The Sun.
London, England, 1855-03-05 00:00:00

A GENUINE IRISH PRIEST.
_ ,

" Father Murphy, the parish priest, came to the en-
trance, dressed in his surplice. As he stood surrounded
by a dense multitude, whom he had hushed into pro-
found silence, he presented a most imposing object.
His form is tall, slender, and emaciated ; but was en-
veloped in his long robes, that gave a peculiarly sacer-
dotal aspect. The hand which he stretched forth was
ample, but worn to a skinny meagritude and pallor.
His face was long, sunken, and cadaverous, but was
illuminated by eyes blazing with all the fire of genius,
the enthusiasm of religion, and the devotedness of pa-
triotism. His lank, black hair fell down his temples,
and eyebrows of the same colour stretched in thick
straight lines along a lofty forehead, and threw over the
whole countenance a deep shadow. The sun was shin-
ing with brilliancy, and rendered his figure, attired as
it was in white garments, more conspicuous. The priest
proceeded to the altar, and commended the people to
abstain, during the Divine ceremony, from all
political thinking or occupation. He recited
the Mass with great fervency and simplicity of
manner, and with all the evidences of unaffected
piety. However familiar, from daily repetition
with the ritual, he pronounced it with a quiet emphasis,
and went through the various forms which are inci-
dental to it with singular propriety and grace. The
people were deeply attentive, and it was observable that
most of them could read, for they had prayer-books in
their hands, which they read with a quiet devotion.
Mass being finished, Father Murphy throw his vestments
off, and, without laying down the priest, assumed the
politician. Re addressed tho people in Irish, and called
upon them to vote for O'Connell in the name of their
country and of their religion. It was a mart extra-
ordinary and powerful display of the externals of elo-
quence ; and, as far as a person unacquainted with the
language could form an estimate of the matter, by the
effects produced upon the auditory, it must have been
pregnant with genuine oratory. It will be supposed
that this singular priest addressed his parishioners is
tones and gestures as rude as the wild dialect to which
be was giving utterance. His action and attitudes were
as graceful as an accomplished actor could use in de-
livering the speech of Antony, and his intonations were
soft, pathetic, denunciatory, and conjuring, according
as his theme varied, and as he had recourse to different
expedients to influenca the people. The general cha-
racter of this strange harangue was impassioned and
solemn, but he occasionally had recourse to ridicule, and
his countenance at once adapted itself with a happy
readiness to derision. The finest spirit of sarcasm
gleArae4 over biti futurob and $11541t.5 of 'Pah* at.

I tended his description of a miserable Catholic who should
I prove recreant to the great cause, by making. a sacrifice
of his country to his landlord. The close of his speech
was peculiarly effective. He became enflamed by the
power of his emotions, and while he raised himself into
the loftiest attitude to which he could ascend, he laid
one hand on the altar, and shook the other in the spirit
of almost prophetic admonition ; and, as his eyes blazed
and seemed to start from his forehead, thick drops fell
down his face, and his voice rolled through lips livid
with passion and covered with foam. It is almost un-
necessary to say that such an appeal was irresistible.
The multitude burst into shouts of acclamation, and
would have been ready to mount a battery roaring with
cannon at his command."
A noble and even wonderful description, that !

and one which justifies our author in asserting tha,
in the person of Father Murphy might be recog-
nised rather the enthusiastic Macbriar in Scott's
novel of " Old Mortality" than that Irish priest of
farce and caricature, the sycophantic Foigard in
Farquhar's comedy of " The Beaux Stratagem."
Peneuden Heath has already been mentioned in
this notice—indeed, it is from Mr. Shiel's amusing
description of the celebrated gathering there in
1828 that we have extracted not only his descrip-
tion of himself, but his delineations also of Messrs.
Hunt and Cobbettr and my Lord Winchelsea.
Referring in that same account to his reported but
inaudible speech to the meeting, Mr. Shiers narra-
tive contains an allusion to ourselves, whioli it may
amuse our readers to see, if only by reason of its—
facetious gravity.
"Of what Mr. Shiel actually said it is impossible to
give any account, and the miraculous power by which
The Sun newspaper of that night contrived to publish
his oration in three columns must be referred to some
Hohenloe's interposition in favour of that journal. I
heard but one sentence, which I afterwards recognised
in print as having been spoken."—Sketches, p. 212,
vol. ii.

Through the medium of these animated sketches
the youth of the present generation may make
themselves acquainted with all particulars of in-
terest in regard to occfirrences dating back some
twenty or thirty years from the present times—
events as renowned for their political importance
as that same "Penenden Heath Meeting," or as the
memorable "Clare Election," or for the local interest
attaching to the " Tabinet Ball," or to the propo-
sals made once upon a time in the Rotunda with a
view to the cultivation of the soience of " Zoology
in Dublin." Meritorous, however, as are the ma-
jority of the literary papers here collected together
from the New Monthly, there are one or two
amongst them we cannot but think which had been
better left unrifled from the earlier volumes of that
magazine. Capital jeux d'esprit they may pro-
bably have been in their day, but vapid,
witless, dull—like Peter Bell—" dull beyond all
expression dull," they have now indubitably be-
come. In illustration of our meaning we need only
refer to the farcical nonsense entitled " The Exor-
cism of a Divine," being the burlesque account of
an imaginary miracle by Prince Hohenloe. By
introducing into the present collection this prepos-
terous extravagance, an extravagance which
ought to have been left to die out and be forgot-
ten, the editor of "Shiel's Sketches" has betrayed
as little judgment as he has elsewhere not unfre-
quently shown, scattered about in the volumes be-
fore us, in foot-notes, as pert as they are unneces-
sary. Literary sins of commission we should
scarcely have expected from the shrewd and agree-
able author of "The Falcon Family," and the
" Bachelor of the Albany."
Although an enthusiastic Celt in all his thoughts
and feelings, Mr. Shiel was by no means either
provincial or restricted in his partialities. He re-
cognised clearly, for example, as he himself has
declared very beautifully, that " compared to her
proud and pampered sister, clothed as she is in
purple and gold, Ireland with all her natural en-
dowments, at best appears but a squalid and ema-
ciated beauty." It is in his description of Ireland
and of Irishmen, however, that we chiefly discern
the abilities of the Milesian demagogue—it is his
evident devotion toErin that wins the sympathy of
as English heart to this ambassador to Florence
and member of the British Legislature. His am-
ple knowledge of his country and of her political
history is here lavished upon us in a copious stream
of lively and agreeable information. Through
these sketches we become familiarised (supposing
the persons hereafter enumerated to have been, any
of them, strangers to us previously) with the motley
group of individuals who more or less signalised
themselves among the crowd of more prominent
Irish advocates of Catholic Emancipation. With
John Keogh, the retired silk mercer of Mount
Jerome, and originally of Parliament-street, Dub-
lin—John Keogh, the unrivalled leader of the
Catholic Body in 1792 and 1793, nay, even up to
the time of the appearance of the veritable
Liberator ! Afterwards with Daniel O'Connell
himself the uncrowned Monarch of Ireland !
With Dennis Scully for some time his active
coadjutor—in his character as a vigorous and
eloquent pamphleteer With Wolfe Tone,
the Secretary to the Catholic Conunitttee in the
Irish capital ! Wi th the late Earl of Fingal, the Pre-
mier Catholic nobleman in the sister kingdom. With
his son the present Earl, when Lord Killeen. Sl' ith
"J. K. L.," the celebrated Doctor Doyle, the Catho-
lic Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin. With 2Ent-,,as
M'Donnel, the London agent of the Catholic Asso-
ciation—of whom, when Lord Norbury observed
him descending the steps of the house of Dr. Troy'
then Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, the Scarron
of the Bench remarked, in a memorable witticism.
—" There is pious .2Eneas coming from the sack
of Troy 1" Together with these more conspicuous
figures in that epoch of agitation others are recog-
nisable in Mr. Shiel's Political Sketches—energetic
advocates of emancipation. English lay advocates,
such as Charles Butler of the Temple, or Irish
clerical advocates,such as Father Sheehan of Water-
ford. It is entertaining, moreover, beyond the
scope of the materials for entertainment here im-
plied, to discern sketches introduced, here and there
in these pleasant volumes, of other celebrities,
some dead, some still surviving, of Sir Francis
Burdett and Lord Brougham, of Sergeant Toler,
afterwards Lord Norbury, and of Mr. Stanley, now
Earl cf Derby, and leader of the great party of the
Conservatives. Of Lord Norbury, Mr. Shiel ob-
served, in 1827, that his orations were " fraught
with a kind of truculent bombast, a sort of san-
guinary fee-fa-fum r " While of Lord Derby's
oratorical powers he wrote, in 1831 :—" His lan-
guage, although it is faultless and flows from the
well f English undefiled, is not rich, coloured, or
diversified ; his expression does not sparkle; it has
neither the glitter of fancy nor the splendour of
imagination.' Such, in truth, were not among
the characteristics of the genius of Richard Lalor
Shiel himself as a speaker—of him none could ever
say "no generous exclamation ever breaks from
his lips ; his eyes are never on fire with a moral in-
spiration ; he is never lifted from the ground' by
any ascendancy of emotion." Witness this that
noble and even magnificent peroration to his great
speech at the close of the Clare election—when
descanting on the power exercised by the Catholic
Association over the Irish peasantry, he cried
out with the true °estrum of the orator, so to
speak, in an agony of adjuration—" What
think you of all this ? Is it meet and wise to leave
us armed with such a dominion ? Trust us not with
it ; strip us of this appalling despotism ; annihilate
us by concession ; extinguish us with peace ; dis-
array us by equality ; instead of angry slaves make
us contented citizens : if you do not—tremble for
the result !" During the earlier part of which
splendid harangue the orator bad exclaimed with
such wondrous effect—" Do you think that Mr.
Daniel O'Connell has himself, and by the single
powers of his own mind, unaided by any external
co-operation, brought the country to this great
crisis of agitation ? Mr. O'Connell, with all his
talents for excitation, would have been utterly
powerless and incapable, unless he had been allied
with a great conspirator against the public peace ;
and I will tell you who that confederate is—it is
the law of the land itself that has been Mr. O'Con-.
Hell's main associate, and that ought_ tod be de-
nounced The
rod
ean
eneltane,
volume
s
of his
of
oppression
aas
the
wand agitatorof this
oo
ff
potenthis spells is the
Penal of the passions, and the book
this • 6
Penal Code. Break the wand of political
magic, and he will evoke _ p
-take from
thheims itrhiets which are un-
Prospero, and
un-
der his control no longer." Elociaence such as
this it is seldom our opportunity now to chronicle
-only, indeed, at rare intervals, as when but the
other evening, in the House of Commons, one of
the most able and gifted among the orators of the
present age, the honourable member for the city of
Manchester, in a burst of oratory worthy of
John Bright, worthier of a juster argument than
John Bright was then enforcing, and not unworthy
of the rhetorical powers of Shiel, or of any one of
Shiel's immediate contemporaries, solemnly ad-
jured the Prime Minister of England to allay the
shedding of blood in the present war against the
Russian Autocrat, exclaiming—" The angel of
death has been abroad throughout the land ; you
that blood
he may the lintelspe
and the s
may almost hear the very beating of his wings.
The rei sni
de
e one
posts to
of
u
o r doors,
sprinkle with
e: n
that
fmmtbhal
eek,
ewaetnah(liitshi t wealthy,
eeomqn. equally
behalflalyp paes
aoalf.t,
"the
At
these
eoistne-
and pass on ; but he calls atthe castle of the noble,
ttc
ahl
age sesmeosaf mansion
some measure the incidental record of an eloquence
kindred to this in its emotional fervour, and
coloured into exquisite beauty by all the adorn-
ments of a copious and varied, but, even during
moments of the greatest intellectual excitement, an
aptly and fastidiously selected phraseology—these
volumes of " Sketches, Legal and Political," from
the pen of the late Right Hon. Richard Lalor Shiel,
?,ZQ uudefierying 9f a place. tiron.

- -
already adorned with the effusions of a Burke and
a Cicero, of a Chatham and a Demosthenes. This
is high praise when accorded to a collection of fugi-
tive contributions to a magazine, but preseiving to
us, as some of these occasional pieces do, examples
of the oratorical genius of Mr. Shiel—it is, we can..
not but think, praise eminently well deserved.
When may we hope to recognise the opportunity
of according some yet more cordial welcome to a
work still worthier of commendation--a work more
substantially valuable as an accession to our na-
tional literature ? When may we 'have the satis-
faction of hailing the appearance—thoroughly re-
vised and carefully annotated—not of 66 Shierts
Sketches," but of " Shiel's Speeches ?"