circumstances no small degree of scenic effect. I remember, for instance, to have seen some years since one of the sidegalleries of the Court of King's Bench occupied by an entire ship's crew of Dutch smugglers, brought up, under writs of habeas corpus, from one of the prisons on the southern coast of Ireland; and while Mr. Perrin, as their counsel, was moving that they should be discharged from illegal custody, and pres sing the court with arguments and cases, it was curious to observe his weather-beaten clients, with their bluff figures and contraband visages, how intently they looked on as their fate was debated in (to them) an unknown tongue, and with what a singular promptness they appeared to discover, from mere external signs-from the looks and gestures of the Judges or the auditors that their counsel was making way with the court. Their deliverance, I recollect, was effected; and if they and the hundreds of others of their trade and country, whom Mr. Perrin has similarly rescued from an Irish prison, have any gratitude, his must be a well-known and popular name in the Dutch ports. Mr. Perrin's professional eminence was not his sole ground of claim to the honor of representing the city of Dublin in Parliament: he had a further and stronger recommendation to the public confidence in the vigor and integrity of his personal character. The political principles which he avows have now, in the circle of events, become the reigning doctrine of the day, and the merit may be small of professing such principles at the present moment. Mr. Perrin's praise is, that what he now is, he has always been; that under circumstances the most adverse to professional advancement, he entered into no compromise between his interests and opinions, but in every stage of his progress asserted himself and the dignity of his profession by an erect and independent bearing; he did so in a temper and spirit the most remote from faction, but he met with little mercy. He had incurred the virtue of public spirit, and was marked for discouragement—even the poor distinction of a silk-gown was delayed until Lord Manners's last general levee of King's counsel; and even then it was understood that Mr. Perrin would have been designedly omitted, had not the Lord Chief Justice, to whose better spirit what is just and manly is always familiar, peremptorily interposed his authority, as the head of the common-law bar, against an act of such unworthy partisanship. I fear that I am trespassing on the ground of the "Sketches of the Irish Bar;" but, as I have gone so far,* let me say a word of Mr. Perrin's personal appearance. It is not so remarkable as to attract examination; but when you examine it, you find its unostentatious simplicity to be strikingly accordant with his mind and character. His figure is about the middle size, and slightly approaching to corpulence. He has black hair, a dark complexion, and regular Roman features. Though no one has a quicker perception of mirth, or enjoys it more heartily, the habitual expression of his countenance is graveness, even perhaps to a touch of sadness; the latter, however, * Mr. Perrin was worthy of a distinct place in these "Sketches," for few lawyers had so much to contend with, on account of particular family circumstances (of no interest to the public), which, for a time clouded his prospects. The touch of sadness upon his countenance was caused, I doubt not, by the raisconduct of a near relative, which met with exemplary punishment from the law. The Irish attorneys, among whom this person had once been enrolled, considered it hard that an innocent man should suffer, from a sort of reflected cloud, and generously showed their sympathy, by throwing as much business into Mr. Perrin's hands as they safely could. In a short time, proving equal to the labor, his great ability obtained, as a right, that practice which, at first had been conceded as a favor. In customs and excise cases, he was unapproached, almost from the first.-As I am on a legal question, and have arrived at the close of this work, let me add, in reference to the conviction of John Scanlan, at Limerick, in 1820, for murder on the Shannon (as detailed in the sketch called "An Irish Circuit," in the first volume), that Mr. Sheil treating of the facts, and Gerald Griffin, working them up into romantic fiction, strangely omitted two strong points. The first, as to motive. Sullivan confessed to Scanlan's desire to get rid, by murder, of the poor young creature whom he had seduced (by mock marriage), "because she kept calling him her husband." The second, showing the malice prepense, was that the crime was delayed until Scanlan had purchased a boat, in which the victim was to be carried out of sight of land, and there" done to death," and until a blacksmith had made a chain and collar to tie round her neck, attached to a heavy stone, to sink the body. I have read the report of the trial, since I annotated Mr. Sheil's detail of facts, but only in time to put the statement into this place.-At this last moment, too, I perceive that the Marchioness Wellesley (the heroine of the Dublin Tabinet Ball, Vol. i.) died at Hampton Court Palace, near London, on December 17, 1853.—M. I apprehend to be nothing more than the mere trace of the laborious occupations in which his life has been passed. On the whole, I would say of his exterior, including face, and form, and apparel, that it was individualized by a certain republican homeliness, intimating a natural, careless manliness of taste, and not without its peculiar dignity. I intended, when I sat down, to have entered upon some of the details of the Dublin election and its sequel; but the subject, I find, would carry me too far: let me therefore for the present merely say that, after an obstinate struggle, the corporation, that cumbrous excrescence upon our institutions, was fairly prostrated, and the popular candidates returned. The triumph was celebrated with all due rites and solemnities. I witnessed the chairing from a window in Grafton street. The sun shone brightly on the procession as it passed-but not more brightly than the countenance of our venerable and patriotic veteran, Mr. Peter Burrowes, who had taken his station at an opposite balcony, and looked down (as his friend Louis Perrin was wafted along) with a smile of joyous and ineffabie thanksgiving, that he had been spared to see that day. INDEX. ABDUCTION, Trials for, i., 42 Abinger, Lord (See Sir James Scar- Acres, The Fifteen, ii., 166 Adelaide, Queen, and the Melbourne Affidavit, Oratory of the, i., 72 71 "All Ireland, Member for," i., 257 367 Amherst, Lord, his Embassy to China, Anglesey, Marquis of, encourages Irish AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION, i., !? Ball, the Dublin Tabinet. i., 328 Costume in Ireland, ii., 1 French, i., 194 Irish, i., 62; Qualifications for Precedence at the, ii., 98; Train Antidote, The, Sir Harcourt Lees' Jour-Barrister and Attorney, different Status Anti-Tithe Emeute in Limerick, i., 229 of, i., 28 Barrister, Confessions of a Junior, ii., 154 Barry, Sir Charles, Architect, i., 254 Assizes, at Limerick, i., 151; at Wex-Bellamy's, i., 158; Scene at, ii., 251 Attorney and Barrister, different Status Attorneys, how admitted to the Bar, Bellew, Sir Edward, ii., 92 Beresfords, the, i., 242 Best, Chief-Justice (Lord Wynford),| Bethel, Counsellor of the Half-Crown,' Bexley, Lord, Notice of, ii., 352 Bible-Teaching, O'Connell on, i., 223 3ridge of Wexford, Massacre on the, Brinkley, Bishop, the Astronomer, i., 330 Bristol, Earl of (Bishop of Derry), Burrowes, Peter-his Absence of Mind, Burton, Judge, Notice of, i., 273; at Memoir of, i., 146; Elevation to Butler, Charles, ii., 91; Memoir of, 197 Butler, Sir Theobald, ii., 79; Capitu- Byron, Lady, ii., 3-18 tice of, i., 234; Anecdote of, 386 his Chancery Reform, 97; Memoir Brummell, and the Duke of Leinster, Brunswick Clubs, ii., 315 Buggins, Lady Cecilia (Duchess of In- Bulls, Irish (vide Sir Boyle Roche), Burdett, Sir Francis, Notice of, ii., 203; Burke, Edmund, Memoir of, i, 238 138; Monody on Sheridan, 139; on Callaghan, Daniel and Gerald, ii., 76 Campbell, Lord, Plunket's bon-mol up- |