The Sun.
London, England, 1855-07-19 00:00:00

The Emperor's Cape, made only by E. MOSES and Fox, and now
universally appreciated, is light, waterproof, and gentlemanly. Its
price is 2(a. plain; richly trimmed with silk, 325.
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with any other house in or ont of London, except their own Esta-
blishments, as follow :
London City Establishment, corner of the Alinories, and ildgats-
(opposite the church).
London West-end Branch, New Oxford-street, corner of Hart
street.

Country Branches—Sheffield and Bradford, Yorkshire.
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brisowrsyr.—Should any article not give satisfaction It will be ex•
changed or, if preterred, the money returned without hesitation. Al
goods are marked in plain 15gures, the lowest price, from which tit
abatement can be made.

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RICHARD LALOR SHEIL.

..-Ifeinairs of the Right lion. Richard Lalor Shell. By W.
Torrens M'Cullagh. 2 vole. Hurst and Blackett, for
Henry Colburn.
It cannot but be a matter of congratulation among the
admirers of the late Right Hon. Member for Dungarvan
that the office of his biographer has devolved upon his
friend Mr. Torrens M'Cullagh. That gentleman has, in
unaffectedly acquitting himself of his task, proffered a
genial tribute to the memory of an incorruptible patriot,
an illustrious orator, and an enlightened statesman ; and,
while so doing, has contributed materials of no common
value towards the future political history of his genera-
tion. We accept these two volumes precisely as they arc
intended to be accepted by their author, for no more and
for no less—scarcely so much as the elaborated narrative
of a life, as a painstaking endeavour to illustrate by a re-
cord of undoubted facts and indisputable opinions the con-
sistency of Mr. Sheil's conduct throughout the whole of the
chequered phases of his career—from 'the earlier mani-
festations of his youthful capacity in the ardour
of the dramatist and the enthusiasm of the dema-
gogue, to the later evidences of his ripened powers in the
practised skill of the debater and the intuitive adroit-
ness of the diplomatist. Mr. M'Cullagh has recounted to
this end no more than was absolutely requisite for the de-
monstration of the moral of this consistency. We look in
vain into his pages for those Boswellian particularities
which constitute so much of the secret charm of the
greatest biography in our own, or perhaps in any other,
literature. That monopolising admiration which em-
braces not only the genius but the very eccentricities of
the hero it undertakes to commemorate. That insatiable
reverence for a departed associate which discovers food for
itself not merely in his more elevated characteristics and
distinguishing idiocyncrasy, but in his personal peculiari-
ties, in the colour of his coat, in the mobility of his fea-
tures, in the freaks and oddities of his deportment. A
plenary homage such as this, it is, which has preserved to
us not only the axiomatic wisdom and conversational apoph-
thegms of Doctor Johnson, but every minute detail of his
habits and of his household. So that as Mr. Macaulay
has reminded us in a celebrated essay, we become as much
familiarised as over could have been Mrs. Thralo or Miss
Fanny Burney, with the old doctor's favourite cat, Hodge,
with his housekeeper, blind Mrs. Williams, with his black
servant, Mr. Francis Barber, with his querulous dependant
or pensioner, Mr. Levett, nay, with the minor peculiarities
of the Sage of Fleet-street—his thirst for tea, his love of
orange peel, his appetite for pig-and-plum-sauce, his
snuff-coloured coat, his scrubby old scratch wig when in
undress, his slouching walk, the twitchings and contor-
tions of his countenance, his sweatings and gruntings over
the dinner table, his deadly hatred of prigs and bores, his
profound piety, and his tender love for little children. We
know all this and more—how much more !—thanks to the
inimitable and laborious minuteness of the incomparable
biographer. Vainly, however, we repeat, may the readers
of the present lively and agreeable memoir of Shell,
look to Mr. M'Cullagh for the like kind of purely anec-
dotal, or simply gossipping, or exclusively personal, infor-
mation. A biography of Dutch-like detail is not the kind
of biography our author here undertakes to produce—it is
not by any means the sort of narrative any one could rea-
sonably expect from him under the circumstances. The
undertaking is altogether something more serious and sedate
in its general character. It is not so much the picturesque
account of the development of the fame and fortunes of a
self-made man, as the phrase runs, nowadays—though it is
that too—as it is (we repeat it) the vindication of his per-
sonal disinterestedness and political consistency.
Looking down a catalogue of the memorable years which
have elapsed since the first outbreak of the French Revolu-
tion, we may take in, according to the old scriptural
phrase, at " a span," between
1791 and
the life-time of the man now under our consideration. An
interval of very nearly sixty years, within which he con-
trived to do good service to his country, while building
up for himse:f no fleeting or unenviable reputation.
Richard Sheil was born on the 17th of August, 1791, at
Drumdowney, a small country-house, near Waterford—
the eldest son of Edward Sheil, of Bellevue, by his wife Ca-
therine, one of the daughters of the family of the M`Car-
thys, of Spring-house, in the county of Tipperary. As a
boy, Sheil passed the most part of his time ou the banks
of the Suir, under the happy shade of Bellevue. Meditat-
ing even then dreams of poetry and rhetoric—an embryo
.Alschylus, a budding Demosthenes. Early enough in life
he began to pick up, in that same beloved retreat, morsels
of French and acraps of Latin, under the guidance of the

1851,