tic groupings and mountains of every height and every shape, frowning over the vast expanse of the Atlantic ocean, give rather shelter than habitation to a people who have proclaimed eternal warfare with civilization. Half a century has since passed over them, without introducing an innovation upon their ancient customs; and the feats of their forefathers, too outrageous for perpetration-and the articles of their superstition, too monstrous for credulity-have now rooted themselves into a kind of prescriptive reverence. The seals that infest their coasts in great numbers, they believe to be animated by the souls of their antiquated maiden relatives, a supposition certainly far more creditable to the chastity of the one sex than the gallantry of the other-the rocks, that with their echoes "syllable men's names," are the established residence of some rustic wizard-and the fairies, numerous enough at the dawn of the morning, never fail to double their numbers towards the conclusion of the frequent holyday! Such was the scene in Curran's early life of many a long vacation. Here the voice, upon whose accents the senate and the people hung, was loud in the revelry of the village wake; and the mind stored with every classic treasure, and inspired with every sublime perception, rivalled the peasant's mirth, and wore familiarly the peasant's merriment. Nor was this idle jocularity without its value. Often afterwards in his professional circuit, the hearer, who stood entranced at an eloquence that seemed to flow from the very fount of inspiration, would see him

suddenly, with some village witness, assume the vulgar air and attitude and accent, until his familiarity wheedled the confession which his ingenuity never could have extorted. Various were the anecdotes with which Mr. Curran used to exemplify the annals of Mulloghmore, and the history of Bob Lyons. But many of them owed half their value to their local interest, and many of them were of a nature more suited to the table than the press. To me, who from my infancy had been familiar with all the localities of the scene, he delighted to repeat them: and as he sported in the retrospect of days so long gone by, the very spirit of the poet's veteran revived within him-he lived over again the pleasures he was describing.

In one of these excursions a very singular circumstance had almost rendered this the period of his biography. He was on a temporary visit to the neighbouring town of Sligo, and was one morning standing at his bed-room window, which overlooked the street, occupied, as he told me, in arranging his portmanteau, when he was stunned by the report of a blunderbuss in the very chamber with him; and the panes above his head were all shivered into atoms! He looked suddenly around in the greatest consternation. The room was full of smoke-the blunderbuss on the floor just discharged-the door closed, and no human being but himself discoverable in the apartment! If this had happened in his rural retreat,

it could readily have been reconciled through the medium of some offended spirit of the village mythology; but, as it was, he was in a populous town-in a civilized family-amongst Christian doctrines, where the fairies had no power, and their gambols no currency; and, to crown all, a poor cobbler, into whose stall on the opposite side of the street the slugs had penetrated, hinted, in no very equivocal terms, that the whole affair was a conspiracy against his life. It was by no means a pleasant addition to the chances of assassination, to be loudly declaimed against by a crazed mechanic as an assassin himself. Day after day passed away without any solution of the mystery, when one evening, as the servants of the family were conversing round the fire on so miraculous an escape, a little urchin, not ten years old, was heard so to wonder how such an aim was missed, that a universal suspicion was immediately excited. He was alternately flogged and coaxed into a confession, which disclosed as much precocious and malignant premeditation as perhaps ever marked the annals of juvenile depravity. This little miscreant had received a box on the ear from Mr. Curran for some alleged misconduct a few days before; the Moor's blow did not sink deeper into a mind more furious for revenge, or more predisposed by nature for such deadly impressions. He was in the bed-room by mere chance, when Mr. Curran entered. He immediately hid himself in the curtains till he observed him too busy with his portmanteau for observation.

He then levelled at him the old blunderbuss which lay charged in the corner, the stiffness of whose trigger, too strong for his infant fingers, alone prevented the aim from which he confessed he had taken, and which had so nearly terminated the occupations of the cobbler. The door was a-jar, and mid the smoke and terror he easily slipped out without discovery. I had the story verbatim a few months ago from Mr. Curran's lips, whose impressions on the subject it was no wonder that forty years had not obliterated.

From this period he began rapidly to rise in professional estimation. There was no cause in the metropolis of any interest in which he was not concerned, nor was there a county in the provinces which at some time or other he did not visit on a special retainer. It was an object almost with every one to pre-occupy so successful or so dangerous an advocate; for, if he failed in inducing a jury to sympathize with his client, he at all events left a picture of his adversary behind him, which survived and embittered the advantages of victory. Nor was his eloquence his only weapon: at cross-examination, the most difficult, and by far the most hazardous part of a barrister's profession, he was quite inimitable. There was no plan which he did not detect―no web which he did not disentangle-and the unfortunate wretch who commenced with all the confidence of pre-concerted perjury, never failed to retreat before

him in all the confusion of exposure. Indeed, it was almost impossible for the guilty to offer a successful resistance. He argued-he cajoled-he ridiculedhe mimicked-he played off the various artillery of his talent upon the witness-he would affect earnestness upon trifles, and levity upon subjects of the most serious import, until at length he succeeded in creating a security that was fatal, or a sullenness that produced all the consequences of prevarication. No matter how unfair the topic, he never failed to avail himself of it; acting upon the principle, that in law as well as in war, every stratagem was admissible. If he was hard pressed, there was no peculiarity of person-no singularity of name-no eccentricity of profession, at which he would not grasp, trying to confound the self-possession of the witness in the, no matter how excited, ridicule of the audience. To a witness of the name of Halfpenny he once began, "Halfpenny, I see you 're a rap, and for that reason you shall be nailed to the counter." "Halfpenny is sterling," exclaimed the opposite counsel-" No, no," said he, "he's exactly like his own conscience, only copper washed."

To Lundy Foot, the celebrated tobacconist, once hesitating on the table-" Lundy-Lundy-that's a poser-a devil of a pinch." This was the gentleman who applied to Curran for a motto when he first established his carriage. "Give me one, my dear Curran," said he, "of a serious cast, because