CHAPTER V.

Mr. Curran visits Paris-Letter to his son-Insurrection of 1803-Defence of Kirwan-Death of Lord Kilwarden-Intimacy of Mr. Robert Emmet in Mr. Curran's family, and its consequences-Letter from Mr. Emmet to Mr. Curran-Letter from the same to Mr. Richard Curran.

THIS year (1802) Mr. Curran, taking advantage of the short peace, revisited France. His journey thither now was undertaken with views and anticipations very different from those which had formerly attracted his steps towards that country. He had this time little hope of any gratification;— he went from an impulse of melancholy curiosity, to witness the extent of his own disappointments, and to ascertain in person whether any thing worth saving, in morals and institutions, had escaped the general wreck; for he was among those whose general attachment to freedom had induced them to hail with joy the first

prospects which the revolution seemed to open upon France. His own early admiration of the literary and social genius of her people had made him watch, with the 'liveliest interest, the progress of their struggles, until they assumed a character which no honourable mind could contemplate without anguish and horror.

To Mr. Curran, too, every painful reflection upon the destiny of France was embittered from its connexion with a subject so much nearer to his heart, the fate of Ireland-for to whatever cause the late rebellion might be attributed, whether to an untimely and intemperate spirit of innovation in the people, or to an equally violent spirit of coercion in the state, it was in the influence of the French revolution that the origin of both might be found.

It will be seen, from some passages in the following letter to one of his sons, that he found little in France under its consular government to diminish his regrets or justify a return to hope.

DEAR RICHARd,

"Paris, October 5, 1802.

"Here I am, after having lingered

six or seven days very unnecessarily in London. I don't know that even the few days that I can spend here will not be enough-sickness long and gloomy-convalescence disturbed by various paroxysms -relapse confirmed-the last a spectacle soon seen and painfully dwelt upon. I shall stay here yet a few days. There are some to whom I have introductions that I have not seen. I don't suppose I shall get myself presented to the consul. Not having been privately baptized at St. James's would be a difficulty; to get over it a favour; and then the trouble of getting one's self costumed for the show; and then the small value of being driven, like the beasts of the field before Adam when he named them;-I think I sha'n't mind it. The character of this place is wonderfully different from that of London. I think I can say without affectation, that I miss the frivolous elegance of

the old times before the revolution, and that in the place of it I see a squalid, beardgrown, vulgar vivacity; but still it is vivacity, infinitely preferable to the frozen and awkward sulk that I have left. Here they certainly wish to be happy, and think that by being merry they are so. I dined yesterday with Mr. Fox, and went in the evening to Tivoli, a great planted, illuminated garden, where all the bourgeoisie of Paris, and some of a better description, went to see a balloon go up. The aeronaut was to have ascended with a smart girl, his bonne amie; for some reason that I know not, some one else went up in her place; she was extremely mortified; the balloon rose, diminished, vanished into night; no one could guess what might be its fate, and the poor dear one danced the whole evening to shake off her melancholy.

“I am glad I have come here. I entertained many ideas of it, which I have entirely given up, or very much indeed altered. Never was there a scene that could furnish more to the weeping or the grin

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ning philosopher; they well might agree that human affairs were a sad joke*. I see it every where, and in every thing. The wheel has run a complete round; only changed some spokes and a few fellows,' very little for the better, but the axle certainly has not rusted; nor do I see any likelihood of its rusting. At present all is quiet except the tongue, thanks to those invaluable protectors of peace, the army!!

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* This idea occurs again in a speech, delivered by Mr. Curran two years subsequent to the date of the above letter." I find, my lords, I have undesignedly raised a laugh. Never did I less feel merriment-let me not be condemned-let not the laugh be mistaken.—Never was Mr. Hume more just than when he says, that in many things the extremes are nearer to one another than the means.' Few are those events, that are produced by vice and folly, which fire the heart with indignation, that do not also shake the sides with laughter. So when the two famous moralists of old beheld the sad spectacle of life, the one burst into laughter, and the other melted into tears;-they were each of them right and equally right.

Si credas utrique

Res sunt humanæ flebile ludibrium.

But these are the bitter ireful laughs of honest indignation, or they are the laughs of hectic melancholy and despair."-Speech in behalf of Mr. Justice Johnson.