mined enemy of Reform-got hold of the Speaker; and, in the course of a brief conversation, the latter informed him that for eight entire days and nights he had never been from under the roof of the House of Commons. The House had been sitting from three o'clock in the afternoon till three and four o'clock in the morning; and then the business of the committees commenced at ten o'clock, to which he was obliged to give a good deal of attention. He spoke of the labor as being greater than any physical strength could endure. When this fact is known, it ceases to be wonderful that he should be anxious, as has been long reported, to exchange the conspicu ous and most honorable situation which he now holds, for that of the youngest peerage, and become second to such insignificancies as Bexley and Sidmouth.* Leaving Farnham, the Speaker was engaged for a short time with Lord Nugent and the Marquis of Clauricarde. Both of these noble Lords appeared in the splendid costume which I believe is characteris tic of the diplomatic corps. Nugent is evidently a person of the most accomplished manners. The perpetual play of goodhumor on his agreeable features shows that the severity of his politics does not arise from any harshness of disposition. It will be recollected that he was the subject of one of Canning's pleasantries in regard to the Portuguese expedition; which, however, had little point, unless his Lordship had been a very stout man-but this is not the fact. A much larger person than Lord Nugent would have occasioned no inconvenience to

*The late Nicholas Vansittart, Chancellor of the Exchequer, from 1812 to 1823, was created Baron Bexley. Henry Addington, successively Speaker, Premier, and Home Secretary, was created Viscount Sidmouth in 1805, and died in 1844.-M.

Lord Nugent, born in 1789, sat in Parliament over twenty years; was Lord-Commissioner of the Ionian Islands from 1832 to 1835; and died in November, 1850. His politics were liberal, and he had considerable literary taste. The Marquis of Clanricarde, Canning's son-in-law, was born in 1802, represents the De Burgh or Burke family, and claims to be descended from Charlemagne. He has been Ambassador to Russia, and Postmaster-General. Before 1831, there was a good deal of town-talk about a young man of property having been "pigeoned" at cards, at Richmond, near London, and it was said that Lord Clanricarde was one of the party; but the scandal blew over, and no proof was given of the imputations on "the noble Marquis."— M.

the heavy Falmouth van. Lord Clanricarde is only remarkable for his connection with Canning. His countenance is anything but pleasing his fondness for play is well known, and had at one time placed him in a disagreeable dilemma.

The last person of note who arrived, before I departed, was Sir Thomas Denman.* The Chancellor was engaged with some one at the moment, and nothing passed between them but an exchange of bows. It was nearly ten years since I had seen Brougham and Denman together: the Queen's trial was then the all-engrossing topic of public consideration. Who could then have foretold that these men would have in so short a space won the confidence of a sovereign, whom they attacked with a degree of virulence which, even in those days of party violence, was generally condemned? The change in feeling is creditable alike to all.

* Thomas Denman, born in February, 1779, and created Baron Denman, of Dovedale, in the County Derby, in March, 1834, was son of a physician in London. He was called to the bar in 1806; went the Midland circuit, entered Parliament in 1818; became Solicitor-General to Queen Caroline in 1820; was elected Common Sergeant of London, in 1822; was made King's Counsel, with a patent of precedency, in 1826; was made Attorney-General, under the Grey Ministry in 1830; was made Chief Justice of England in 1832; raised to the peerage in 1834; and compelled, under Lord John Russell's Ministry, in 1850, to resign, on the plea of advanced years, to make room for Lord Campbell (only two years his junior), for whom a job of the same character had been perpetrated, in 1841, when Lord Plunket was literally turned out of the Irish Chancellorship, in order to give Lord Campbell a legal claim to a life-pension of four thousand pounds sterling. As an advocate, Denman was bold and eloquent; his denunciation, on the Queen's trial, of the Duke of Clarence (afterward William IV.) as a "royal slanderer," was decided and fearless-ten years afterward, this prince, as Sovereign, accepted Denman as nis first law officer. As a judge, he was just and constitutional. In politics, he has always been liberal. In Parliament, he was a ready debater. During the Reform Bill discussions, Sir C. Wetherell compared Old Sarum (for which three men elected two members) to Macedon. "Yes," replied Denman, "Macedon was ruled by an Alexander:"--an East India Director, named Alexander, was then one the (so-called) representatives of this nominal borough, with one house, three voters, and two Members, while Manchester, population four hundred thou sand, was wholly unrepresented--- M.

STATE OF PARTIES IN DUBLIN, IN 1831.

On the 5th of this month of May [1831], my business led me into the Four Courts, Dublin; and on the way, by a train of associations too obvious to require to be analyzed, my mind involuntarily reverted to the past, and took note of the vicissitudes produced since I last wrote. But it was only when I found myself in that emporium of law, and politics, and gossip the Hall of the Four Courts-that I felt in all their force the variety and extent of those mutations. The scene and the majority of the actors were still the same, and the general resemblance, at the first view, appeared unimpaired; but, upon a nearer scrutiny, how striking and singular had been the changes!

Of these actors, for instance, one of the first that attracted my attention was Mr. William Bellew, a Roman Catholic barrister of great personal respectability, and of just repute in certain departments of his profession. In his general aspect there was little perceptible alteration. Time, as if from a kindly feeling toward an old acquaintance, seemed to have spared him more than younger men. I found the same spire-like altitude of frame; the same solemn, spectral stride; the same grave and somewhat querulous, but not undignified cast of feature. "In his own proper person," in face and form, Mr. Bellew was such as I had seen him in his penal days; but what a transfiguration had been accomplished in his gown! How omnipotent must have been that act of Parliament which had substituted his present rustling silk attire for the dingy, tattered fustian, in which I had so often seen him haunting the precincts of the Court of Chancery, and which he had vowed to

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wear while a rag of it remained, as an ensign of reproach to the presiding bigot of the court! But Lord Manners and his tenets had passed away, and Mr. Bellew's epitaph may state that he too, in his generation, was one of his Majesty's counselat-law.

My eye, turning from Mr. Bellew, soon rested upon several other barristers of his creed, who, like him, had been taking the benefit of the statute. Among them, and apparently the youngest of the group, was Mr. O'Loghlin, upon whom Emancipation had fortunately come just at a period of his career when promotion, being possible, was inevitable. He is already one of the three sergeants, and, if the orisons of the public can confer length of days, the highest judicial office is his certain destination.

But the most singular of those metamorphoses, which, when I last addressed you, it would have been maniacal to have predicted, was exhibited in the personal identity and present offiċial attributes of the worthy ex-Secretary of the ex-Catholic Association, Mr. Nicholas Purcel O'Gorman. This excellent and best-tempered of organized beings, who, during a life devoted to the angry politics of Ireland, has made as many friends as another would have created enemies-who was ever frank and fearless in the expression of his opinions, even though one of those opinions was and is that "St. Paul was a decided Orangeman"-now stood before me, transformed into nothing less than a public functionary, by title Cursitor, of that very court in which Mr. Saurin had pleaded and Lord Manners had presided. The selection, I am bound to add, has been pronounced by the public, from whose discernment in such matters there is no appeal, to have been worthy of the exalted person to whom, fortunately for Ireland, higher functions than the extension of mere acts of considerateness toward meritorious individuals have been again committed.

I approached the group, to whom Mr. O'Gorman, who had been recently sworn in, was detailing with humorous exaggeration the weighty responsibilities that had descended upon his rather Atlantean shoulders. The Cursitor's office, I collected from him, was one of the great fountain-heads of justice, whence

litigation flowed in streams or torrents through the land. It was emphatically the officina brerium, the inner temple of ori ginal writs, and the Cursitor the high-priest, without whose signature, now written with majestic brevity, "O'Gorman," those sacred documents would want their legal potency. I was gratified, however, to hear Mr. O'Gorman add, which he did with a glance of no doubtful meaning at one of his auditors, who had been an unsuccessful expectant under the old régime, that his hierarchal cares were in some measure soothed by sundry daily and not unwelcome offerings from the deve tees at the shrine over which he had been appointed to preside. It was an office of trust coupled with emolument, a coincidence which Mr. O'Gorman, though a stanch reformer, very justly pronounced to be not incongruous.

These are single instances of the changes which the surface presented, but I could multiply them without number; wher ever I looked around, I found abundant evidences, had I otherwise been unaware of the fact, that the genius of Mr. Gregory,* no longer presided in the government of Ireland. Religions peace, and never was a peace more just and necessary, had been proclaimed; and, after it, had followed in due course the gradual decline of as hateful a faction as had ever desolated and insulted a devoted country. There was, however, no want of excitement. It had changed its character, but was as active in its way as in those dreary times when Mr. Lefroy's theology and Master Ellis's statesmanship found favor at the Castle. The groups of animated bustlers in the Hall were no longer discussing the divided allegiance of the Catholics, or holding a drum-head inquiry over Mr. Sheil's last speech at the Association, but much was said of schedule A-of its multiform abominations by the smaller and more hopeless politiciansof its wisdom and necessity by others, and among them not a few who conceived it to be both wise and necessary to declare their opinions in favor of reform. But I soon discovered that

* Of William Gregory (who was Privy Councillor and under-Secretary for Ireland) mention has already been made in one of the notes on Lord Norbury, page 36, in this volume. Mr. Gregory was a Protestant Ascendency" man. His son represented Dublin, in Parliament, for a time.-M.