"It would be difficult to do justice to the lofty and overwhelming elocution of this distinguished man, during the early period of his political exertions. To the profound, logical, and conclusive reasoning of Flood-the brilliant, stimulating, epigrammatic antithesis of Grattan-the sweet-toned, captivating, convincing, rhetoric of Burgh-or the wild fascinating imagery, and varied pathos of the extraordinary Curran, he was respectively inferior; but in powerful, nervous language, he excelled them all. A vigorous, commanding, undaunted eloquence burst in torrents from his lips; not a word was lost. Though fiery, yet weighty and distinct, the authoritative rapidity of his language, relieved by the figurative beauty of his luxuriant fancy, subdued the auditor without a power of resistance, and left him in doubt, whether it was to argument or to eloquence that he surrendered his conviction.

"His talents were alike adapted to public purposes, as his private qualities to domestic society. In the common transactions of the world he was an infant-in the varieties of right and wrong, of propriety and error, a frail' mortal-in the senate, and at the bar, a mighty giant; it was on the bench that, unconscious of his errors, and in his home, unconscious of his virtues, both were most conspicuous. That deep-seated vice, which with equal power freezes the miser's heart, and inflames the ruffian's passions, was to him a stranger ;-he was always rich, and always

poor-but though circumstances might sometimes. have been his guide, avarice never was his conductor: like his great predecessor, frugality fled before the carelessness of his mind, and left him the victim of his liberality, and, of course, in many instances, a monument of ingratitude. His character was entirely transparent, it had no opake qualities;--his passions were open-his prepossessions palpable-his failings obvious-and he took as little pains to conceal his faults as to publish his perfections.

"In politics he was rather more steady to party than to principle, but evinced no immutable consistency in either a patriot by nature, yet susceptible of seduction—a partizan by temper, yet capable of instability-the commencement and conclusion of his political conduct were as distinct as the poles, and as dissimilar as the elements.

"Amply qualified for the bench, by profound, legal, and constitutional learning, extensive professional practice, strong logical powers, a classical and wide ranging capacity, equitable propensities, and a philanthropic disposition; he possessed all the positive qualifications for a great judge:-but he could not temporize; the total absence of skilful or even necessary caution, and the indulgence of a few feeble counteracting habits, greatly diminished that high reputation, which a more cold phlegmatic mien, or a

solemn, imposing, vulgar plausibility, often confers on miserably inferior characters.

"As a judge, he certainly had some of those marked imperfections too frequently observable in judicial officers; he received impressions too soon, and, perhaps, too strongly; he was indolent in research, and impatient in discussion; the natural quickness of his perception hurried off his judgment, before he had time to regulate it, and sometimes left his justice and his learning idle spectators of his reasons and his determination; while extraneous considerations occasionally obtruded themselves upon his unguarded mind, and involuntarily led him away from the straight path of calm deliberation,

"But the errors of talented and celebrated men are always more conspicuous, exaggerated, and condemned, than those of inferior ones; and perhaps this severity is not altogether unjustifiable: the errors of dulness may be the errors of nature; those of talent have not the same apology. But even with all his faults, Lord Avonmore's abilities were vastly superior to those of almost all his judicial cotemporaries united. If he was impetuous, it was an impetuosity in which his heart had no concern; he was never unkind, that he was not always repentant; and ever thinking that he acted with rectitude,

the cause of his greatest errors seemed to be a careless ignorance of his lesser imperfections.

"He had a species of intermitting ambition, which either led him too far, or forsook him altogether. His pursuits, of course, were unequal, and his ways irregular-he sometimes forgot his objects, and frequently forgot himself. Elevated solely by his own talents-he acquired new habits without altogether divesting himself of the old ones-and there was scarcely a society so high, or a company so humble, that the instinctive versatility of his natural manners could not be adapted to either. A scholara poet a statesman-a lawyer-in elevated society he was a brilliant wit-at lower tables, a vulgar humourist :-he had appropriate anecdote and conviviality for all-and, whether in the one or in the other, he seldom failed to be either entertaining or instructive.

"He was a friend, ardent, but indiscriminate even to blindness-an enemy, warm, but forgiving even to folly ;—he lost his dignity by the injudiciousness of his selections--and sunk his consequence in the pliability of his nature;-to the first he was a dupe to the latter an instrument:-on the whole, he was a more enlightened than efficient statesman a more able than unexceptionable judge-and more honest in theory than the practice of his poli

tics. His rising sun was brilliant-his meridian cloudy-his setting obscure :-crosses, at length, ruffled his temper-deceptions abated his confidence -time tore down his talent-he became depressed and indifferent-and after a long life of chequered incidents and inconsistent conduct he died, leaving behind him few men who possessed so much talent -so much heart-or so much weakness.

"This distinguished man, at the critical period of Ireland's emancipation, burst forth as a meteor in the Irish senate his career in the Commons was not long, but it was busy and important; he had connected himself with the Duke of Portland, and continued that connexion uninterrupted till the day of his dissolution. But through the influence of that nobleman, and the absolute necessity of a family provision on the question of the Union, the radiance of his public character was obscured for ever-the laurels of his early achievements fell withered from his brow-and after having, with zeal and sincerity, laboured to attain independence for his country in 1782, he became one of its sale-masters in 1800, and mingling in a motley crowd, uncongenial to his native character, and beneath his natural superiority, he surrendered the rights, the franchises, and thè honors of that peerage, to which, by his great talents and his early virtues, he had been so justly elevated.