BREIL'S LEGAL AND POLITICAL CIIANACTENS AND SKETCRES.'
Tuts reprint of the articles which Sheil contributed to the New ItIonthly .31agazine, some thirty years ago, derives some fresh in- terest from the reeeut appearance of Mr. M'Cullagh's Memeirs: The preface informs us that the republication originated in the same American " unserupulosity " that compelled Macaulay to reprint his Essays against his will. In Sheirs case there was indeed more than reprinting ; many articles of the series written by Mr. Cur- ran were ascribed to Sheil. The American editor, moreover, "had the assurance to pretend in his preface, that a compilation so dis- creditable was undertaken with the approbation and authority of Mr. Sheil himself." He also has treated the text pretty much as Macaulay declares the text of the unauthorized edition of his speeches was handled. "In the American edition, the most palpable mistakes of the press in the ori.- ginal papers are religiously preserved and repeated ; and the errors in the clas- sical quotations (those everlasting stumblingblocks of printers) are copied with scrupulous nicety. We are informed, in a cautious note, that by Goethe's Me- tempsyphiles ' may possibly have been intended Goethe's Mephistophiles.' A slip of the pen so obvious as 'the Chorus of Apothecaries in Moliere's _Bourgeois Gentilhonone,' remains uncorrected. In one place, Charles Butler the lawyer is confounded with Alban Butler the divine, and affirmed to be the author of the lives of the Saints. In another, the late Earl Grey is represented, in the year 1825, as still overwhelmed with sorrow for the death of Mr. Fox. In short, there is no end to the blunders and absurdities with which the publication abounds."
The collection is distinguished from other collections of a some- what similar nature by the more personal and contemporary cha- racter of its subjects. The articles of Macaulay and Stephen are historical : Sydney Smith deals mainly with social., moral, or politi- cal topics; his politics, even when on particular questions, being treated with reference to principles rather than men : Jeffrey, Foster, and others, are miscellaneous in their topics, philosophical or critical in their manner. The collections, however they may differ in merit, are obviously written by men who had the power of raising themselves above the passions of the hour and of look- ing upon the world from a height of, some sort.. Shell is as evi- dently a iningler in the fray. The most prominent and on the whole the most interesting topics are sketches of the leading members of the Irish bar some -thirty years ago, and the reports of criminal trials, or rather the story of some of those atrocious crimes which startled the whole kingdom when they were committed, and have attached a stigma to the name of Irishman. There are also accounts of events that were-stirring at the time and are now almost historical—as the Clare election, which was the denouement of the long drama of Catholic Emancipation ; and some topics of lesser moment—as disquisitions on the then State of Parties in Dublin. A few are of the nature of the thorough "article," in which the essay, though resting upon particular facts, passes into generalization, and de- pends for its interest as much upon literary skill as upon the importance of the subject.
The attraction of the book will much depend upon the age of the reader. Those who are old enough to remember the men and the events whioh the writer describes will have revived the memory of times more stirring and violent than we now live in and probably be moved as by an old face or any other memorial of the past. Younger readers will feel less interested by the record, for they are not interested in the circumstances. Who cares nowadays for the
• Sketches Leg,a1 and Political by the late Right Honourable Richard Lalor Sheil. Edited. with Notes, by M. W. Savage, Esq. In two volumes. Published for Henry Colburn by Hurst and Blackett.
details of the contest springing out of the row at the Dublin theatre when the exasperated Orangemen threw from the gallery:a bottle at the box where Lord Wellesley was sitting as -Viceroy P The lawyers, active and celebrated in their day, have passed from the mixed of the general publio. Few of this generation feel concerned about the names of Swain, Joy, Bellew, perhaps even of Ologhlert or Bushe. The notices of Irish politics' and the sketches of Irish political men or events, have the same faded character to the gene- ral reader of the present day. The legal cases have more interest, and for many readers will excite the most attention of anything in the book.
The nature of the subject is not improved by the treatment. The pointed Milesian rhetoric which characterized Mr. Shell's speeches is sobered down in these papers ; but the political partisan and the rhetorician are still visible. To give effect to the bottlie row and its consequences, for example, the Marquis Wellesley should appear to the reader as a man grossly insulted for endea- vourins to discharge his public duty between parties. Instead of that, he is represented as a weak and trimming politician who brings his troubles on himself as a ruler, while as an individual he is painted as ridioulously vain, giving his mind to the external trappings of his office, and chiefly intent upon playing the ride of king, when he is only a king's deputy. There may be some truth in this, but it is far from being the whole. truth. The object of the Catholic advocate was to lower the Lord-Lieutenant, who aia not patronize their cause so much as the Catholics expected. The same feeling shows itself in exaggeration of the merits or demerits of the local politicians, while there appears to lurk in the writer's mind an undue sense of their importance. The whole book was written before Emancipation, and before the writer, had shaken off his provincial trammels. The nature of Shell's mind and pursuits affects his writings in another way. A party or professional speaker is rarely Well fitted for literature, because his mind is less trained to the dis- covery of natural truth—that is, of the qualities inherent in a thing—than to pick out those points that are likely to have a telling if only .a temporary effect. Too much of this characteristics is visible in the Sketches generally. It is obvious that the writer is as much on the look-out for something smart to say against an opponent as studying to exhibit what his subject really contains. lie seems less anxious to produce an exaot portrait than to bring out those features that May flatter the prejudices or preconceptions of -political partisans. This might originally conduce to popu- larity; it militates against effect now. Although onesided, there is little that is narrow about Sheil, and still less of mere vulgar partisanship. The necessity of his position and his objects confined him to friends or foes, but he was not altogether blinded to the merits of the foe or the de- merits of the friend, if he dared not always follow his own perceptions in their fullest extent. His visit to England as one of the Catholic Deputation in 1825 did not exactly open his eyes, but it extended his ken, and dissipated some of his more provincial notions; though 'the following remarks are rather ap- plicable to his colleagues than himself—he had several times been in England before. "No incident occurred deserving of mention, unless a change in our feel- ings deserves the name. The moment we entered England I perceived that the sense of our own national importance had sustained some diminution, and that, however slowly and reluctantly we acknowledged it to ourselves, the contemplation of the opulence which surrounded us, and in which we saw the results and evidences of British power and greatness, impressed upon every one of us the consciousness of our provincial inferiority, and the con- viction that it is only from an intimate alliance with Great Britain, or rather a complete amalgamation with her immense dominion, that any pertnanent prosperity can be reasonably expected to be derived. In the sudden transi- tion from the scenes of misery and sorrow to which we are habituated in Ireland to the splendid spectacle of English wealth and civilizatirm, the MI- miliating contrast between the two islands presses itself upon every ordinary observer. It is at all times remarkable. Compared to her proud and pam- pered sister, clothed as she is in purple and in gold, Ireland, with all her na- tural endowments, at best appears but a squalid and emaciated beauty. I have never failed to be struck and pained by this unfortunate disparity : but upon the present Occasion the objects of our mission, and the peculiarly. 71a- tional capacity in which we were placed in relation to England, naturally drew our meditation to the surpassing glory of the people of whom we had come to solicit redress. "An- occasional visit to England has a very salutary effect. It operates as a complete sedative to the ardour of the political passions. It should be prescribed as a part of the antiphlogistie regimen. The persons who take an active part in the impassioned deliberations of the Irish people are apt to be carried away by the strength of the popular feelings which they contri- bute to create. Having heated the public mind into an ardent mass of emo- tion, they are themselves under the influence of its intensity. This result is natural and just : but among the consequences (most of which are bene- ficial) which have arisen from this habitual excitation, and to which the Catholics have reasonably attributed much of their inchoate success, they have forgotten the effect upon themselves, and have omitted to observe in their own minds a disposition to exaggerate the magnitude of the means by which their ends are to be acoomplished. In deelainung upon the immense population of Ireland, they insensibly put out of account the power of that nation from whom relief is demanded, and who are grown old m the habit of domination which of all habits it is most difficult to resign." Besides diet he could perceive the weak points of friends, Mr. Sheil was not bigoted in religipn. In his mind the Catholic ques- tion was a cause rather than a creed. Ile touches upon the ex- treme views both of the faith and the faithful with sly and sportive irony. This picture of the Catholic barrister who was one of the first "called" after Romanists were declared admissible, is an -ex.- ample of the author's pleasantry. It must, however, be borne in mind, that Mr. Bellew, like many other respectable men, was op- posed to the violence of O'Connell and his followers. The tem- porary nature of the illustrations, as well as the transient pictures
Of bygone manners in Ireland, which the articles often turn up, are both indicated in the following extract.
"Mr. William Bellew is a member of one of the most distinguished Roman Catholic families in Ireland. There was formerly a peerage attached to his name, which was extinguished in an attainder. A baronetcy was re- tained. His father, Sir Patrick Bellew, was a man of high spirit, distin- guished for his munificence, and that species of disastrous hospitality by which many a fine estate was so ingloriously dismembered. He constituted a sort of exception among the Catholic gentry ; for at the time when that body sank under the weight of accumulated indignities, Sir Patrick Bellew exhibited a lofty sense of his personal importance, and was sufficiently bold to carry a sword. His property descended to his eldest son, Sir Edward Bellew. Mr. William Bellew, the barrister, who was his, second son, was sent to the Anglo-Saxon University of Amoy; from whence he returned with all the altitude of demeanour for which his father was remarkable, but with ayrofound veneration for all constituted authorities, of whatever nature, hand, or degree, and with abstract tendencies to political submission, which are Ilne means at variance with a man's interests in Ireland.e was one of the first Roman Catholics called to the bar ; and I have understood from some of his contemporaries, that as he represented the Catholic gentry, and was considered to take a decided lead in their proceed- ings, in his first appearance in the Four Courts he attracted much notice. His general bearing produced a sort of awe ; and it was obvious that, as Owen Glendower says he was not in the roll of common men.' His lofty person, his stately walk, his perpendicular attitude the rectilineal position Of his head, his solemnity of gesture, the deep and Meditative gravity of his expression, his sustained and measured utterance, the deliberation of his tones, his self-collectedness and concentration, and that condensed but by no means arrogant or overweening look of superiority by which he is charac- terized, fixed an universal gaze upon him ; and, from the contrast between him, and the rapid, bustling, and airy manner of most of his brethren, ex- cited a general curiosity. Heedless of observation, and scarcely conscious of it, the forensic aristocrat passed through the throng of wondering spectators, and, as Horatio says of the Royal Dane,
• with solemn march Went slow and stately by them.'
There was indeed something spectral in his aspect. The phantom of the old Catholic aristocracy seemed- to have been evoked in his person, while the genins of Protestant ascendancy shrunk before its majestic apparition. All i idea of checking the growth of Popery' vanished in an instant at his • eiht., • • `If I were a painter and were employed to furnish illustrations of Ivanhoe, I do not think that I could find a more appropriate model than Mr. Bellew ler the picture of Lucas Beaumanoir. His visage is inexorable without fierce- ness; and many a time hath he been observed fixing his immitigable eye upon a beauty in the dock at the Assizes of Dundalk, with that expression with which the Grand Master is represented to have surveyed the unfortu- nate Jewess. His friend Mr. hi'Kenna used to observe, that 'if William Bellew saw a man hanging from every lamp-post down Capel Street, in his morning walk from Great Charles Street to the Four Courts, the only ques- tion he would ask would be whether they were hanged according to law.'"
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