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

• tended his description of a AI Sirable 6athelio who ehould
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 flee 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 that
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 Foi'ard in
Farquhar's comedy of "The Beaux Stratagem."
Penenden Heath has already been mentioned in
this notice—indeed, it is from Mr. Shiers 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 Cobbett, and my Lord Winchelsea.
Referring in that saint) account to his reported but
inaudible speech to the meeting, Mr. Shiers narra-
tive contains an allusion to ourselves, which 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 Sten 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 occurrences dating back some
twenty or thirty years from the present time.—
events as renowned ler their political importance
as that same "Penendenfleath Meeting," or as the
memorable " Clare Election," or for the focal intere,t
attaching to the " Tabiuet Ball," or to the propo-
sals made once upon a time in the Rotunda with a
view to the cultivation of the science of " Zoology
in Dublin." Meritorous, however, as are the ma-
jority of the literary papers here collected together
from the New Mouth/y, 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 jeuz 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
au imaginary miracle by Prince Hobenloe. 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 lie 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 tdErin that wins the. sympathy of
an English heart to this ambassador to Florence
and member of the British Legislature. His am-
ple knowledge of his country and of her political
i 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 17 92 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 Committteei- in the
Irish capital ! With the late E al of Fingal, the Pre-
mier Catholic nobleman in the sisterkinedom. With
his son the .present Earl, when Lord Killeen. Wi th
"J. K. L.," the celebratedDoctorDoyle the Catho-
lic Bishop of Kildare and Leiglilin. With ..Eneas
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 Scarrou
of the Bench remarked, in a memorable witticism
—" There is pious Eneas coming from the sack
of Trey !" 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 those 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-furn l'" While of Lord Derby's
oratorical powers he wrote, in 1831 :—" His lan-
guage, although it is faultless and flows from the
well of 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
auy 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 cestrum of the orator, so to
speak, in au agony of adjuration—" NV hat
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 had 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--,-]e
° iil-
s
.ought Mr.
to °b
e de-
tnheeirlsawmoafintheaslsaonediateits,elafntd tihatllast
been
nounced as the mighty agitator of Ireland. The
rod of oppression is the wand of this potent enchan-
ter of the passions, and the book of his spells is the
Penal Code. Break the wand of this political
Prospero, and take from him the volume of his
magic, and he will evoke the spirits which are un-
der his control no longer." Eloquence 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 jester argument than
John Bright was then enforcing, and net unworthy
of the rhetorical powers of Shiel, or of any one of
Shiers immediate contemporaries, solemnly ad-
jured the Prime Minister of England to allay the
shedding of blood in the present war against the,
Russian Autocrat, exelaituing—c‘ The angel of
death has been abroad throughout the lantr; you
may almost hear the very boating of his wings.
There is ue one to sprinkle with blood the lintel
and the side posts of our doors, that he may spare
and pass on ; but he calls at the castle of the noble,
the mansion of the wealthy, equally as at the cot-
tage of the humble, and it is on behalf of all these
classes that I make this solemn appeal." As in
some measure the incidental record of au eloquence
kindred to this in its emotional fervour, and
coloured into exquisite beauty by
all the adorn-
meuts of a copious and varied, but, even
during
moments of the greatest intellectual excitement,an
aptly and fastidiously selected phraseology—these
from
the of " Sketches, Legal and Political,"
the pen of the late Right Hon. Richard
uponßichardbLnaolko-h
rsSelliveL,
. arc not undeserving of a place