as they inspired elsewhere; and while Europe was
convulsed with alarms, England, strong in her liberties and
self-reliance, was united and unmoved.

In Ireland, the departure of Lord Buckingham was followed by a revival
of the factious intemperance his energy had for a season suppressed. The
Parliament opened in disorder, and carried on its debates in a tone of
vindictive hostility to the British connection. The opponents of
Government had strengthened their hands by the accession of new orators,
and by the occasional lapses into their old violence of others who had
given in their submissions to the late Viceroy, and who, now that he was
gone, affected an independence of their obligations. The Lord Chancellor
Fitzgibbon was growing into increasing disfavour with the Opposition,
and becoming, by the force of resistance, more English and less popular
than before. The invectives in which the wild passions of party found a
congenial vent, descended to the fiercest recriminations, and led to the
severance of friendships, and personal rencontres. Fitzgibbon and the
Ponsonbys, who had hitherto preserved unimpaired, amidst the contentions
of the Senate, their intimate relations in private life, were now cast
asunder by an explosion of animosity that tempted the Chancellor to
declare "that he would never speak to them again;" even the close bonds
that united the Ponsonbys and the Beresfords were imperceptibly relaxed;
and Mr. Hobart, to use his own expression, was "obliged to fight Mr.
Curran," for which he excuses himself to Lord Buckingham by saying that
"in any other country in Europe he would not have met him." In no other
country, undoubtedly, from a cause so absurd and unwarrantable, could
the necessity for such a meeting have arisen. Numerous letters from
Ireland conveyed fragments of news of this kind to Lord Buckingham in
his retirement, the old supporters of Administration still seeming to
look up to him for encouragement and advice. But these letters are not
now of sufficient interest to justify their publication.

Such, indeed, is the general character of the correspondence of the
year. One letter, however, announces an incident which cannot be so
satisfactorily recorded as in the language of the writer. Mr. Grenville
was about to receive that recognition of his great talents and important
services which few men had earned so worthily or were destined to wear
more honourably and usefully. The absence of all exultatio