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who heard the preacher never can forget him. It was my happiness to have the opportunity thrice, while a student in the University of Dublin. The church, on and, in truth, not a very decorous specthose occasions, presented a singular,

tacle-a bear-garden was orderly compared to it. The clothes were torn off men's backs-ladies were carried out fainting-disorder the most unseemly disgraced the entire service, and so continued till Kirwan ascended the pulpit. What a change was there then! Every eye was turned to him-every tongue was His hushed-all was solemn silence. enunciation of the Lord's Prayer was one of the finest things ever heard. Never before or since did mortal man produce such wonderful effect. And yet he had his disadvantages to overcome his person was not imposing; he was somewhat wall-eyed; and his voice at times was inharmonious."

liament. These walls shut out the The volume is not remembered-those roar of the populace, which disturbed him, but to which he once must listen. These walls sheltered him from that perpetual clinging of Popery, which dragged down his fine tastes to its own level. Within these walls, he was relieved from the petty interests of partisanship, and raised from the feuds of an island to the policy of an empire. In Ireland, popularity required perpetual submission to the caprices of the multitude, and no man had more fully felt than Grattan the impossibility of taking a stand on his own principles-he must be either on the shoulders of the mob, or under their heels. In England, no longer wearied with the responsibility of leading parties who refused to be guided, or the disgust of following his inferiors through the dust of their hurried "road to ruin," he had before him, and embraced with the gallantry of his nature, the great Cause for which England was fighting-the cause of human kind. In Ireland, Grattan, with all his intrepidity, would not have dared to make his magnificent speech on the war with Napoleon, or, if he had, would have been denounced by the roar of the million. In England, he was in the midst of the noblest associations; he was surrounded by all the living ability of the empire; and if genius itself is to be inspired by the memories of the mighty, every stone of the walls round him teemed with inspiration.

Thus, if his language was more chastened, it was loftier; if his metaphors were more disciplined, they were more majestic ;-the orb which, rising through the mists of faction, had shone with broadened disc and fiery hue, now, in its meridian, assumed its perfect form, and beamed with its stainless glory.

In recording the remarkable names of this period in Ireland, Mr Phillips alludes to the celebrated preacher, Dean Kirwan :

"He had been a Roman Catholic cler

gyman, but conformed to the Church of England. He was a wonderful oratorone of the greatest that ever filled a pulpit; and yet, when injudicious friends, after his death, published a volume of his sermons, they were scarcely readable. This sounds paradoxical: but it is true.

We see in this striking portrait the writer con amore, and we must give him due credit for his vivid tribute to Irish ability. But there are few miracles in this world, and the fact that Kirwan's printed sermons are wholly inferior to his reputation reduces our wonder within more restricted bounds. If it is true, that much emotion is lost by the loss of the actual speaking; that the full power of the oratory is somewhat diminished by its being calmly read, instead of being ardently heard; still we have but few instances, perhaps none, where true oratory altogether loses its power in publication.

For example, Curran's published speeches give the general reader a very sufficient specimen of the richness of his language, the fertility of imagination, and even the subtlety of his humour. Grattan's speeches, most of them mere fragments, and probably few published with his revision, give the full impression of his boldness of thought, depth of argument, and exquisite pungency of expression. Burke's printed speeches are even said to give a higher sense of his wonderful ability than when they were delivered in the House of Comwhen Pitt had read one of those mons. There is an anecdote that, earlier speeches in the form of a pamphlet, he expressed his astonishment. "Is it possible," he exclaimed, "that this fine oration can be what we heard the other night?"

That Kirwan's preaching was attended by immense congregations is unquestionable; and that his collections were very large is equally true. But there were circumstances remarkably in favour of both. He preached but three or four times in the year, and he never preached but for charities patronised by the highest personages of the land. The Lordlieutenant and the principal nobility were generally the patrons of those especial charities. There was this additional advantage, that then poorlaws in Ireland were unknown, and public liberality was thus the more urgently required, and the more willingly exercised. The day of his preaching was in general an anniversary; for which the whole preceding year was a preparation; and the collection was thus, in a certain degree, the payment of a rent.

The magnitude of his collections has been the subject of some erroneous conjectures. On the occasion of his preaching for the families of the yeomanry who fell in the rebellion of 1798 a memorable and melancholy occasion, which naturally called forth the national liberality-the collection was said to have amounted to a thousand pounds. A very large sum, but it was a national contribution.

Kirwan's style of delivery, too, had some share in his popular effect-he recited his sermons in the manner of the French preachers; and the novelty formed a striking contrast to the dreary reading of the ordinary preachers. He was also fond of lashing public transgressions, and the vices of high life were constantly the subject of sharp remarks, which even stooped to the dresses of the women. The nobility, accordingly, came to hear themselves attacked; and, as all personality was avoided, they came to be amused.

Still, Kirwan was a remarkable man, and worthy of mention in any volume which treats of the memorable personages of Ireland.

We wish that we could avoid speaking of his treatment by the Church dignitaries of his time. While they ought to have received such a

convert with honour, they seem to have made a point of neglecting him. He was not merely a man of talent in the pulpit, but alike accomplished in science and elegant literature; for he had been successively Professor of Rhetoric, and of Natural Philosophy, in (if we recollect rightly) the College of Louvain, at a time when French Mathematics were the pride of the Continent.

Yet he never obtained preferment or countenance, and scarcely even civility, except the extorted civility of fear, from any of the ecclesiastical heads of Ireland. The dull and commonplace men, with whom it was then customary to fill the Irish Sees, shrank from one who might have been a most willing, as he must have been a most able, instrument in reconciling his Papist countrymen to the Church of England. And, without any other cause than their own somnolent stupidity, they rendered wholly useless-as far as was in their powera man who, in a position corresponding to his ability, might have headed a New Reformation in Ireland.

Kirwan's only dignity was given to him by the Lord-lieutenant, Cornwallis, after nearly fifteen years of thankless labour; and it consisted only of the poor Deanery of Killala, a nook on the savage shore of Western Ireland. He died soon after, of a coup-de-soleil-as it was observed the natural death of a man of his genius!

But we must break off from this captivating volume. We recollect no political work in which politicsare treated with more manly propriety, or personal character delineated with more vigorous truth; in which happier anecdotes abound, or in which the writer gives his own opinion with more firmness, yet with less offence to public feelings. From its evident knowledge of Ireland, it could be written by none but an Irishman; but its sentiments are cosmopolite. If the author sails under his national flag, still, his bark must be recognised as a noble vessel, and welcome in any Port of the World.

LORD HOLLAND'S FOREIGN REMINISCENCES.

THERE is no pleasanter kind of reading than a good personal memoir. Works of this description serve a double purpose; for they not only convey to us most lively impressions of society, illustrated with portraits of the most eminent and remarkable men of the time, but, taken in the aggregate, they furnish the best and most authentic store of materials available to the future historian. Ponderous or brilliant, gossiping or grave, according to the peculiar style and idiosyncrasy of their writers, they have all claims to our notice; and more than one posthumous reputation has been achieved through compositions such as these, by men whose other labours have failed to attract the slightest share of the public notice or approbation.

But even in this light walk of literature, there are certain conditions which must be observed, in order to excite interest and to insure success. We expect from the compiler of memoirs a narrative, however desultory, of what passed before his own observation. He must not be altogether a reporter at second-hand -a mere relater of stories or scandals which he has chanced to pick up from others-a dilator, through simple hearsay, of closet or antechamber gossip. The substance at least of his tale must be derived from his personal knowledge, else we have no voucher at all for the authenticity of what he is pleased to relate. The memoirs, in short, must be his own, not fragments from those of other people.

His

The announcement of the publication of a volume of Memoirs or Reminiscences from the pen of the late Lord Holland could hardly have failed to stimulate the public curiosity. His known intimacy with many of the leading characters of the last generation, his near relationship to the most conspicuous of modern Whig statesmen, his inclination towards letterswhich made him appear the centre of a certain literary coterie-were all so

many distinct pledges for the value of his literary legacy. True, Byron in his early satire had irreverently scoffed at the reunions of Holland House, and thrown no slight degree of ridicule on the fame of that rising academy; but the satire served at the same time to commemorate the hospitality of the noble Mæcenas. We observe that a critic in the last number of the Edinburgh Review is still magniloquent on this theme. With the savour of past banquets still lingering in his nostrils, he manfully declares his intention of being impartial, nay stern, in the execution of his censorial duty; and attempts to persuade us, as he is persuaded himself, "that the very prepossessions which we feel, and have endeavoured to describe, have been disadvantageous rather than favourable to the author." If so, the inevitable conclusion must be, that the critic is a monster of ingratitude. Had he contented himself with simply stating that no amount of dinners, no extent of hospitalities received, should influence his judgment one whit in favour of the book, the declaration, with some due allowance of course for the frailties of human nature, might have been accepted. But when he tells us that, because he was a guest at the table of the late Lord Holland, and admitted, as he insinuates, to his intimacy, his prepossessions are disadvantageous to the author, he is either writing egregious nonsense, or conveying the reverse of a compliment.

"Had the work," says he, "been anonymous, or had it proceeded-like many of those innumerable books miscalled histories-from the Palais Royal or the quays of Paris, we are inclined to think that a more favourable judgment might have been formed of it, than when every sentence, nay, almost every line, is weighed against the high reputation of the author, and the anticipations of readers like ourselves."

The majority of the reading public, however, are by no means in the

Foreign Reminiscences. By HENRY RICHARD LORD HOLLAND. Edited by his Son, Henry Edward Lord Holland. Longmans: 1850.

exalted position of the critic, who, by the way, was under no obligation whatever to review the book, if, on perusal, he found its contents fall greatly short of his expectations. What he means by talking about publications issuing "from the Palais Royal or the quays of Paris" we cannot exactly divine, unless he wishes us to understand that the Foreign Reminiscences intrinsically belong to the same class of writings - an opinion in which we thoroughly agree. Such twaddle as this is altogether superfluous. The public generally has no prepossession either the one way or the other. The name of Lord Holland is known to them as that of a man who moved in a distinguished sphere of society, and who must, in his own day, have seen much which was worth narrating. They have no means of weighing his conversation against his writings; they accept the latter when laid before them, and will judge of them strictly according to their actual value.

It appears that the present volume constitutes but a small part of Lord Holland's written Memoirs. The reason why it is given to us at the present time is set forth in the Preface, which, being short, we transcribe entire.

"The recent events on the Continent have induced the editor to publish the following pages on foreign politics. The time of which this volume treats has already acquired the interest of a long past age; and the public will read with pleasure, and perhaps with profit, the observations on passing events of a con

temporary who, if not wholly impartial, is acknowledged by all who knew him to have been as candid as he was benevolent.

"The editor has scrupulously abstained from making the slightest verbal alteration in the text or notes. The omission of four insignificant sentences is all that he has deemed necessary for the immediate publication of what was probably written with the intention of not seeing the light so soon."

We must fairly confess that this preface stimulated our curiosity still further. From it we understood that the Reminiscences were to have some practical bearing upon the events which have taken place on the Continent during the last three years

that they would throw some additional

light upon the causes which have led to so many dynastic convulsions. Our disappointment therefore was proportionably great, when, on perusing the work, we discovered that not a single page of it was calculated to assist us in any such researches, and that even the observations on passing events were of the most meagre and unsatisfactory description. What especial purpose the publication of this volume, apart from the remainder of the Memoirs, could serve at the present, or indeed at any other time, we are wholly at a loss to conceive. It treats of no topic which has not been long ago exhausted, contains hardly any personal narrative, and affords us not one single atom of novel information. As a repertory of anecdotes it is singularly worthless. We allude to such anecdotes as may be considered authentic, or at least tolerably so-anecdotes, for example, communicated to the author by Talleyrand, and one or two other foreign statesmen with whom, in later years, he was acquainted. But there is another class of anecdotes, or pseudo-anccdotes, which we cannot pass over even with so slight a censure. We allude to the revelations of private intrigue, on which the author dwells with a zest which to us seems peculiarly offensive. Until we saw this volume, we could not have believed that one British peer would have penned, and another have published, such a tissue of scandals, emanating from discarded serving-women and court menials, and reflecting directly on the honour of some of the first houses of Europe. We are at no loss to discover where the omissions mentioned in the preface are made, or what was the nature of the passages expunged. It would perhaps have been better, where the inuendo is retained, to have preserved the details, in order that they might have been strictly tested. It is, we think, no proper concession to delicacy to find lines of asterisks following a direct charge against the virtue of Marie Antoinette, or the legitimacy of the Duchess of York; or to have a page of such mysterious symbols inserted immediately after the notice of the marriage of Ferdinand VII. of Spain. Lord Holland

should have been allowed to tell his own story, if not in justice to the memory of the ladies whose chastity is called in question, at least that we might know the true bent of the imagination of the noble author, and appreciate "that humorous pleasantry, guided by good sense and wisdom, and raised above vulgar irony or personality," which his eulogist in the Edinburgh Review is pleased to claim as his attributes. It is difficult to understand why, in one case, there should be an evident suppression, whilst, in another, anecdotes of an exceedingly offensive nature, reflecting upon the conduct of a queen, are printed without the slightest reserve, introduced in the following highly satisfactory manner:-" A story was current at Madrid, which, if true, would at once prove that the Prince of the Peace was aware of her infidelities," &c., and followed by this commentary" the anecdote is, perhaps, too dramatic to deserve implicit credit." If so, why was it written down, and why is it now published? The appetite for prurient details which is a main feature of this book, is perhaps intelligible when it relates to intrigues notorious to all the world. No man of a really refined or fastidious mind would have committed these details to paper, more especially when they bore reference to the family of an individual with whom he was on something like intimate terms. But the case is far worse, and can admit of no palliation, when we find the most infamous charges, which have never been supported by even a shadow of proof, deliberately revived and repeated against that heroic and unfortunate lady, Queen Marie Antoinette of France. If the lament of Burke for the wane of chivalry was felt, not as a brilliant diatribe, but as a cutting sarcasm at the time when it was first enunciated, how much more appropriate is it now, when we find that a member of the British peerage

a man thought to be distinguished for high sentiment and generous sympathy-did not hesitate to adopt in the solitude of his closet the shameless inventions of the French revolutionary rabble; and that these are now given as facts which will not admit of questioning or denial to the world!

We are extremely glad to observe that the writer in the Edinburgh Review has had the proper spirit to refute-and he does it most satisfactorily this wretched and scandalous attack upon the memory of a royal lady. It was not perhaps to be expected that he should do more; but what sort of imputation does his vindication of the Queen leave upon the character of her assailant? This is not a matter which should be passed over lightly; and for our part we feel bound to say that we can conceive no spectacle more pitiable or humiliating, than that of an old man committing with a palsied hand to paper the prurient rumours of the past. Had the evidence against Marie Antoinette been ten times stronger than it was, honour and the feelings of a gentleman should have deterred any one even from repeating the accusation. But the late Lord Holland entertained no such scruples. His witness, at secondhand, is the very woman who wrote Mémoires sur la Vie Privée de Marie Antoinette, Reine de France; and in these memoirs of hers there is not even an inuendo against the honour of the unfortunate Queen. But Madame Campan cannot so escape. Lord Holland was determined that she should, in some way or other, assist in blackening the reputation of her royal mistress; and accordingly we are treated to the following ingenuous note:

"Madame Campan's delicacy and discretion are not only pardonable, but praiseworthy; but they are disingenuous, and her Memoirs conceal truths well known to her, though such as would have been unbecoming a lady to reveal. She was, in fact, the confidante of Marie Antoinette's amours. These amours were

not numerous, scandalous, or degrading, but they were amours. Madame Campan, who lived beyond the Restoration, was not so mysterious in conversation on these subjects as she is in her writings. She acknowledged to persons, who have acknowledged it to me, that she was privy to the intercourse between the Queen and the Duc de Coigny."

And this is evidence upon which we are to condemn Marie Antoinette! I had it says this distinct and confident accuser-from other people, who had it from the waiting-woman, although the waiting-woman knew better than to

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