new landlord, that dawny little bit av a leprehaun! Begorra, the boys might as well be shootin' at a jacksnipe.'

'My friend, Dr. Beatty, with whom I had a bottle of Carlowitz last evening, told me not a bad thing. Christmas day was celebrated at his house by a plum-pudding of vast circumference; but the doctor missed the whiskey which he had given out to rob it of dyspeptic terrors. That night he taxed his cook with the omission, who naively replied, 'The puddin' and I tossed to see which should have the whiskey, and the puddin' lost.' In this way Lever's lips ran, delighting all who listened; but it was in gesture that his great strength lay."

A favoured few had access to his room at Morrison's Hotel, and one thus graphically describes what passed:—

"I found him seated at an open window; a bottle of claret at his right hand, and the proof-sheets of Lord Kilgobbin' before him. It was a beautiful morning borrowed from the month of May; the hawthorns in the College park were just beginning to bloom, and nature was young and warm and lovely. At the date of our visit, he looked a hale, hearty, laughter-loving man of sixty. There was mirth in his grey eye, joviality in the wink that twittered on his eyelid, saucy humour in his smile, and bon mot, wit, repartee, and rejoinder in every movement of his lips. His hair, very thin, but

*

The conversation that passed has been elsewhere given. It may be added, that a brilliant member of the demi-monde having cantered past, he said, "The demi-monde is like a decaying peach, one side seems sweet-but how repellent the other."

of a silky brown, fell across his forehead, and when it curtained his eyes, he would jerk back his head-this, too, at some telling crisis in a narrative, when the particular action was just the exact finish required to make the story perfect. Mr. Lever's teeth were all his own and very brilliant, and whether from accident or habit, he flashed them on us in conjunction with his wonderful eyes-a battery at once powerful and irresistible.

"He spoke slowly at first, but warming to his work, and candying an idea in a short, contagious, musical laugh, his story told itself all too rapidly, and the light burned out with such a glare as to intensify the succeeding darkness. Like all good raconteurs, he addressed himself deferentially to his auditor in the beginning, and as soon as the fish was hooked, the attention enthralled, he would speak as if thinking aloud.

He

"Mr. Lever made great use of his hands, which were small and white, and delicate as those of a woman. made play with them, threw them up in ecstasy, or wrung them in mournfulness, just as the action of the moment demanded. He did not require eyes or teeth with such a voice, and such hands: they could tell and illustrate the workings of his brain. He was somewhat careless in his dress, but clung to the traditional high shirt collar merely compromising the unswerving stock of the Brummell period. I stick to my Irish shoes,' he said, thrusting upwards about as uncompromising a 'bit of leather' as I have ever set eyes on right under my nose, and until a few years ago, I got them from

DOCTOR OF LAWS.

289

a descendant of the celebrated Count Lally, who cobbled at Letterkenny. There is no shoe in the world—or accent either-equal to Irish brogue.'"

This keen sketcher might have added that Lever plumed himself on the stand which he had made against the beard and moustache movement. No parish priest or ritualist parson was ever more cleanly shaved. Describing a nag which he had once been given to ride at Killarney, he said that it had "a back-bone with which one might shave himself-using the tail for a brush."

Of Doctors Stokes, Wilde, and Beatty-all since dead -he saw much. To Doctors Bigger and Tuohill, and to Rev. Chancellor Tisdall he paid farewell visits.*

He dined with his old friend, Alexander Spencer, who had known him as a tiny child in tunics; and in the evening he read aloud for Mrs. Spencer and her sons several chapters of "Lord Kilgobbin." Two young men then prosecuting their studies in Stephen's hospital, joined the party later. Early memories crowded to Lever's mind as he warmed towards them; and he remained until the small hours telling them stories of that joyous time.

He also saw a good deal of his old schoolfellow Henry West, Esq., Q.C., whose recollections of Lever in our first volume will be remembered. "As I have told you the first story, I may as well give you his last," adds Mr. West. "He was present with me at a military ball at the International Hotel, Bray. I had introduced him to a lady who was with me, and when he was cloaking her on leaving he told her that an Italian of his acquaintance one evening doing the same thing to a lady, though un peu indiscrète, she said, "Don't be naughty," her husband coming in asked her what she had said, and she replied, " Buona notte."

VOL. II.

U

It was during his last visit to Ireland that the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon him by the University of Dublin. He had long relinquished his early title of Dr. Lever; he now reassumed it with satisfaction, and renewed his former active life in the Phoenix Park, notwithstanding that the blue sky of his country wept pretty much as usual. He made many calls; not a few old familiar knockers were raised; and bells pulled, to receive, on more than one occasion, alas, a chilling response! Some of these knockers had been previously draped with crape-tidings which had failed to reach Lever in his exile. Early associations pleasantly intertwined round Clare-and a desire to utilise its stirring traditions led Lever to wish for an interview with Purcell O'Gorman, a noted bon raconteur. his son tells us that he had attained at this time his eightieth year, and finding his memory failing, he shrank .from the interview, and left Dublin.

But

Though Lever could throw off a novel in instalments only, he composed currente calamo; but his books were marked by characteristics widely different from those who write with ease, and are read with difficulty. He often deferred "putting on the steam' till the last moment. A friend, who found him correcting the proofs of "Lord Kilgobbin," said

This, I suppose, is for the June number of Cornhill.” "No," he replied, "it is for May on which we are just about to enter." "You are fitting it very tight," continued his visitor. "I always run things very close,'

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he replied, "I can't work except from month to month, or rather, as they say in Ireland, from hand to mouth. I wish to see how the public like it. I was offered £2,000, for a complete novel, but I could not do it." From revision he continued to recoil, holding with Scott that great correctors succeed as ill in composition as in education, and that many a clever boy has been flogged into a dunce, and many an original piece corrected into mediocrity.

Emotion filled him on revisiting scenes endeared by early ties. Dublin he now saw, as he well knew, for the last time, but he sipped the honey wherever he found it, and generally kept clear of the stings. Though disease was at work, he was Charles O'Malley -every inch of him-still. His niece tells us that on accompanying her to Westland Row terminus, dressed as youthfully and gaily as ever, his funny stories threw her into such convulsions of laughter, that she felt abashed on finding herself surrounded by those who convert into a waiting room that part of the platform known as the "pen."

"You may never see me again," said Lever, "and you must kiss me now." "But those people are not to know you are my uncle!" replied his pretty companion. "I'll take care that they do," whispered Lever, and he forthwith loudly called upon his niece to fold, in a loving embrace, her venerable uncle just about to start for America." So saying, he rapidly performed the feat, "smacked the honey" and went his way, proud of the