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REALITY V. ROMANCE.

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from her father's office. I acquitted myself so much to his satisfaction, that he sent me another, and another, and finally installed me as one of his standing counsel for the junior business of his office. The opportunities thus afforded me brought me by degrees into notice. In the course of time, general business began to drop in upon me, and has latterly been increasing into such a steady stream, that I am now inclined to look upon my final success as secure.

I have only to add, that the twelve years I have passed at the Irish Bar have worked a remarkable change in some of my early tastes and opinions. I no longer, for instance, trouble my head about immortal fame; and, such is the force of habit, have brought myself to look upon a neatly-folded brief, with a few crisp Bank-of-Ireland notes on the back of it, as, beyond all controversy, the most picturesque object upon. which the human eye can alight.

LORD MANNERS.

On the 31st day of July, in the year of our Lord 1827, Lord Manners, the late Keeper of his Majesty's Irish Conscience, bade the Irish bar farewell.* The scene which took place upon that melancholy occasion deserves to be recorded. It being understood that an address of professional condolence on behalf of the more loyal portion of the bar was to be pronounced by that tender enunciator of pathetic sentiment, the Attorney-General, the Court of Chancery was crowded at an early hour. The members of the Beef-Steak Club, with countenances in which it was difficult to determine whether their grief at the anticipated "export" from Ireland, or the traces

* Lord Manners, was son of Lord George Manners, of the Ducal house of Rutland. He was born in 1756, was educated at Cambridge, where he obtained the honor of being fifth wrangler, and, having been called to the bar, in due time became Solicitor-General to the Prince of Wales, and one of his parlia mentary adherents. In 1802, when made Solicitor-General to the king, he was knighted. In 1803 he was one of the official prosecutors of Colonel Despard, tried and executed for high treason. He was made one of the Barons of the Exchequer in 1805, and in 1807 was raised to the peerage, on being appointed Lord-Chancellor of Ireland, as successor to Mr. Ponsonby. On demanding the Seals, with all wonted formality, he discovered that he had accidentally left behind him the authority for assuming the new dignity! Lord Manners held the Irish Chancellorship for twenty years-until July, 1827, when he was recalled, and succeeded by Sir Anthony Hart. As an equity judge, he wanted capacity, and was further deficient, by being a decided political partisan. Many of his judgments were reversed by the House of Lords, and nothing but the fact that he was ultra-Protestant in his principles could have retained him, so long, in a position where the general opinion of the profession as to his conduct and qualifications was contemptuous in the extreme. He died in May, 1842, aged eighty-six.-M.

HIS FRIENDSHIP FOR MR. SAURIN.

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of their multitudinous convivialities, enjoyed a predominance, filled the galleries on either side. The junior aristocracy of the bar, for whom the circuits have few attractions, occupied the body of the court; while the multitude of King's counsel, in whom his Majesty scarcely finds a verification of the divine. Saying of Solomon, were arrayed along the benches, where it is their prerogative to sit, in the enjoyment of that leisure which the public so unfrequently disturb. The assembly looked exceedingly dejected and blank. A competition in sorrow appeared to have been got up between the rival admirers of his Lordship, the Pharisees of Leeson and the Sadducees of the Beef-Steak Club. "The Saints," however, from their habitual longitude of visage, and the natural alliance between their lugubrious devotion and despair, had a decided advantage over the statesmen of revelry and the legislators of song; and it was admitted on all hands that Mr. M'Kaskey should yield the palm of condolence to a certain pious Sergeant, into whom the whole spirit of the prophet Jeremy appeared to have been infused.

But the person most deserving of attention was Mr. Saurin. Lord Manners had been his intimate associate for twenty years. He had, upon his Lordship's first arrival in Ireland, pre-occupied his mind; he took advantage of his opportunities of access, and, having crept like an earwig into his audience, he at last effected a complete lodgment in his mind. Mr. Saurin established a masterdom over his faculties, and gave to all his passions the direction of his own. A very close intimacy grew up between them, which years of intercourse cemented into regard. They were seen every day walking together to the court, with that easy lounge which indicated the carelessness and equality of their friendship. In one instance only had Lord Manners been wanting in fidelity to his companion. He had been commissioned to inform him (at least he was himself six months before apprized of the intended movement) that Mr. Plunket would, in return for his services to the Administration, be raised to the office of Attorney-General for Ireland. Had Mr. Saurin been informed of this determination, he might have acted more wisely than he did, when, in a fit of what his

advocates have been pleased to call magnanimity, but which was nothing else than a paroxysm of offended arrogance, he declined the Chief Justiceship of the King's Bench! Lord Wellesley took him at his word, and gave him no opportunity to retrace his steps. He would not, at all events, have been taken unawares. Mr. Saurin is not conspicuous for his tendencies to forgiveness, but he pardoned the person in whose favor, of all others, a barrister should make an exception from his vindictive habits. Their intercourse was renewed; and whatever might have been the state of their hearts, their arms continued to be linked together. This intimacy was noted by the solicitors, and, although deprived of his official power, Mr. Saurin retained his business, and the importance which attends it.

The resignation, therefore, of Lord Manners, to whose court. his occupations were confined, was accounted a personal misfortune to himself. From the peculiar circumstances in which he was placed, he drew the general notice in the scene of separation, and was an object of interest to those who, without any political sympathy or aversion, are observers of feeling, and students of the human heart. In justice to him it should be stated that his bearing did not greatly deviate from his ordinary demeanor, and that he still looked the character which he had been for some time playing, if not with profit, yet not without applause, as the stoic of Orangeism, and the Cato of "a falling state." Not that he appeared altogether insensible, but, in his sympathies, his own calamities did not seem to have any very ostensible share: any expression of a melancholy

*He was succeeded by Sir Anthony Hart, born in 1759 at St Kitt's, in the West Indies. He was once a Unitarian preacher at Norwich; went to the English bar; practised in equity for many years, and with such success that he was then made Master of the Rolls, succeeded Sir John Leach as Vice-Chancellor of England, in April, 1827, and was then knighted. In Ireland he gave much satisfaction, by reason of the soundness and impartiality of his judgments. He literally had no politics, and prided himself on being a lawyer and nothing else in strong contrast to his predecessor, who was a political partisan and not much of a lawyer. He retired from office, at the close of 1830, when the Grey Ministry appointed Plunket to succeed him, and died December, 1831, aged seventy-two.-M.

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kind, that was perceivable through his dark and Huguenot complexion, seemed to arise more immediately from the pains of friendship than from any sentiment in more direct connection with himself.

I can not avoid thinking, however, that his mind must have been full of scorpion recollections: there was, at least, one incident which must have deeply stung him. Had the address to Lord Manners been pronounced by Mr. Plunket, Mr. Saurin might have been reconciled to the representation of the bar, in the person of a man who had long approved himself his superior. But to see his own proselyte holding the place to which he had acquired a sort of prescriptive right, and to witness in Henry Joy the Attorney-General to a Whig Administration, while he was himself without distinction or office, was, I am sure, a source of corrosive feelings, and must have pained him to the core.

It would, however, have been a misfortune for the lovers of ridicule, if any man except Mr. Joy had pronounced the address which was delivered to the departing Chancellor. He is a great master of mockery, and looks a realization of Goethe's Mephistophiles. So strong is his addiction to that species of satire which is contained in exaggerated praise, that he scarcely ever resorts to any other species of vituperation. Nature has been singularly favorable to him. His short and upturned nose is admirably calculated to toss his sarcasms off; his piercing and peering eyes gleam and flash in the voluptuousness of malice, and exhibit the keen delight with which he revels in ridicule and luxuriates in derision. His chin is protruded, like that of the Cynic listening to St. Paul, in Raphael's Cartoon. His muscles are full of flexibility, and are capable of adapting themselves to every modification of irony. They have the advantage, too, of being covered with a skin that dimples into sneers with a plastic facility, and looks like a manuscript of Juvenal found in the ashy libraries of Herculaneum. In this eminent advocate, such an assemblage of physiognomical qualifications for irony are united, as I scarcely think the countenance of any orator in the ancient city of Sardos could have presented. His face was an admirable commentary

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