ly as a
humorist, from the glances of sly sarcasm, and even of open ridicule
which he cast round the court during the pleadings of some of his
"learned brethren." But, in that court his true faculties were known;
and the moment of his rising, careless as was his attitude, and listless
the look which he gave as he turned from his brief to the jury, was the
signal for universal silence, and the fixing of every eye upon the great
pleader.

He began by sweeping away the heap of useless facts and forensic
prolixities with which his predecessors had encumbered the case; and
nothing could be more admirable than the dexterity with which he seized
on the most casual circumstances tending to clear the character of the
accused. But it was when he arrived at higher topics that he displayed
his genius.

"_Nunc in ovilia, mox in reluctantes dracones._" It was when, from
developing the ignorance and contradictions of the informer by whom the
charge of conspiracy was sustained, he rushed to the attack on the
general system of the Irish government, that I saw him in full vigour.
He denounced it as the source of all the tumults which had of late years
shaken the "isle from its propriety." "Here was the fount," said he,
"from which flowed the waters of bitterness, not the less bitter that I
can trace its wanderings through centuries of national desolation,
through fields of blood, through the graves of generations." After
giving the most daring outline of what he termed the evils of the local
sovereignty of Ireland, he surprised me into sudden acquiescence and
involuntary admiration, by a panegyric on the principles of British
government in the more favoured island--on "the majestic supremacy of
the law, extending over all things, sustaining all things, administering
life and health and purity to all; a moral atmosphere, and though
invisible, like the physical, yet irresistible in its strength,
penetrating through the whole national existence, and carrying on
undisturbed and perpetual, in the day and night of empire, all the great
processes of national animation and prosperity." Then, suddenly darting
away from this lofty and solemn view, he indulged in some wild story of
native humour, which convulsed the whole audience with laughter. Yet,
before the burst had subsided, he touched another string of that harp
which so magically responded to the master's hand. He described the long
career of calamity through which an individual born with