and lingering expectation of mercy. Mr. Colclough was a remarkably handsome man, elegantly made, though rather heavy in the limbs, as Irishmen not unfrequently are; his face was round and fair, with an expression of great sweetness; he was a Catholic, though, when I knew him, ashamed to acknowledge it -he thought it degrading as a philosopher and republican, to wear the shackles of so contracted a religion; yet so difficult are early habits to be rooted out, so much do the tales of the nursery influence the man, that what he denied with his tongue, he venerated in his heart; and he has been often known to steal privately to the only Catholic place of worship Edinburgh then afforded; he was then very young, however, and his religious opinions might have undergone many changes previous to his death-little did I imagine at that period it would be his fate to undergo such a one, or that it would be mine thus to record it.

After our party broke up I went to the play: it was the Three Knights, which I was desirous to see; not, as will readily be believed, on its own account, but, as I had seen its first representation at Covent Garden, to compare the Dublin and London performers. The first act was over when I went in; this was so far convenient, that it gave me an opportunity of surveying the house and audience :-as a public building, Crow Street has little in its external or internal appearance to recommend it to notice; there were some allegorical paintings on the ceiling, of which I did not fully comprehend the meaning, nor did I think it worth while to inquire the audience was brilliant and numerous : as we are now in the dog-days, the atmosphere was not over and above salubrious; all the foreheads around

me glistened with dew-one very large gentleman seemed completely in the melting mood, and, as he either had no handkerchief, or could not get at it, "the big round drops

"Cours'd one another down his rubicund nose

In piteous chase;"

I could not help looking on the audience with pity, not unmixed with contempt; nor can I conceive how a number of beings, pretending to be rational, could forego the beauties of a delicious summer's evening, to sit for hours in a heated atmosphere, unfit for respiration and injurious to health, listening to a wild farrago of absurdity, in comparison with which, Guy Earl of Warwick, or Jack the Giant-Killer, are rational productions; but such is the force of fashion. This play was approved of by a London manager, and was received as the newspapers were pleased to tell us, "by a brilliant and overflowing audience with the most unbounded applause."-The good people of Dublin were therefore earnest to see and applaud likewise; and to prove themselves as profound critics as their sapient brethren of London. The truth is, amidst much noisy loud-tongued nationality, the people of Ireland, and in an especial manner, the people of Dublin, are as provincial a people as perhaps are anywhere to be found. On no subject of taste, nor (with the exception of politics) scarcely on any of literature, have they an opinion of their own. As good, as fashionable, as beautiful as in England, is the climax of praise; nor has any thing a chance to be reckoned either good, or fashionable, or beautiful, unless it comes from England, or has been approved of there. The after

piece was the Budget of Blunders, a farce which met with much illiberal opposition last winter in London, for no other reason, I believe, but the opinions its author was supposed to entertain on the riots which a short time before had disgraced Covent Garden;—it was highly and deservedly applauded here. A Mr. Farran exerted his talents with much effect in Dr. Smugface; I should have seen him I dare say with more pleasure, had I not seen Liston in the same part; but his humour is of so truly comic and original a nature, that every actor of his parts sinks in the comparison—in a particular sort of dry and quaint humour, in simplicity pretending to cunning, in vivacity that affects to be grave, in vacuity that seems to think, in the wisdom of folly, and the folly of wisdom, this actor stands unrivalled.

Their excellencies the Duke and Duchess of Richmond were present; they came in before the commencement of the play, and I understand were received with the highest applause: the duchess is a plain-looking middle-aged woman. The duke I did not distinctly see, nor did he, I fancy, see much of what was going on-he seemed little taken " with the cunning of the scene;" indeed, from the posture he sat in, I thought he was sleeping; but this is no imputation on his grace's taste; I know by experience that the Three Knights is a very powerful narcotic. He brightened up, however, at the farce, and laughed so heartily, (in which the audience, as in duty bound, accompanied him) that the author himself, had he been present, would have been satisfied, and pronounced him a most judicious critic and enlightened lord lieutenant.

This was a day of meeting with great people; in

the morning, as I was walking with a friend in Dame Street, he desired me to look at a man who was coming towards us: I looked both at him and after him— “Do you see any thing remarkable there?" asked he. "Very," I replied; "he is remarkably ordinary, and remarkably mean-looking." "He is remarkably clever," said my companion; "that is Mr. C—, the celebrated advocate !" Bodily and mental beauty (though I have known some instances to the contrary) seldom go together. If Mr. C's talents are as great as his appearance is unprepossessing, he must be one of the brightest men in the world: he is little, and dark complexioned; but as he was dressed in a full suit of black, probably looked less than he really is.

A few moments afterwards I was lucky enough to meet with Mr. Grattan, whom, though I had heard him once or twice before in the House of Commons, I might be now said to see for the first time. I viewed, with mingled sentiments of respect and admiration, the man, whose transcendent abilities reflect such lustre on the country which gave him birth; which his talents. have ennobled, and his eloquence freed; and who, during a period of thirty years, has proved himself the steady and inflexible patriot, faithful to his country, but loyal to his king. During his long political life, Mr. Grattan has often experienced the uncertainty of popular favour: in turn praised and abused, he was pronounced the saviour, and afterwards the betrayer of his country: his picture was put up with shouts and acclamations in the common-hall of this city, and afterwards taken down with curses and execrations. Regardless of ephemeral and evanescent popularity, he still held the even tenor of his way; unterrified by the frowns of government, and unseduced by the erroneous

judgments of the mob. He acted from the dictates of his own conscience, and found in the approbation of his own heart, the best reward of virtuous deeds.

As an orator he is in the foremost class; he is not only the first at present in the House of Commons, but, perhaps, the greatest who ever had a seat there; he is not a frequent speaker however he is neither a fluent nor eloquent haranguer on the common business and details of parliament: on such occasions his manner seems trifling and insignificant; his action ungraceful, and his words studiously sought, and obtained with difficulty: but on a grand question of justice or morality, which involves the existence and security of government, the happiness of the present and of succeeding generations, his mind grows with the subject; he is wrapt and carried away as it were out of himself; and he seems to his astonished hearers, something more than human. Like Achilles, his arguments scatter death upon his opponents; the fire of his eloquence dries up and withers opposition like the lightning of heaven: the power of generalizing, which Mr. Grattan possesses, is most extraordinary, and is the true criterion of the orator as well as of the poet, ❝ who are of imagination both compact." Every sentence is an aphorism on which pages might be written; a text on which sermons might be preached; he reviews the past, he dives into the future, which he foretells with almost prophetic exactness; and in the bold frenzy of his oratory, as he pours forth the heavy denunciations of impending punishment on folly and misrule, he seems rather an oracle in the act of inspiration, than a public speaker. I remember well on the speech he made about two years ago on the Catholic question-(a speech which in my opinion might have impressed