interest or amuse. I doubt whether any affair of the
kind was ever, to use the phrase of the trade, so well and perfectly
reported. The speeches appeared word for word the same in the columns
of newspapers of different politics. For four-fifths of the contents of
the paper it would have been the same to you whether you were reading
the Evening Mail, or the Freeman. Every word that was uttered in the
Court was of importance to every one in Dublin; and half-an-hour's
delay in ascertaining, to the minutest shade, what had taken place in
Court during any period, was accounted a sad misfortune.

The press round the Four Courts [6], every morning before the doors
were open, was very great: and except by the favoured few who were able
to obtain seats, it was only with extreme difficulty and perseverance,
that an entrance into the body of the Court could be obtained.

[FOOTNOTE 6: The Four Courts was a landmark courthouse in Dublin
named for the four divisions of the Irish judicial
system: Common Pleas, Chancery, Exchequer, and King's
Bench.]

It was on the eleventh morning of the proceedings, on the day on which
the defence of the traversers was to be commenced, that two young men,
who had been standing for a couple of hours in front of the doors of
the Court, were still waiting there, with what patience was left to
them, after having been pressed and jostled for so long a time. Richard
Lalor Sheil, however, was to address the jury on behalf of Mr John
O'Connell--and every one in Dublin knew that that was a treat not to
be lost. The two young men, too, were violent Repealers. The elder of
them was a three-year-old denizen of Dublin, who knew the names of
the contributors to the "Nation", who had constantly listened to the
indignation and enthusiasm of O'Connell, Smith O'Brien, and O'Neill
Daunt, in their addresses from the rostrum of the Conciliation Hall
[7]; who had drank much porter at Jude's, who had eaten many oysters
at Burton Bindon's, who had seen and contributed to many rows in the
Abbey Street Theatre; who, during his life in Dublin, had done many
things which he ought not to have done, and had probably made as
many omissions of things which it had behoved him to do. He had that
knowledge of the persons of his fellow-citizens, which appears to be so
much more general in Dublin than in any other large town; he could tell
you the name and trade of every one h