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perusal but study. It would be impossible to surpass the vigour of their dialectics. Even his hustings speeches at Cashel, in which he dwelt on the policy of the Irish Government, were commented upon by all the English Press.

The hearty commendation which the Examiner and Spectator bestowed on the speeches of Mr. Woulfe, sufficiently showed the estimation in which his abilities were held by political critics. In those days the editor of the Spectator used to attend the parliamentary debates, of which he gave piquant and graphic descriptions, and we well remember his hailing Woulfe (on the occasion of his maiden speech) as an important accession to the Liberal cause; on the few occasions when he spoke, the house listened to him with the greatest attention. Personally he was much liked by the members generally, as indeed was the case with all who ever knew the man; for he was good-natured and unaffected, and had the heart of one who would faithfully serve a friend and spare an enemy.

In politics, with the general science of which, as his writings and speeches testify, he was intimately acquainted, he wanted a high and animating purpose. After the concession of Emancipation, there was no great political question which aroused his hopes. He did not care much for the common objects which interest party politicians; he was not a violent Anti-Tory, neither was he a vehement Whig. He had very little faith in the formulas which are deemed of such importance by the Utilitarians. We have already indicated the peculiarity of his political position with regard to the two sections of the Irish Liberal party.

He was a most warm friend to the extension of the franchise. He had no fear of popular power, which, however, he thought should be balanced by positive institutions. The American system of government he did not think at all fit for these countries. In the main, he was a warm admirer of the British constitution; but he thought that hitherto it has been too much a thing of theory and not reality.

Although we have no doubt that at a political conjuncture of awful exigency, Woulfe would have sided with his countrymen, still he was of that cautious character which would recoil from hazardous counsels. The shout and the hurrah would not have made him waver in the avowal of unpopular opinions. He was an out-spoken, straightforward, and fearless politician.

In a country circumstanced like France, where men of esprit become powerful, Woulfe, (had his destiny been so cast) would have fully developed all his powers, which were precisely of that order likely to meet with rapid appreciation in such an assembly as the Chamber of Deputies. In the French legislature, the theorist and political thinker occupy a far higher rank than they could win in St. Stephen's. would certainly not have talked to empty benches in a French chamber of legislation, and Mackintosh would not have been voted a parliamentary

failure, by audiences who have attentively listened, upon repeated occasions, to the elaborately scientific demonstrations of Arago, or the metaphysical disquisitions of Cousin. Aptness for the speculative parts of political science, conjoined with skilful energy in the transaction of the public business, and the management of public questions, form the character of most value in the French senate. In such a field Woulfe's abilities would have worked well. His powers of action, and his capacity for sustained scientific thought, would have placed him high in a country which selects its ministers from its literati.

Woulfe was not fitted for a popular leader; he had too uncrouching a character for such a part. He was still less fitted for the bureau, for he could not muffle his political gait with the feline instinct of a stealthy official.

But what did Woulfe do that we, Irishmen, need care for his memory?

Ah! it is a great thing in this dreary age of Ireland, when the country is provincialized, and the genius of the people not permitted to develope itself, to be a genuine Irishman in heart and head,-to be a real incorrupt son of the soil. It is a great thing in such a time, under withering influences, to grow up a hardy vigorous Irishman, and give a living argument for the inextinguishable vitality of the Irish character. While too many of our countrymen ape the bearing of the frigid Englishman, and become his servile imitators in political, literary, and the more transient social fashions, it is no small thing to be a Stephen Woulfe, overtopping the crowd of copyists,-oxos avegwwwv,-giving us the cheering sight of a man of genius, whom we are proud to hail as a fellow-countryman.

And Woulfe was undoubtedly an Irishman of genius. The volcanic nature, which many erroneously deem the invariable accompaniment of Irish genius, he very largely shared. He cast up his best thoughts in eruptions. The vehemence of his delivery, and the rapidity of his ar gument, plainly show in what country he had learned his oratory. A peculiarity common to Irish artists, whether painters or orators, of treating even common subjects after a certain grand fashion, was very visible in Woulfe. Not that he was stilted or bombastic, but like many of our greatest men, he was not master of a good middle style.

He was not in the popular sense a witty man. He had not much Irish humour, and though few possessed a keener insight into the false, he had little sympathy with the ludicrous. His mind affected the grand and sublime rather than the pathetic or droll. His wrath, however, was Irish, bursting out suddenly with startling vehemence. He was a powerful and accomplished Celt. Though bred in times of great popu

At such times it was impossible to follow him. The parliamentary reporters could not undertake to report his speeches, and he was obliged to attempt the office himself, but he executed it miserably. The reports in Hansard are very meagre transcripts of 3 F

what he said.

1842.-NOVEMBER.

lar ferment, he was not even tinged with the vile spirit of vituperation. He always avoided personalities.

His appearance was most striking. Shelley might have assigned to his

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His physiognomy was such as

Inspired and desperate alchemist,

Staking his very life on some dark cast."

His face was that of a dark character. It was strangely fierce and penetrating. He looked like one of the personages in a drama, of which the scene is laid in Venice.

His form in latter years was gaunt and spectral, and his voice in conversation croaked like a raven. Upon the whole, there was something very fearful in the appearance of Woulfe. Never before probably had so amiable a man such an formidable aspect. He looked like one who was ready to do something great and terrible.

While in his reveries, which were frequent, his face had quite another caste. Then all traces of the fearful vanished, and you saw only a strange, wild, absorbed man, with a mystical expression on his features. At such moments he appeared to be entirely forgetful of what was passing around him. He seemed like one pondering on some metaphysical form of the clair obscur, or rapt by a floating vision of fantasy. Then you would have said "surely, this man must have something to tell the world. Here is a mind at work." He had a curious trick at such times of violently thrusting his fingers through his long dark hair, pushing it off his forehead. He would continue to do so for several minutes, and then he would, as it were, waken up from his trance, and plunge again into the scene around him.

It was at such moments that he looked like a man whose spirit was striving for utterance. He always gave us the idea that he shrunk from wakening the echoes of his thoughts. He might have truly cried in the poet's words

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"But as it is, I live and die unheard,

"With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword."

It has been well said by a consummate judge of character, that "Woulfe was the first mind amongst the modern Irish Catholics." He was the first amongst the laymen of that body who gave incontestable evidence of a profound thinker, endowed with philosophical grasp and a penetrating spirit. His theological training (for he was partly educated at Maynooth, having been originally intended for the Catholic church) did much to sharpen the intellect, and invigorate the reasoning powers of one whose faculties, without some constraint, would have been erratic in their tendency, from the discursive character of his mind. Had he taken orders, and engaged in controversy, he might have been the Bossuet of Ireland.

Nature, however, formed him for a statesman; but circumstances, which we have faintly indicated, prevented his coming into more active

life. Had he been born thirty years sooner, or thirty years later, he might have stamped his name indelibly in the history of his race; but, as things were, he lacked ambition.

Upon the whole, there was something lofty and towering about Woulfe's mind, that spoke the power of genius. He was great enough to have lived in the days of Flood and Hussey Burgh. We can easily imagine what he would have been in an Irish House of Commons. Even though an undeveloped man, he always refreshed our eyes with the sight of an original character, breaking the dreary uniformity of commonplace which pervades the modern Irish bar.

As we are not writing a memoir of Woulfe, which we leave to other and abler pens, we refrain from anecdotes. It deserves however to be known, as a proof of Woulfe's generosity and modesty, that on the death of Chief Baron Joy, he was most anxious that Baron Pennefather should be made Chief, he himself being content to sit as second Baron. The Whig government, however, (naturally enough) refused to entertain Woulfe's most liberal proposal.*

To conclude,-singularly "unhating" for one bred in times of agitation-a sterlingly honest politician, who strove "for the supremacy of reason and honesty" in the government of Ireland—a scholar and philosopher without literary pride—with a magnanimous heart, and the manners of a gentleman; a genius for investigating the phenomena of politics, and reducing government to science; and a soul that responded to the sentiment of country, Stephen Woulfe was to be admired as one of "the few, fine, bold original spirits, who might give the world a new character, and a more majestic aspect to crouching life. But we look abroad, and see strutting to and fro the sons of little men, blown up with vanity, in a land where tradition, not yet old, tells of a race of giants.

"Brush these away, and let us think of the great dead, let us look to the great living, and strong in memory and hope, be confident in the cause of freedom."

*This is corroborated by the writer of an interesting sketch of the Rt. Hon. Charles Bushe, which appeared in the Dublin University Magazine for July, 1841. Alluding to some mutual sacrifices which Bushe and Saurin made to each other in the way of professional advancement, he says in a note :-" Although not strictly relevant to the subject of the present sketch, it may not be altogether unfitting here to mention an instance of a similar disposition to waive personal claims to superior professional merits, which is not generally known, and which ought not to be kept secret. When the place of the Chief Baron of the Exchequer fell vacant in 1837, by the lamented death of Chief Baron Joy, the right to fill it devolved on Woulfe, the then Attorney-general. The Attorney-general urged strongly on the government the propriety of appointing to the vacant place Baron Pennefather, unquestionably the fittest man at the Irish bar to fill it; offering himself to accept the puisne judge's place, which would be left vacant by the promotion of Baron Pennefather; and it was not until the government had positively stated, in reply to his repeated remonstrances, that they would under no circumstances consider the claims of Baron Pennefather, that Mr. Woulfe accepted the place of Chief Baron. Of the truth of this there is no doubt, and we mention it as an act of justice to the memory of one, who, whatever were his faults, political or personal, was never appreciated as he ought to have been."-Dub. Univ. Mag. Vol. xviii, p. 84.

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ON a November evening, in the year of grace 15**, a large shallop might be seen working to seaward from the iron-bound coast of the county of Waterford. She was a stout vessel, manned by a numerous crew, and several banners, with various armorial quarterings, on her large and clumsily cut square-sails, showed that she belonged to some powerful chieftain, and almost as plainly indicated that she was strongly armed; but whether she sailed in the service of the state, or for the private objects of her master, was a doubtful point. A nearer view would have shown that she carried the arms of Desmond at her maintop; and the legend "crom aboo" around several shields which ornamented her sides, showed that she belonged to this powerful sept-a fact not at all calculated to assure any honest trader of the safety of her neighbourhood, as it was well known to sea-going people, who owned rich argosies, that those doughty earls or their dependants seldom went far to sea for pleasure solely. Two men in half-armour walked her quarter-deck, and were in earnest conversation, stopping occasionally to look to windward at the heavy piles of leaden coloured clouds that were fast rolling in from the south west, portending a severe gale, to withstand which with more effect, they were now running out for a good offing. A strong low tower near her bow, then, more appropriately than now, called the forecastle, and armed with two small petronels, was filled with men, some of them seamen, in rough doublets with seal-skin hats, and others, "men of warre," in quilted haubergeons and rude iron skull-caps. They were apparently much delighted with the conversation of a thin, but wiry and powerfully made man, who wore a grey cassock over a shirt of mail of foreign manufacture, and whose shaven crown told that he was a man in religious orders, a circumstance which in our days would seem almost incredible, seeing that he wore an enormous skein or iron dagger at his side, hanging in close propinquity to a curious and richly ornamented set of beads. It was easy to perceive that he was from circumstances a priest, and from disposition a warrior; and fortunately for his reputation, he lived in a time when both characters formed not a very inconsistent combination. He had evidently gone forward to indulge in warlike conversation with the occupants of the forecastle; for a sinewy warrior, who rose from his seat opposite the "galley" fire, in order to accommodate the ecclesiastic, said,

"Father le Poer, or, Sir Priest, as you are wont to be called when you don the hauberk on your shoulders, will you warm the blood of your men of arms for one while, by telling us of the freak you had when you

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