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could the movement of his arteries; and the effect upon the minds of strangers to his peculiarities may naturally enough have been unfavorable: but when the question arisen is a denial of a collateral and unessential matter of fact, a lapse of memory, or a meditated suppression, surely every one, who would not wantonly shake the stability of character, should feel bound to put the tenor of a long and honorable life against a most improbable supposition.

This was the view taken by those who knew him best: among the rest, by the late Mr. Grattan, whose friendship alone formed high evidence of a spotless reputation. For thirty years Mr. Grattan had been his intimate friend, and had seen him pass through the ordeal of times which tried, as far as any earthly process can try, the worth and honor of a man and what was his impassioned exclamation? "Mr. Goold is thoroughly known to me. I would stake ence upon his integrity, as I would upon my own. not to be trusted, I know not who is to be trusted!" To this attestation, and its inference, I can not but cordially subscribe.

my

exist

If he is

JOHN HENRY NORTH.

I LOOK upon MR. NORTH to be in several respects a very interesting person. He is immediately so by the great respectability of his character and talents. He is at the same time a subject that less directly invites the attention and speculation of an observer, in consequence of certain predicaments of situation and feeling, upon which his lot has cast him, and in discussing which the mind must, of necessity, ascend from the qualities and the fortunes of the individual to considerations of a higher and more lasting concern. If I were to treat of him solely as a practising barrister, possessed of certain legal attributes, and having reached a determined station, the task would be short and simple. But this would be unjust. Mr. North's mind and acquirements, and, it may be added, his personal history, entitle him to a more extended notice, and, in some points of view, to greater commendation, not unmingled, however, with occasional regrets, than his merely forensic career would claim.

It is now about fifteen years since Mr. North was called to the Irish bar. He was called, not merely by the bench of

*John Henry North, born in 1789, went through Trinity College, Dublin, with brilliant success, obtaining such distinctions there that no one for a century had a higher collegiate reputation. In 1811, he was called to the bar, and immediately established a name for cloquence and legal acumen. He was married in 1818, to the sister of John Leslie Foster, afterward a Judge, and a near relative of Lord Oriel. Mr. North, whose character for oratory was very high, was brought into Parliament, in 1824, for an English borough, by Canning, to whom he was known. He was returned for an Irish borough in 1831, and by no means equalled the expectations of his political friends. In 1830, on the removal of Sir Jonah Barrington, the office of Judge of the Admiralty

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legal elders performing the technical ceremony of investment, but by the unanimous voices of a host of admiring friends, so numerous as to be in themselves a little public, who fondly predicted that his career would form a new and brilliant era in the annals of Irish oratory. This feeling was not an absurd and groundless partiality. There was, in truth, no previous instance of a young man making his entry into the Four Courts, under circumstances so imposing and prophetic of a high destination. He had already earned the fame of being destined to be famous. In his college course he had outstripped every competitor. He there obtained an optime—an attestation of rare occurrence, and to be extorted only by merit of the highest order in all of the several classical and scientific departments, upon which the intellect of the student is made to sustain a public scrutiny into the extent of its powers and

attainments.

The Historical Society was not yet suppressed.* Mr. North was accounted its most shining ornament. It was an established custom that each of its periodical sessions should be

Court in Ireland was conferred upon Mr. North, by the Duke of Wellington. When the Reform Bill was brought forward by Earl Grey's administration, its details were opposed by Mr. North, who considered it a revolutionary measure; Canning whose politics he held, had always opposed Parliamentary Reform. Mr. North died in September, 1831, at the early age of forty-two.

*The Historical Society, long connected with the University of Dublin, was at once the nursery and the school of Irish Eloquence. There some of the great men who have made history, learned the difficult task of public speaking, which has been well defined to be the art of thinking on one's legs. In that arena, Sheil himself was schooled in rhetoric. Among the later orators in this Society were Charles Wolfe, author of the noble lyric, "Not a drum was heard," in which he described the burial of Sir John Moore, who fell, in January, 1809, during the retreat at Corunna. The liberal principles professed and vindicated in the Historical Society, induced the University authorities first to discountenance it, next to restrict its license, then to drive it out of connection with the College, and finally to suppress it. The Speculative Society of Edinburgh, of which an account is given in Lockhart's "Life of Scott"-the place where Jeffrey, Brougham, and their compeers, learned to be eloquent—appears to have much resembled the Historical Society of Dublin. So, also, to this hour, are the Debating Clubs (called “The Union”), at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, where Heber and Gladstone, as well as Macaulay and Bulwer, first gained distinction among their fellows.-M.

closed by a parting address from the chair, reviewing and commending the objects of the institution. The task, as a mark of honor, was assigned to Mr. North. It was the last of his academic efforts, and is still referred to by those who heard him, as a rare and felicitous example of youthful enthusiasm for eloquence and letters, soaring above the commonplaces of panegyric, and dignifying its raptures by the most luminous views, and by illustrations drawn from the resources of a pure and lofty imagination. It was pronounced to be a masterpiece, and the author urged to extend the circle of his admirers by consenting to its publication. But he had the modesty or the discretion to refuse; and the public were deprived of a composition which, whatever might be its other merits, would at least have told as a glowing satire upon the miserable, monastic spirit, that soon after abolished the Historical Society as a perilous innovation upon the primitive objects of the royal foundress of Trinity College. It is edifying to add, that John Locke's Treatise on Government was also pronounced to inspire doctrines that would have met no countenance "in the golden days of good Queen Bess ;" and as such, was expelled from the college course.

Mr. North's talents for public speaking were further exercised, and with increasing reputation, in the Academical Society of London. The impression that he made there attracted numerous visiters. He had now to stand the brunt of an audience little predisposed to be fascinated by provincial declamation. But the severest judges of Irish oratory admitted that his was copious, brilliant, and, best of all, correct. He was pronounced by some to be fitted for the highest purposes of the senate. It was even whispered that a ministerial member (a fortunate emigrant from Ireland, who had lately proved his capacity for less delicate commissions), had been secretly deputed from Downing street to "look in" at the academies,

*Downing street in London is a cul-de-sac in Parliament street, close to the Horse-Guards, and in the vicinity of the Legislature. The principal offices of the State Administration are in this street-or rather were, as they have latterly been much increased, and their principal façade (which has many architectural beauties, and was erected by Sir Charles Barry, the architect of the New Houses of Parliament) is in Whitehall. The Colonial and Foreign Offi

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and report upon the expediency of tendering a borough and a place to the youthful orator. But whether it was that the honorable and learned missionary had no taste for a style of eloquence above his own; or that he missed that native audacity which he could so well appreciate; or that he had the shrewdness to infer, from certain popular tendencies in the speaker's cast of thought, that he might turn out not to be a marketable man- the experiment upon Mr. North's virgin ambition, if ever meditated, was not exposed to the risk of failure. The murmur, however, ran that such a proposal had been in agitation. Mr. North's growing celebrity had all the benefit of the rumor; and when he shortly after appeared in the Irish Hall, he was considered to have perched upon that bleak and arid waste as upon a mere place of passage, whence, at the expected season of transmigration, he was to wing his flight to a brighter and more congenial clime. This latter event, however, contrary to the calculations and wishes of all who knew him, was for years delayed. It is only the other day that Mr. North has at length been summoned to the Senate.*

In the interval, his progress at the bar, however flattering it might be to a person of ordinary pretensions, has not realized the auspicious anticipations under which his coming was announced. Wherever he has been tried, he has proved his legal competency. In some of the qualifications for professional eminence, and, among them, those in which a proud but unambitious man would most desire to excel-in a sound and comprehensive knowledge of general principles, and a facility of developing them in lucid and imposing language, he need not shrink from a comparison with a single contemporary rival.

ces are in Downing street: the Home and Council Offices, with the Board of Trade, the Commissioners of Education, Treasury, and Woods and Forests, are in Whitehall, in connection with Downing street. The War Office and the Admiralty are between the Treasury buildings and Charing-Cross.-M.

* Mr. North first was returned in 1825, for Milbourne Port, a small borough under the influence of the Marquis of Anglesey, who was then in friendly relations with Canning, under whom he held office two years later. Milbourne Port (which was disfranchised in 1832, by the Reform Bill) was represented, in 1830-31, by Mr. Sheil.-M.