Those who gathered around his death-bed observed with emotion how fondly and how constantly his mind reverted to that Legislature which he had served so faithfully and had loved so well. seemed as though the forms of its guiding spirits rose more vividly on his mind as the hour approached when he was to join them in another world; and, among the last words he is recorded to have uttered, we find a warm and touching eulogium of his great rival, Flood, and many glowing recollections of his fellow-labourers in Ireland. He passed away tranquilly and happily on June 6, 1820. He died, as a patriot might wish to die, crowned with honours and with years, with the love of friends and the admiration of opponents, leaving a nati n to deplore his loss and not an enemy to obscure his fame.

It

It is at the tombs of great men that succeeding Lord Mahon's' History of England.'

generations kindle the lamp of patriotism; and it might have been supposed that he whose life was fraught with so many weighty lessons, and whose memory possesses so deep a charm, would have rested at last in his own land and among his own people. Another, and, as it would seem to some, a nobler lot, was reserved for Grattan. A request was made to his friends that his remains might rest in Westminster Abbey, and that request was complied with. He lies near the tombs of Pitt and Fox. The place is an honourable one, but it was the only honour that was bestowed on him. Not a bust, not an epitaph marks the spot where the greatest of Irish orators sleeps; but one stately form seems to bend in triumph over that unnoticed grave. It is the statue of Castlereagh, the statesman of the legislative Union.'

DANIEL O'CONNELL.

WHILE the Union was under discussion in the Irish Parliament no class of persons exerted themselves more energetically in opposing it than the Dublin lawyers. Among the meetings they held for this purpose there was one which assumed a peculiar significance from its being composed entirely of Roman Catholics. They assembled to protest against the assertion that the Roman Catholics, as a body, were favourable to the measure; to express their opinion that it would exercise an injurious influence upon the struggle for emancipation; and to declare that were it otherwise they did not desire to purchase that boon at the expense of the independence of the nation. Military law was then reigning, and a body of troops, under Major Sirr, were present at the Exchange to watch the proceedings. It was under these rather trying circumstances that a young lawyer, 'trembling,' as he afterwards said, 'at the sound of his own voice,' rose to make his maiden speech. He delivered a short address against the Union, which, if it contained no very original or striking views, had at least the merit of exhibiting the common arguments in the clearest and most convincing light; and he shortly after hurried to a newspaper-office to deposit a copy for publication. This young lawyer was Daniel O'Connell, the great Irish agitator. I confess that it is not without some hesitation that I approach this part of my subject, for the difficulty of painting the character of O'Connell with fairness and impartiality

can hardly be exaggerated. 'Never, perhaps,' as has been said, 'was there a man at once so hated and so loved;' and it may be doubted whether any public man of his time was the object of so much extravagant praise and blame. On the whole, however, the latter greatly preponderates. For many years the entire press of England, and a large section of that of Ireland, was ceaselessly employed in denouncing him. All parties in England were combined against him, and in Parliament he had to bear alone the assaults of statesmen and of orators of the most varied opinions. By the more violent Irish Protestants he was regarded with feelings of mingled hatred and terror that almost amounted to a superstition; and the failure of the last great struggle of his life, as well as the disastrous condition of the country at the time of his death, has been very injurious to his reputation.

Daniel O'Connell was born in the county of Kerry, in the year 1775. His family was one which had for a long time occupied a prominent position among the Catholics of the county, which was much noted for its national feeling, and, it must be added, greatly addicted to smuggling. It was in after-years remarked as a curious coincidence that its crest bore the proud motto 'Oculus O'Connell Salus Hiberniæ.' During his boyhood the penal laws were still unrepealed, though much relaxed in their stringency, and the poorer Roman Catholics had sunk into that state of degradation which compulsory ignorance necessarily produces, while the richer drew their opinions, with their education, from France. O'Connell spent a year at St. Omer, where the principal predicted that he would afterwards distinguish himself, and he then remained for a few months at the English College of Douay. The Revolution had at this time shattered the French Church