joining room, "appears to be an excellent person. It must be a great advantage, in your Highness's present position, to have so tried an adherent of your family, to assist you with his experience and advice."

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Oui," she replied, "c'est l'homme du monde le plus respectable. C'étoit le Chancelier pour mon Duché, car mon frère ne m'a pas donné de Royaume."*

What a trait! How super-exquisite; but oh! for the careless nonchalante air with which in the intervals of two sips of chocolate, " my brother did not give me a kingdom," was uttered!

"Do this, and this,

Take in that kingdom, and enfranchize that."

I give this dialogue, exactly as it was uttered. A veracious recital of the most ordinary conversation, goes beyond the effort of fiction; and there is nothing in the doctrine of possibilities, however extravagant, which is not equalled or surpassed by fact.

THE COUNSELLOR.

I WAS talking yesterday to a gentleman of the birth, parentage, and education, of Mr. Canning; all of which have been for ever misrepresented by

*Yes, he is the most excellent person in the world. He was the chancellor of my dutchy; for my brother did not give me a kingdom."

"He

the political enemies of that eminent man. was the grandson," said my informant, "of the well known Counsellor Canning of Garva, who, as an Irishman, of ancient birth, large possessions, and as a member of the Irish legislature, was a person of the very highest consideration."

"Then why do you call him counsellor, as a title of distinction."

"Because in Counsellor Canning's day, it was a distinction. A papist might have a noble descent, a large property, and an historical name, but he could not be a counsellor."

Whatever marked the distinctive privileges of the Protestant ascendancy, was a grade in itself, a dignity guarded by the laws of the land, and an assurance of personal gentility. Up to the middle of the last century, all the liberal professions were closed against the Catholic gentry of Ireland; but it was a dignity to belong to the bar, even among protestants; for the candidate for its honours was obliged to study in London, which at that time was an affair of no inconsiderable enterprise and effort. The uncertain sea voyage, and long land journey, were attended with a very heavy expense, some risk, and considerable labour. Wales being then inaccessible to carriages, that part of the journey was made on hired horses; and not less than three weeks were occasionally passed in the transit from Dublin to London, To be a counsellor, therefore, was in itself the mark of a certain considerable wealth and respectability.

"Counsellor," is still prefixed as a title of distinction by the common people, and by all the secondrate Catholics, to the names of barristers; and even the feudal cognomen of "the O'Connell," loses nothing by the professional dignity of counsellor,

which the Kerry clients of that gentleman, the exsubjects of his dynasty, never fail to give him.

A short time before the death of Grattan, " our husband and ourself” drove from the house of our old friend General C, to pay a visit at Tenahinch. We had taken a wrong road, within a mile or two of that beautiful spot; and we stopped to inquire our way of an old woman, who sat spinning at a cabin door. "Pray, which is the road to Mr. Grattan's?"

"Misther Grattan! Och, sorrow know myself knows, no, in troth, Mar'm."

"What! not know where Tenahinch is ?"

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Tinnyhinch, agrah! Och, it's the counsellor's yez are looking for; well, turn here, just to the right, and any body will tell yez where the counsellor's is; just a stone's throw from the Dargle. Sorrow one in the country but knows the counsellor's."

The counsellor, then, was the distinctive epithet by which the poor neighbours of Tenahinch best knew "the father of his country." It was the title of his ascendancy; and power is always uppermost in the Irish mind.

How deeply has the iron of oppression entered into the soul of the Irish nation, and how much has a long misrule deteriorated the national intellect; substituting the conventional for the true, and rendering moral dignity and honesty of conduct almost physically impossible. Aristides himself, to say nothing of St. Anthony, could scarcely resist the temptations to corruption which arise from a divided population, and which are unknown in the worst governments of the continent. The protestant ascendancy, from the peer to the coal porter, form the true aristocracy of the land, and all else are

serfs. The protestants are in Ireland, what the Normans were in England; only they have not seen the policy of a social fusion, which the more genial temperament of the French conquerors submitted to, in their intercourse with the Saxons. Oh! with how many warm Irish hearts and ardent Irish spirits I began life, who have since yielded to the baneful influence of this state of things, and cooled down to a more prudent consideration of their country's wrongs in relation to their own private interests. Yielding to a paltry and ephemeral ambition, they have looked down from the height of their official dignities upon the romance of patriotism, and condemned the expression of feelings. which it was once their pride to avow. How many who once shared such illusions, have afterward shunned my sight, lest they should involve their interests in the proscription of one who loved their country, "not wisely, but too well." This is one of the severest penalties of life: death itself inflicts none so bitter. The penalties of nature bring their solace in their necessity: but what consoles for the terrible conviction of the frailty, and falling off from principle, of genius and sensibility; for perceiving. ere half our course is run, or, while we are maintaining ourselves a direct course, "steering right onward."

"Each wave that we danced on at morning, glide from us. And leave us at eve on the bleak shore alone."

VOL. II.-G

RIDICULE.

Yes, I am proud,-I must be proud, to see
Men, not afraid of God, afraid of me."

I ENVY Pope the burst of honest triumph that produced these lines!

How long was he lashed, tortured, reviled, calumniated, and misrepresented in character, feeling, religion, person, and in all his ties and all his affections, before the author of Windsor Forest and the Universal Prayer produced his Satires and his Dunciad! Ridicule is an arm furnished by nature to wit, to defend it against the envy, hatred, and malice of vain, pretending mediocrity; and the severity of its blows has no doubt mainly contributed to the outcry against its legitimacy in the warfare of opinion. Dulness commenced its denunciation, and self-interest set the seal of reprobation upon it, by rendering it penal.

The validity of the legal objection against ridicule, seems to me wholly untenable; being founded on one of those "subterfuges," in which Lord Kames tells us, that "lawyers delight." The assumption that ridicule is no test of truth, has been received without examination, principally on account of its application to the detection of political and religious error. Notwithstanding the universal dislike to be shown up, no one has dared directly to question the morality of satire as a corrective of manners, or to object to the poet's magnificent boast of