f his sufferings; and, however mercilessly he has been
hitherto pursued, that your verdict will send him home to the arms of
his family and the wishes of his country. But if, which Heaven forbid!
it hath still been unfortunately determined, that because he has not
bent to power and authority, because he would not bow down before the
golden calf and worship it, he is to be bound and cast into the
furnace,--I do trust in God there is a redeeming spirit in the
constitution, which will be seen to walk with the sufferer through the
flames, and to preserve him unhurt by the conflagration."

After this brilliant speech, when Curran made his appearance outside the
court, he was surrounded by the populace, who had assembled to chair
him. He begged of them to desist, in a commanding tone; but a gigantic
chairman, eyeing Curran from top to toe, cried out to his
companion--"Arrah, blood and turf! Pat, don't mind the little darlin';
pitch him upon _my_ shoulder." He was, accordingly, carried to his
carriage, and drawn home by the people.

ENCOUNTER WITH A FISHWOMAN.

There was a fishwoman in Cork who was more than a match for the whole
fraternity of her order. She could only be matched by Mrs. Scutcheen, of
Patrick-street, Dublin--the lady who used to boast of her "bag of
farthin's," and regale herself before each encounter with a pennorth of
the "droppin's o' the cock." Curran was passing the quay at Cork where
this virago held forth, when, stopping to listen to her, he was
requested to "go on ou' that." Hesitating to retreat as quick as the
lady wished, she opened a broadside upon Curran, who returned fire with
such effect as to bring forth the applause of the surrounding
sisterhood. She was vanquished for the first time, though she had been
"thirty years on the stones o' the quay."

CURRAN AND LORD ERSKINE.

Dr. Crolly, in speaking of the two great forensic orators of the day,
draws a comparison between the circumstances under which both addressed
their audiences:--

"When Erskine pleaded, he stood in the midst of a secure nation, and
pleaded like a priest of the temple of justice, with his hand on the
altar of the constitution, and all England waiting to treasure every
deluding oracle that came from his lips. Curran pleaded--not in a time
when the public system was only so far disturbed as to give additional
interest to his eloquence--but in a time when the system was threatened
with instant dissolution; when society