of respect as to take you for its first freely chosen. chief magistrate; but still more that you should thus have opened to you an additional and most available means of advancing that great measure, which will be the compensation for all your labours and sufferings-as it is, and has been, the great object of your life—the raising Ireland to her proper condition as a nation. The importance to Ireland of your present position is as yet scarcely considered or known.

"I can well imagine the ecstacy of the poor people. It is time for them to have some triumph, and to have a friend and friends in the Corporation. Ray, too, must be in great delight: and no man merits the pleasure of the triumph better than he who has worked so hard to organise and carry on the struggle for it.

"There are a thousand inquiries here, and most anxious hopes that you will be at Darrynane after this month. You ought indeed make an effort to come, and break through all minor restraints. You will want some fresh air, if only for three or four weeks; and after the wet summer and autumn that we have had, it will go very hard if we do not have good weather with the hard frosts."

* * * *

But O'Connell's duties as chief magistrate opposed an additional barrier to his annual visit to the

country. On Thursdays he held his weekly court in Green-street. On the first day's sitting the court was, of course, extremely crowded. The tipstaves tried to clear it. "Let all persons leave the place that haven't business," shouted Traill, one of these functionaries who had been retained from the former corporation.

"In Cork," said O'Connell, "I remember the crier trying to disperse the crowd by exclaiming'All ye blackguards that isn't lawyers, quit the coort !'"

Among the cases on the first day, was a claim for some alleged arrear of wages made on a Catholic priest. The priest brought proofs of the claimant's utter incompetence as a servant; but the Lord Mayor decreed the amount sought for.

"It amuses me much," said he, "to think that on the very first day of my sitting, I had to make a decree against a priest."

He must have been terribly bored with the insignificant and noisy disputes on which, as Mayor, he was called to adjudicate. Take the following specimen:-In a case of trivial import, a Mr. Kenny, the defendant, made a rambling, violent, and incoherent speech in his own defence, before the plaintiff's case was stated. Mr. Kenny concluded his harangue with a hope "that

he had made an impression on the Lord Mayor's judicial faculties."

66

"You have," said O'Connell," performed a very common piece of blockheadism-you have made a rigmarole speech in reply to a case which hadn't yet been made." Macnamara (the plaintiff) here stated his claim with a torrent of verbosity. "The best thing for me to do," said O'Connell," is to dismiss this plaintiff's claim as being wholly unintelligible." He had not made the slightest approach to an intelligible case. Why, my lord," said Macnamara, "I think I have shown your lordship that I claim thirteen days at 3s. 4d. per day." "So you have said, sir," answered O'Connell. "I hope I may not meet such another pair while I'm Lord Mayor. Macnamara is a man with an enormous deal of talk, and Kenny is a man without the slightest accuracy. Between you both you have bothered the case. I make the best conjectural decree I can-I give three pounds to Macnamara."

In another case the following characteristic little scene occurred. It was a question of accounts, in which a person named Burke was plaintiff.

"Mr. Burke," quoth the attorney, "did you keep a book?"

"I never kept a book," cried Burke, very angrily.

"I'll tell you what you'll keep," said O'Connell,

-"keep your temper."

"Were you boarded in the house of

ployer?" inquired the attorney.

your em

"What has this to do with the case?" roared

Burke, ferociously.

"There never was a question," said O'Connell, "that required so little anger. You were asked if you got something to eat, whereupon you break out into a passion!"

The following pun, not the worst I have heard, was made by one of the attorneys. An old gentleman accused his servant, among other thefts, of having stolen his stick. The servant protested perfect innocence. "Why, you know," rejoined the complainant, "that the stick could never have walked off with itself."—" Certainly not," said the attorney for the defence, "unless it was a walkingstick."

CHAPTER III.

"Duke O'Neill's Will"-Malachi's Collar-"Cousin Kane”— O'Grady and the Limerick Jurors-"Evangelical" Missionaries-Barnewall's Lottery-Ticket-The Picture-Dealer and the Flat-Judge Day-Forensic Eloquence-Scott's Novels -O'Connell at Court.

SPEAKING of his professional recollections, O'Connell mentioned a curious fraud which had sent him many applicants who dreamed of participating in enormous wealth; the visionary hope of which was excited by the following device :—A smart attorney's clerk, who had a mind for a cheap summer's ramble, forged a document purporting to be the will of a certain Duke O'Neill, who had died childless in Spain, having amassed 1,200,0007., which enormous sum he bequeathed to be equally divided between all his Irish cousins bearing the name of O'Neill, within the fortieth degree of kindred! The fabricator bent his course to the