that attended his entrance upon public life. Mr. North has abundant strength of intellect, but he has not equal energy of will. His mind wants boldness and determination of character. It wants that hardihood of purpose and contempt of consequences, without which nothing great in thought or action can be accomplished. He is trammelled by a fastidious taste, and by a disastrous deference to every petty opinion that may be pronounced upon him. He sacrifices his fame to his dignity. Fame, he should have remembered, is like other fair ladies, and faint heart never won her. Like the rest, she must be warmly and importunately wooed. He shrinks, however, from the notion of committing himself as her suitor, except upon a classical occasion. I have been often asked "if I considered Mr. North to be a man of genius?" My answer has been, "he would be, if he dared." If it were possible to transfuse into his system a few quarts of that impetuous Irish blood which revels in O'Connell's veins-if he could be brought to bestir himself and burst asunder the conventional fetters that enchain his spirit, he has many of the other qualities that would entitle him to that ⚫ envied appellation. But as it is, his powers are enthralled in a state of magnetic suspension between the conflicting influences of his ambition and his apprehensions. With all the desire in the world to be an eminent man, and conscious that the elements of greatness are within him, one of its most necessary attributes he still is without a sentiment of masculine self-reliance, and along with it a calm and settled disdain for the approbation of little friends, and the censure of little enemies, and the murmurs of the tea-table, and the mock-heroic gravity with which mediocrity is ever sure to frown upon a style of language or conduct above its comprehension. Hence it is, that he has never yet redeemed the pledges of his youth. In his public displays, which, from the same scrupulous taste, have been far more unfrequent than they ought, he has been copious, graceful, instructive, and in general almost faultless to a fault. But the lofty spirit of heroic oratory was wanting" there was no pride nor passion there." He is so afraid of " tearing a passion to tatters," he'll scarcely venture to touch it. He distrusts even light from heaven for fear it should lead astray. I am far from attributing these deficiencies to any inherent incapacity of lofty emotions in Mr. North; I should rather say that he has been in some sort the spoiled child of premature renown. The applause that followed his first attempts taught him too soon to propose himself as a model to himself, and to shudder at the danger of degenerating from that ideal standard. He speculated" too curiously" upon how much character he might lose, without considering how much more might yet be gained. In this respect he arrived too soon at his years of discretion. His mind seems also to have early imbibed an undue predilection for the mere elegancies of life, and for external circumstances as connected with them. In spite of his better opinions on the subject of human rights, I am not sure that his heart would not beat as high and quick at the pageantry of a coronation, as at the demolition of a bastille. In matters of literature, too, I would almost venture to say that what in secret delights him most, is not the bold, impassioned, and agitating, but the gentle and diffuse : that he likes not the shock of those tempests of thought that purify the mental atmosphere, chasing away the collected clouds, and tearing up our sturdiest prejudices by the roots, but rather prefers to repose his

spirit in the midst of those quiet reveries where no favourite opinion is in danger of being shaken. Instead of ascending to the mountain-tops with the hardy speculator, he would rather linger among the charms of the cultivated plain with the meek essayist-where, sauntering along through scenes of security and repose, with all harsher objects excluded from the view, and nothing around but sweet sights, sweet smells, and pleasant noises becalming every sense, the pensive soul, forgetting for the moment the world and its ways, is lulled to rest, and dreams that all is right. Mr. North would have written the most beautiful letters in the world from the Lake of Geneva, and not the less so from the inspiring influence of an elegant residence on its banks. His speeches savour of the particular tastes I have been describing. There is too much of the equanimity of literature about them-too little of the ardour and impetuosity of passion speaking viva voce. They rather resemble highwrought academic effusions, stately, orderly and chaste, and having also the coldness of chastity, than the glowing eruptions of a mind on fire, warming and illuminating whatever comes within its range. To conclude, Mr. North is a proficient in the formal parts of the higher order of oratory-in diction-arrangement-the selection and command of topics-delivery-action-but (to adopt some hackneyed illustrations) in the same degree as moonlight differs from the splendour of the sun, pearl from diamond, silver from gold, the scented and welltrimmed shrubbery from the majestic forest, the placid waters of the lake from the impetuous heavings of "old ocean," so may he be said to fall short of first-rate excellence in the art of speaking.

From my observations upon Mr. North's mind, neutralized as he has permitted it to become, I should say that now his chief strength lies in sarcasm, and in that species of humour which consists of felicitous combinations of mock-heroic imagery and gorgeous diction, descriptive of the feelings and situation of the object ridiculed;-and yet he has employed his powers in this respect so sparingly, that I have some doubts whether he be fully aware of their extent. I have not heard that he gave any early indications of this talent; and though at first view it may appear to be at variance with the leading propensities of his mind, I do not conceive it difficult to account for its existence. On the contrary, it seems natural enough that a person gifted with powers of language and imagination, but of too timid a taste to risk them upon sincere and serious trains of sentiment, should resort to ridicule, and to that particular kind, to which I have just adverted. Such a person feels what an awful thing it is to be accountable to a sneering public, for the appropriateness of every generous thought and glowing illustration into which a well-meaning but too fervid enthusiasm may betray him. The incessant recollection of the proximity of the ludicrous to the sublime, appals and paralizes him; but give him an adversary whose motives and reasonings and language are to be travestied, and the spell that bound his faculties is dissolved. Here, where every exaggeration has a charm, he ventures to give full scope to his fancy. The very temper of mind that renders him sensitive and wary when he speaks in his own person, suggests the boldest images, and the more grotesque they are the better, when by a rhetorical contrivance the whole responsibility of them is, as it were, shifted upon the shoulders of another. I would almost venture to predict, that it is in this way that Mr. North will make

himself most felt in the House of Commons. He has the classic authority of Mr. Canning, for proposing as a subject the Duigenan redivivus of the House; but I have my fears that he will select a nobler mark than Master Ellis. I therefore caution my Opposition friends, and especially Mr. Hume, to be on their guard.

Mr. North's exterior has nothing very striking; his frame is of the middle size and slender, his features small and pallid, and unmarked by any prominent expression, save those habitual signs of exhaustion, from which so few of the occupied members of his profession are exempt. If he were a stranger to me, I should pass him by without observation, but, knowing who he is, and feeling what he might be, I find his face to be far from a blank. Upon examination, it presents an aspect of still and steady thoughtfulness, with that peculiar curve about the lips when he smiles (as he often does,) which imports a refined but too fastidious taste. When the countenance is in repose, I fancy that I can also catch there a trace of languor, such as succeeds a course of struggles where high and early hopes had been embarked, while a tinge of melancholy, so slight as to be dispersed by the feeblest gleam, but still returning and settling there, tells me that some and the most cherished of them have been disappointed. I confess that I respect Mr. North too much to regret those indications of a secret dissatisfaction with his condition; and more especially, because in him they are entirely free from the ordinary fretfulness and acrimony of mortified ambition. He is too considerate and just to wage a splenetic warfare with the world because all the bright visions of his youth have not been realised; and he is still too young and too conscious of his capacity to be irretrievably depressed, when reminded by others or by himself, that hitherto fame has spoken of him only in whispers, and that much must be done both in intellect and action, before the glorious clang of her trumpet I shall rejoice his ear.

These allusions to Mr. North's omissions as a public man, are offered in no unfriendly spirit. If I looked upon him as an ordinary person, I should say at once of him, that he has well fulfilled the task assigned him. He has won his way to a respectable station in a most precarious profession; enjoys considerable estimation for general talent, and is cordially honoured by all who know him, for the undeviating dignity and purity of his private life. But from those to whom much is given much is exacted. My quarrel with Mr. North is, that living under a system teeming with abuses, and loudly calling upon a man of his character and abilities to interpose their influence, he should have consented to keep aloof a neutral and acquiescent spectator. For fifteen long years, a liberal and enlightened Irishman, seeing with his own eyes what an English barber could not read of without contempt for the nation that endured, and not to have left a single document of his indignation!-not a speech, not a pamphlet, not an article in a periodical publication--not even, that forlorn hope of a maltreated cause, a wellpenned protesting resolution! What availed it to his country that he was known to be a friend of toleration, if his co-operation was withheld upon every occasion where his presence would have inspired confidence, and his example have acted as a salutary incitement to others? What, that his theories upon the question of free discussion were understood to be manly and just, if, after having witnessed the irruption of an

armed soldiery into a legal meeting, and being himself among the dispersed at the point of the bayonet, he had the morbid patience to be silent under the affront to the laws, paying such homage to the times as scarcely to

"Hint his abhorrence in a languid sneer."

pur

His learning too, his literary and philosophic stores, things so much wanted in Ireland,-where has he left a vestige of their existence, so as to justify the most flattering of his friends in saying to him, "You have not lived in vain, and should you unfortunately be removed before your time, your country will miss you?"-This is what I complain of and deplore; and these sentiments are strong in proportion to my estimate of his latent value, and my genuine concern for the interests of his fame; for in the midst of my reproaches, I see so much to admire and respect in him, he is of so meek a carriage, and has about him so much of the gentleman and the scholar, that I cannot divest myself of a certain feeling of almost individual regard. Nor, in putting the matter thus, am I aware that I make any unreasonable exactions. At particular seasons, his profession, no doubt, must demand his undivided care: but there are intervals which, with a mind full as Mr. North's is, might have been, and may still be, dedicated to honourable uses. There are not wanting contemporary precedents to show what the incidental Jabours of a lawyer may accomplish, in science, in letters, in public spirit. Let him look to Mr. Brougham, to the versatility of his suits, and the varieties of his fame-the Courts, the House of Commons, and the Edinburgh Review: to Denman, Williams, and many others of the English Bar, eminent or on the road to eminence in their profession, and patriotic and instructive in their leisure; or, (a more pregnant instance still) let him turn to the Scotch, those hardy and indefatigable workers for their own and their country's renown. There is Jeffrey, Cockburn, Cranstoun, Murray, Montcrief, great advocates every man of them: the first the creator and responsible sustainer of the noblest critical publication of the age; the others ardent and important helpmates, and all of them finding it practicable, amidst their regular and collateral pursuits, to take an active lead in the popular assemblies of the North. These men, whom energy and ambition have made what they are, may be used in other respects as a great example. Under circumstances peculiarly adverse to all who disdained to stoop, they never struck to the opinions of the day, but, confiding in themselves, were as stern and uncompromising in their conduct as in their maxims yet are they all prosperous and respected, and formidable to all by whom a high-spirited man would desire to be feared.

I see but one plausible excuse for the course of political quietude to which Mr. North so perseveringly adhered, and in fairness I should not suppress it. It was his fate to have commenced his career under the Saurin dynasty. Things are something better now, but some twelve or fifteen years ago, woe betided the patriotic wight of the dominant creed who should venture to whisper to the public that all was not unquestionable wisdom and justice in the ways of that potent and inscrutable gentleman. The opposition of a Catholic was far less resented. The latter was a condemned spirit, shorn of all effective strength, and was suffered to flounder away impotent and unheeded in the penal abyss; but for a Protestant, and more than all, a Protestant

barrister, to question the infinite perfection of the attorney-general's dispensations, was monstrous, blasphemous, and punishable-and punished the culprit was. All the loyal powers of the land sprung with instinctive co-operation to avenge the outrage upon their chief and themselves. The loyal gates of the Castle were slapt in his face. The loyal club to which he claimed admission, buried his pretensions under a shower of black-beans. The loyal attorney suspected his competency, and withheld his confidence. The loyal discounter declined to respect his name upon a bill. The loyal friend, as he passed him in the streets, exchanged the old, familiar, cordial greeting for a penal nod. In every quarter, in every way, it was practically impressed upon him, that Irish virtue must be its own reward. Even the women, those soothers of the cares of life, whose approbation an eminent French philosopher has classed among the most powerful incentives to heroical exertion,-even they, merging the charities of their sex in their higher duties to the state, volunteered their services as avenging angels. The tea-pot trembled in the hand of the loyal matron as she poured forth its contents, and along with it her superfine abhorrence of the low-lived incendiary; while the fair daughters of ascendency grouped around, admitted his delinquency with a responsive shudder, and vowed in their pretty souls to make his character, whenever it should come across them, feel the bitter consequences of his political aberrations. All this was formidable enough to common men. Mr. North was strong enough to have faced and vanquished it. Instead of fearing to provoke the persecuting spirit of the times, he might have securely welcomed it as the most unerring evidence of his importance.

The

Having said so much, I am bound to add that the foregoing observations have not the remotest reference to Mr. North's conduct at the Bar. There he is entitled to the highest praise, and I give it heartily, for his erect and honourable deportment in the public and (an equal test of an elevated spirit) in the private details of his profession. most conspicuous occasion upon which he has yet appeared was on the trial of the political rioters at the Dublin theatre. It was altogether a singular scene-presenting a fantastic medley of combinations and contradictions, such as nothing but the shuffling of Irish events could bring together; a band of inveterate loyalists brought to the bar of justice for a public outrage upon the person of the king's representative; an attorney-general prosecuting on behalf of one part of the state, and the other exulting with all their souls at the prospect of his failure; a popular Irish bench; an acquitting Irish jury; and finally, the professional confidant of the Orange Lodges--the chosen defender of their acts and doctrines, Mr. North. It would be difficult to conceive a more perplexing office. He discharged it, however, with great talent and (what I apprehend was less expected) consummate boldness. As a production of eloquence, his address to the jury contained no specimens of first-rate excellence, but many that were not far below it; while his general line of argument, and his manner of conducting it, gave signs of a spirit and power from which I would infer, that, should state-trials unfortunately become frequent in Ireland during his continuance at the Bar, he is destined to make no inconsiderable figure as a leading counsel for the defences. The Williamites were grateful for the effort, and grected their successful advocate with enthusiastic