It has been often said that great occasions make great men. Certain it is that the men in whose sayings and doings we take the greatest interest are the actors on the great occasions, be they the great men or not. Thus it is

that the period of, and a little after, the Union in Ireland supplies such an inexhaustible fund of personal anecdote. There is before us one of those pleasing miscellanies, chiefly conversant with that period, which, in our literature, supply the place of memoirs -one of those volumes calculated to make the old feel young and the young feel old-reviving the pictures of the past with such truth, that he who remembers them may imagine himself again an actor, and painting them with such spirit, that he who is but an historic spectator, may forget that he has not seen them.

The volume contains sketches of all classes. In introducing our readers to the author (D.Owen-Madden, Esq.), we shall follow the order he has chosen, and begin with the gentlemen of the long robe.

It is commonly said that the present generation of the bar is far inferior to its predecessors-that the age of the Fitzgibbons, Malones, Burghs, Currans, Bushes, Plunkets, is past

"Etas parentum, pejor avis, tulit
Nos nequiores."

But whatever truth there may be in this criticism, as to the stars of the legal drama (and even there we do not admit its justice), it must be taken with the qualification that the charac

ter of the stock company is vastly improved.

Sketches or anecdotes of the bygone days of the bar are almost always suggestive of painful reflections on its condition, even in a much greater degree than the pictures of other classes of Irish society. Admiration of forensic eloquence and wit, the enjoyment of barristerial humour or oddities, is ever tinged with a melancholy sense of the absence of those qualities which constitute "respectability." In the last generation, the ambition-peculiarly Irish-to dazzle, careless either of gaining or losing respect, unfortunately characterised both the bench and the bar. To make a pointed bon mot, or set the audience in a roar by a humorous sally, gained more admirers than to elucidate a legal doctrine, or establish an honest cause. Of the great principles of English jurisprudence developed or established in the last century scarcely one has been started or investigated in an Irish case. In fact until within the last few years our judicial decisions were treated with profound contempt at the other side of the channel. The Irish advocate prided himself on his personal adroitness-little scrupulous how it was applied; even a knowledge of the facts of his case was a secondary consideration. The instructions "we have no merits; but counsel will please abuse the opposite attorney," were not only briefed but acted on. Outside the Four Courts the rising barrister often stooped to even a lower office to become the

VOL. XXXI.-NO. CLXXXI.

1848.

B

paid libeller and bully of an election. When the practitioner in such a school became a judge, he was too often incompetent to use the legitimate means of determining a cause. Surely all this is vastly improved!

The Court of Common Pleas was the popular tribunal of the last generation. It was a sort of minor stage, devoted to extempore extravaganzas. The foppish acuteness of Goold, and the coarse humour of Harry Grady, the then leaders of Dublin Nisi Prius, supplied the stock of the dialogue, varied with Lord Norbury's frequent bursts of judicial buffoonery. The temple of Themis was habitually desecrated with the worship of Momus. A grave divine, who was a frequent spectator there, excused himself, because his profession prevented him from going to the theatre, and he was passionately fond of furce." Even the inost awful duties that a man can be called on to discharge, were the foundation of jokes and humbug-ay, the doom that was to usher a fellow creature into eternity has been passed in a pun! Turning to an adjoining court, the unhardened spectator was differently shocked. He saw the practice of nepotism and personal favoritism reduced to a perfect system-the father's ermine made a begging-bag for the son's briefs-this case won, because a judge's relative was its paid advocate; the next lost, because he was not. It needed, indeed, the most exalted qualities, intellectual and moral, to rise above such contagion.

But, to pass from the sad side of the picture to the gay-there is no doubt that the present generation of Irish barristers, in convivial qualities, bears no comparison with the last. Mr. Madden's book commences with sketches of the "old Munster bar," including Keller, Lysaght, Grady, and others, celebrated for their social powers. Of Keller, he says:

66 Jerry Keller was one of the best lawyers on the circuit. But, he was still better known for his incomparable social powers. He was 'the joyousest of once-embodied spirits'

A gay thirsty soul,

As e'er cracked a bottle, or fathomed a bowl.'

He was fit to have lived with that jolly

old lawyer, Sir Toby Butler. Though not such a wit as Curran, his company was almost as much sought after by convivial spirits. Keller sacrificed his fame and fortune to the love of society. He joined a sound and capacious understanding to a spirit whimsical, reckless, and droll. For legal depth, and dinnertable drollery, no one man ever came near him. There were times, however, when Keller half-repented of the way in which he had passed his time. He gave utterance to this feeling on the first day that the late Judge Mayne took his seat upon the bench. Mayne was a formal coxcomb-a thing of solemn, artificial, legal foppery, with a manner of intense gravity, and a well-got-up look of profundity. He had passed himself off on the public as a deep lawyer, and was never found out by the same discerning public, until he was made a judge.

Ah! Mayne,' said Keller, in a voice half audible, my levity keeps me down here, while your gravity has raised you up there!"

We must observe, the writer is unjust to Judge Mayne; and we question if he has improved the popular version of Keller's joke-which is, that he proved Newton's theory of gravitation false, for "Mayne rose by his gravity, and Keller sunk by his levity." There is another sketch of Keller, which has lately appeared in print, in an exccedingly spirited and well-written article* in the Law Review. The writer tells the following anecdote (which is exceedingly characteristic of Keller) so graphically, that we cannot forbear quoting it:

"The successful had no cause for envy, and others, whom his sarcasms wounded, found an apology in his disappointments. There were times, however, when forbearance itself was in danger of being exhausted-after dinner especially. Mr. Nicholas Philpott Leader fell one evening under his extreme displeasure, and was belaboured accordingly. Leader's hair, it must be premised, was somewhat frizzled, and his principles quite liberal enough. The difference arose from that fertile source of all differences in Ireland, a political discussion; and Keller, foiled in the argument, launched out into the most outrageous personalities. A man of war, at daylight, wakened Jerry out of his sleep. Loudly and gruffly did he

*