sistance; the deadliest enemies to the Irish name, under the mockery of supporting its character; the most licentious, irreligious, illiterate banditti, that ever polluted the fair fields of literature, under the spoliated banner of the press. Bloated with the public spoil, and blooded in the chase of character, no abilities can arrest, no piety can awe; no misfortune affect, no benevolence conciliate them; the reputation of the living, and the memory of the dead, are equally plundered in their desolating progress; even the awful sepulchre affords not an asylum to their selected victim. HUMAN HYENAS! they will rush into the sacred receptacle of death, gorging their rave nous and brutal rapine, amid the memorials of our last infirmity!' p. 124.

Of the Liberty of the Press a theme which I approach with mingled sensations of awe, and agony, and admiration. Considering all that we too fatally have seen-all that, perhaps, too fearfully we may have cause to apprehend, I feel myself cling to that residuary safeguard, with an affection no temptations can seduce, with a suspicion no anodyne can lull, with a fortitude that peril but infuriates. In the direful retrospect of experimental despotism, and the hideous prospect of its possible re-animation, I clasp it with the desperation of a widowed female, who, in the desolation of her house, and the destruction of her household, hurries the last of her offspring through the flames, at once the relic of her joy, the depository of her wealth, and the remembrancer of her happiness. It is the duty of us all to guard strictly this inestimable privilege-a privilege which can never be destroyed, save by the licentiousness of those who wilfully abuse it. No, IT IS NOT IN THE ARROGANCE OF POWER; NO, IT IS NOT IN THE ARTIFICES OF LAW; NO, IT IS NOT IN THE FATUITY OF PRINCES; NO, IT IS NOT IN THE VENALITY OF PARLIAMENTS, TO CRUSH THIS MIGHTY, THIS MAJESTIC PRIVILEGE:-REVILED, IT WILL REMONSTRATE; MURDERED, IT WILL REVIVE; BURIED, IT WILL RE-ASCEND; THE VERY ATTEMPT AT ITS OPPRESSION WILL PROVE THE TRUTH OF ITS IMMORTALITY, AND THE ATOM THAT PRESUMED TO SPURN, WILL FADE AWAY BEFORE THE TRUMPET

OF ITS RETRIBUTION!' p. 134, 135.

Now, that Messrs Finlay and Phillips deem this a very fine passage, we infer from their having printed the latter half of it in large Roman characters. Then follows a picture of him who abuses the Liberty of the Press.

Oh, I would hold such a monster, so protected, so sanctified, and so sinning, as I would some demon, who, going forth consecrated, in the name of the Deity, the book of life on his lips, and the dagger of death beneath his robe, awaits the sigh of piety, as the signal of plunder, and unveins the heart's-blood of confiding adoration!' p. 135.

Again, in every line he licks the sores, and pampers the pestilence of authority.' (p. 136.) Let any man declare to

us the meaning of what follows, and we will not call him Davus. Without it, gold has no value, birth no distinction, station no dignity, beauty no charm, age no reverence; or, should I not rather say, without it every treasure impoverishes, every grace deforms, every dignity degrades, and all the arts, the decorations, and accomplishments of life, stand, like the beacon-blaze upon a rock, warning the world that its approach is danger-that its contact is death? The wretch without it is under an eternal quarantine ;-no friend to greet -no home to harbour him. The voyage of his life becomes a joyless peril; and in the midst of all ambition can achieve, or avarice amass, or rapacity plunder, he tosses on the surge-a buoyant pestilence!' p. 138.

And again-

Oh divine, oh delightful legacy of a spotless reputation! Rich is the inheritance it leaves; pious the example it testifies; pure, precious, and imperishable, the hope which it inspires! Can you conceive a more atrocious injury than to filch from its possessor this inestimable benefit-to rob society of its charm, and solitude of its solace; not only to outlaw life, but to attaint death, converting the very grave, the refuge of the sufferer, into the gate of infamy and of shame?' p. 139.

And then of Calumny

The reptile Calumny is ever on the watch. From the fascination of its eye no activity can escape; from the venom of its fang no sanity can recover. It has no enjoyment but crime; it has no prey but virtue; it has no interval from the restlessness of its malice, save when, bloated with its victims, it grovels to disgorge them at the withered shrine, where envy idolizes her own infirmities. Under such a visitation, how dreadful would be the destiny of the virtuous and the good, if the providence of our constitution had not given you the power, as, I trust, you will have the principle, to bruise the head of the serpent, and crush and crumble the altar of its idolatry!' p. 140.

And the plaintiff on the record is thus described

In the midst of slander, and suffering, and severities unexampled, he has had no thought, but, that as his enemies evinced how malice could persecute, he should exemplify how religion could endure; that if his piety failed to affect the oppressor, his patience might at least avail to fortify the afflicted. He was as the rock of Scripture before the face of Infidelity. The rain of the deluge had fallen-it only smoothed his asperities: the wind of the tempest beat-it only blanched his brow: the rod, not of prophecy, but of persecution, smote him; and the desert, glittering with the Gospel dew, became a miracle of the faith it would have tempted! We must picture to ourselves a young man, partly by the self-denial of parental love, partly by the energies of personal exertion, struggling into a profession, where, by the pious exercise of his talents, he may make the fame, the wealth, the flatteries of this world, so many angel heralds

to the happiness of the next. His precept is a treasure to the poor; his practice, a model to the rich. When he reproves, sorrow seeks his presence as a sanctuary; and in his path of peace, should he pause by the death-bed of despairing sin, the soul becomes imparadised in the light of his benediction! Imagine, Gentlemen, you see him thus; and then, if you can, imagine vice so desperate as to defraud the world of so fair a vision.' * p. 140-142.

The peroration is as follows.

I will not pursue this picture; I will not detain you from the pleasure of your possible compensation; for oh! divine is the pleasure you are destined to experience;-dearer to your hearts shall be the sensation, than to your pride shall be the dignity it will give you. What! though the people will hail the saviours of their pastor : what! though the priesthood will hallow the guardians of their brother; though many a peasant heart will leap at your name, and many an infant eye will embalm their fame who restored to life, to station, to dignity, to character, the venerable friend who taught their trembling tongues to lisp the rudiments of virtue and religion, still dearer than all will be the consciousness of the deed. Nor, believe me, countrymen, will it rest here. Oh no! if there be light in Instinct, or truth in Revelation, believe me, at that awful hour, when you shall await the last inevitable verdict, the eye of your hope will not be the less bright, nor the agony of your ordeal the more acute, because you shall have, by this day's deed, redeemed the Almighty's persecuted Apostle, from the grasp of an insatiate malice-from the fang of a worse than Philistine persecution.' p. 142, 143.

* The genus dicendi' of which Messrs Finlay and Phillips are the chief patrons (and indeed models) in the present day, does not appear to have been known to the antient masters. We look in vain for any description of it in Cicero or Quintilian. In the middle ages, however, it was abundantly practised. The rule in which its whole mystery may be summed up, is, to give utterance to all the ideas, and in all the words that present themselves (and as near as possible all at once), upon any matter, without regard to order or selection, and how remote soever their reference may be to the subject. Who does not recognize the true Philippic style in such passages as the following, being part of Thomas de Elinham's description of the battle of Agincourt? The historian from whom we extract it, indeed terms it, • Example of the Bombast, '—but he was a person of a cold, northern taste—in truth a Scotchman.—' O ! letale bellum, dira strages, clades • mortalis, fomes mortis, sitis cruoris insatiabilis, furibundus impetus, furor impetuosus, insania vehemens, crudelis conflictus, immiseri* cors ulcio,' &c. &c. Aer fragoribus tonitruat, nubes missilia im• pluunt, tellus cruorem absorbet,' &c. &c. Iste invadit, ille ca'dit; iste aggreditur, ille moritur; iste,' &c. &c. Occisor irasci* tur, occisus mærore conteritur; victus reddi desiderat, victorum impetus redditionis tempora non expectat; sævitia regnat, pietas exulat, &c. &c.-Henry's History, Book V. App.

What portion of the Divine pleasure' here mentioned, the gentlemen of the Jury thought proper to taste, we are not informed; and indeed it is somewhat singular, that, after the large boast in the preface of the practical effects produced by Mr Phillips's eloquence in a Speech not published in this volume, the results of those that are here inserted, are omitted, except in one case, where he was of counsel for the defendant, and succeeded at least so far as to make the plaintiff consent to withdraw a juror. We infer, unwillingly, that the effects of the other Speeches were not very remarkable-at least in the essential matter of damages,-and that he either obtained no verdicts at all, cr so little that it is deemed better to suppress the particulars. Such reflexions are extorted from us by the empirical nature of the present publication. On any ordinary occasion we should gladly have suppressed them.

Mr Phillips has but little talent for wit or humour. The following piece of violent absurdity, is, we presume, meant for a specimen of his powers in that line.

Only just admire this far-famed Security bill,-this motley compound of oaths and penalties, which, under the name of emancipation, would drag your prelates with an halter about their necks to the vulgar scrutiny of every village-tyrant, in order to enrich a few political traders, and distil through some state alembic the miserable rinsings of an ignorant, a decaying, and degenerate aristocracy! Only just admire it! Originally engendered by our friends the Opposition, with a cuckoo insidiousness, they swindled it into the nest of the Treasury ravens, and when it had been fairly hatched with the beak of the one, and the nakedness of the other, they sent it for its feathers to MONSEIGNEUR QUARANTOTTI, who has obligingly transmitted it with the hunger of its parent, the rapacity of its nurse, and the coxcombry of its plumassier, to be baptized by the bishops, and received æquo gratoque animo by the people of Ireland!! Oh, thou sublimely ridiculous Quarantotti! Oh, thou superlative coxcomb of the Conclave! what an estimate hast thou formed of the MIND of Ireland! Yet why should I blame this wretched scribe of the Propaganda!' p. 4, 5.

The Speech, however, in the case of Blake v. Wilkins, is full of ribaldry; and the transitions from vulgar, and coarse or silly jokes, to extravagant, pompous declamation, in Mr Phillips's worst bombast, make this perhaps the worst thing in the collection. Ilis quotations here are chiefly from Dibdin's songs. Sometimes he gives the words of the original exactly-as when he cites from Captain Wattle and Miss Roe;sometimes he parodies-as in quoting Poor Jack, which furnished, we presume, the original of the following motley pas sage.

Alike to him the varieties of season or the vicissitudes of warfare. One sovereign image monopolizes his sensibilities. Does the storm rage? the Widow Wilkins outsighs the whirlwind. Is the Ocean calm? its mirror shows him the lovely Widow Wilkins. Is the battle won? he thins his laurel that the Widow Wilkins may interweave her myrtles. Does the broadside thunder? he invokes the Widow Wilkins!

"A sweet little Cherub she sits up aloft

To keep watch for the life of poor Peter!' p. 185. And he gives an elaborate adaptation of Alley Croker in the same style. We really cannot give any more specimens of this production. But the vulgar story, so badly as well as flippantly told of Mr Fox, in p. 50, and which we will venture to assert has no earthly foundation, except in the jest-book it was taken from, where we dare say it was at least told comparatively well, surpasses any thing else in this volume, for low and unsuccessful attempt at humour.

After the idea which the foregoing pages must have conveyed of Mr Phillips's judgment, it can hardly appear wonderful that we should now mention, as amongst the most prominent of his faults, an injudicious choice of his topics, and a manner of handling them which generally sacrifices the sense to the sound. In fact, he never appears for a moment to have in view the object which alone he ought constantly to aim at, conviction or persuasion. To strike-to dazzle-is his perpetual effort; to bring forward the speaker, and let the subject fare as it may, is the manifest purpose, not only of every Speech, but of all the particular passages. To be sure, the kind of speaking in which he seems chiefly to have practised, leads naturally enough to this grand defect. When a gentleman is called upon after dinner for a speech, he is expected to entertain the company pretty much as if he were asked to sing a song. There is too often, upon such occasions, a want of any precise point towards which his eloquence can be directed; and, at all events, it is displayed to a friendly audience, and hardly ever in foro contentioso. But never was there any instance of oratory brought so exactly down to the level of mere display amusement (except, perhaps, in the ludicrous associates of Clubs) as at the Dinner on Dinas Island in the Lake of Killarney, '-for there, it is plain, that speechmaking must have been introduced, like pipes or songs, for no other purpose than to pass the evening. Yet even here there was a style more peculiarly ill adapted to the occasion than any other; and, that the orator hit it, the following sentences may testify.

I appeal to History! Tell me, thou reverend chronicler of the grave, can all the illusions of ambition realized, can all the wealth of an universal commerce, can all the achievements of successful he