d more logic than a long argument from another man. In fact, the
whole host of rhetorical figures seemed breaking out of his face. By
a solitary glance of his eye he could look a man into a dilemma, and
practise a _sorites_, or a homemade syllogism, by the various shiftings
of his countenance, as clearly as if he had risen to the full flight
of his former bombast. He had, in short, a _prima facie_ disposition to
controversy; his nose was set upon his face in a kind of firm defiance
against infidels, heretics, and excommunicated persons; and when
it curled with contempt of another, or with pride in the power that
slumbered in itself, it seemed to give the face from which it projected,
and the world at large, the assurance of a controversialist. Nor did his
negative talents rest here: a twist of his mouth to the right or left
ear, was nicely shaded away into a negative or affirmative, according
as he intended it should be taken; and when he used his
pocket-handkerchief, he was certain, though without uttering a syllable,
to silence his opponent, so contemptuously did his intonations rout the
arguments brought against him. The significance and force of all these
was heightened by the mystery in which they were wrapped; for whenever
unbending decorum constrained him to decline the challenges of the
ignorant, with whom discussion would now be degradation, what could he
do to soothe his vanity, except, as the poet says, with folded arms
and a shaking of the head to exclaim--"_Well, well we know;_ or, _if we
could, and if we would;_ or, _if we list to speak_; or, _there be an if
they might;_" which left the imaginations of his hearers at liberty
to conceive more fully of those powers which his modesty declined
exhibiting. For some time before he got absolutely and finally into
black, even his father gave up his accustomed argument in despair. The
son had become an adept in all the intricacies and obscurities of Latin,
and literally overwhelmed the old man with small inundations of that
language, which though, like all inundations, rather muddy, yet were
they quite sufficient to sweep the worthy veteran before them.

Young Denis O'Shaughnessy was now pretty nearly finished at school, that
is to say, almost fit for Maynooth; his studies, though higher, were
less assiduous; his leisure was consequently greater; and it is well
known, that a person of his character is never asked to work, except it
be his own pleasure to labor a day