that his hand has begun to tremble and his fine eyes have lost their lustre.

Tipperary conferred a second time an honour on itself by re-electing Mr. Wyse. It was apprehended that the death of Mr. Lanigen, an attorney, who, by his talents and influence over the public mind, has before so essentially contributed to the triumph of Mr. Wyse, would strip him of all likelihood of success. But the merits of Mr. Wyse were too well appreciated by the people; they justly felt, that however a man unknown and undistinguished might be well repudiated as an alien, genius and integrity should every where find a domicile. There was, accordingly, no contest. Mr. Wyse has been so much before the public that a description of him is almost superfluous; yet to those who have not seen him, it is as well to say what manner of man he is. His person is small and rather below the middle size; he has, however, an exceedingly-gentlemanlike bearing, which takes away any impression of diminutiveness. He holds himself erect, and seems a little animated by a consciousness that he belongs to an ancient family and is owner of the manor of St. John. He is exceedingly graceful in his manners, and at once conveys the conviction of his having lived in the best society. His countenance is more refined than marked and expressive, and indicates gracefulness and elegance of thought and feeling rather than any strong and broad traits of character. Mr. Wyse is eminently accomplished; a master of several languages; a poet, a painter; versed in antiquities, and a traveller in the East, he presents a rare combination of personal merits and adventitious advantages. His eloquence is, perhaps, a little too rotund and full, and he is too wholesale a dealer in abstractions, and too lofty an intonator of high-sounding diction; but it flows out of a copious and abundant fountain, and runs through a broad channel, amidst all the rich divestings of highly-decorated phrase. What he mainly wants is simplicity and directness in position and in argument. He gives his hearer credit for more velocity in following him than he is entitled to, and forgets that when he arrives himself per saltum at a conclusion, full many an auditor may not be able to leap with the same agility to his consequences as himself.

The associate of Mr. Wyse is Mr. Hutchinson. He is generally known by the name of Lavalette, from his having, in conjunction with Mr. Bruce, performed a signal feat of courage, with which the world are too familiar to make a more distinct reference to it appropriate. Mr. Hutchinson had incurred, notwithstanding the long advocacy of the Catholic Question by his family, a good deal of popular disrelish by writing what was certainly a very incautious letter of admonition, in reply to an invitation to dine at a public dinner at Clonmel. This imprudence cost him the county at a former election. He did not regret it, but it grieved old Lord Donoughmore to the heart. He is I now again elected, and it is pleasurable to think that the animosities between him and the people are at an end. He is what is commonly called "a good fellow," who does not set up any claims to eminent faculty, but whose title to good sense is beyond dispute.

The City of Kilkenny has again sent Mr. Leader to Parliament. Mr. Leader is a most useful member of the House. He has a minute

knowledge of Ireland, and possesses perhaps more acquaintance with its statistics, than any other of its representatives. I understand he never speaks without conveying information, and on that account is always attended to, although it must be owned, that he sometimes displays so much vivacity, and animates his oratorical physique with so much impetuosity of emotion, that he gives the Saxon temperaments of his hearers a start. But these imperfections ought not to be mentioned in any comparison with his most valuable qualities. He has a clear vigorous mind, amply stored with facts, and possesses a perspicuous, full, and simple diction, which from its freedom from the false brilliancy of that Irish eloquence which is held in about as much value as Irish diamonds, is a good deal prized in the House of Commons, as the most appropriate vehicle of sound reasoning and illustrative fact.

Daniel O'Connel is at last Member for Kerry, and has refuted the sacred aphorism, by becoming a prophet in a country where his claims to inspiration had been hitherto the subject of incredulity. In the county of Kerry he had less influence than in any other part of Ireland, from causes which I have not heard explained-I presume on account of the pre-eminence which the Kenmare family have for generations enjoyed in that district. It appeared singular to Englishmen, that when he started, after his unfortunate exclusion from the benefits of the Relief Bill, for any Irish county, he should not have selected his native one. Some imagined that it was in order to give evidence of his power that he wandered through the country, leaving it to put its counties into emulation for the honour of selecting him. The truth was, however, that he had not at that period any hold over Kerry. His recent election there gives the best proof of his increased popularity, and of the extent to which "the Repeal" has possessed itself of the national mind. Mr. O'Connel has substituted it for the Catholic Question, and turned it to even a more exciting account. It has effected for him in Kerry what the former measure could not accomplish, and from the summits of the mountains of Ivra he beheld the Lords of Kenmare, if not tributary to his dominion, subject, at all events, to his ascendancy. With him, Mr. Mullins, the son of a clergyman, and a relation of Lord Ventry, was returned. The brother of Lord Kenmare (Mr. Brown) did not venture to come to the poll. Neither did the Knight of Kerry, Mr. Maurice Fitzgerald. The exclusion of the latter is a source of regret to those who know him. However opposed to his late proceedings in Parliament, they recollect his services to Ireland, and his inflexible adherence, in the midst of temptations the most trying, to the cause of his countrymen. In an unhappy moment he joined the Duke of Wellington. For this union much allowance should be made; he was the Duke's early friend; they both lived together in the dissipation of the Irish Court, and formed that ligature of friendship which circumstances are least likely to snap or time to wear away. The Duke, in his splendid prosperity, always reverted to the social hours of his youth with pleasure, and honoured the Knight of Kerry with testimonies of his undiminished regard. When he came into power, he tendered him office. It was

difficult to resist place, when held out by the hand of an old friend to one who stood, perhaps, in some domestic need of it. The Knight of Kerry gave way-he accepted office, and is now banished, I fear, from public life for ever. I lament it. He is a high-minded gentleman, belongs to the old school of dignity and lofty-breeding, and has a heart, whose location in its right place in his bosom has never been suspected.

This, the fourth return of Alexander Dawson for the county of Louth, is at once a testimony to his merits, and a proof that the Roman Catholic body are not as forgetful of services as has been sometimes suggested by those who employed their own estimate of their claims to thankfulness as the standard of that virtue in others. The benefit conferred by him was signal, and the return which has been made for it has been commensurate. Mr. Dawson broke the yoke of the aristocracy by coming forward from his retirement in 1826, and has rendered it impossible that it should ever be again placed upon the necks of the people. His first speech in Parliament was greatly praised, and was admired almost beyond any other by Mr. Canning, who was struck with the intellectual bonhommie of the plain, unvarnished agricultural delegate from an Irish county, who told the truth with a strenuous frankness, far preferable to the gaudy eloquence which in Ireland has obtained so undue a portion of the popular favour.

The colleague of Mr. Dawson is Mr. Sheil, who has at length succeeded in obtaining the object of his aspirations, although it would have been as well for himself, and better for the country, if he had continued Member for Milbourne Port. He was already in Parliament, and it looked ungracious that he should interfere with Sir Patrick Bellew, the natural representative of the county, and who has thrown himself with much devotion into alliance with the people. Sir Patrick Bellew would, by his election, have confirmed the popular influence, and given it a permanent basis; whereas the hold of Mr. Sheil cannot be considered as very tenacious, and there can be no doubt that he will be strongly opposed by the gentry on the next election, who superadded to an aversion for his politics, a resentment for his intrusion. The friends of Mr. Sheil consider it desirable that he should be placed in an independent relation to the country, but Mr. Sheil cannot forget the obligations which he owes to the Marquess of Anglesey to such an extent as to act against his government. There is this farther awkwardness in his position: as a Government member, allowance would have been made for his necessity to sustain the Administration which put him in: he has now no apology to make to his constituents. If he votes against Government, he will be charged with an oblivion of favours; and if he votes with Government, he will be denounced by his friends as a traitor to the people. The little gentleman is in a practical dilemma, from which it will require some of his habits of rhetorical artifice to escape. Mr. Stanley has already, in the House of Commons, given him some hint of his displeasure, by referring to his characteristic impetuosity in insisting that the Government should at once proceed to the relief of the grievances of Ireland. The rebuke was well

deserved; for while Mr. Sheil found fault with his patrons for their tardiness, he made no suggestion of a single practical measure for the

benefit of his country, in a speech which was delivered on very illselected topics upon a very inappropriate occasion.

Mr. Wallace has been defeated at Drogheda by Mr. North. The former has now expended some thousands of pounds in his parliamentary pursuits, and it is to be lamented that money so hardly earned should have been so deplorably misapplied. In the House of Commons Mr. Wallace had failed; that failure arose far more from accident and obstinacy than from any deficiency in fitness for the House. He rose at three in the morning on the fourth night of the Catholic debate, and commenced with the Treaty of Limerick. He plunged, as I have heard it observed, at once into one of the old moats of that ancient city, and lost himself in the ooze, if I may so call it, with which his infelicitous topic was overspread. The House had been wearied with eternal discussion on a matter which the Joseph Surfaceism of Sir Robert Peel had first thrown out for discussion; for he had declared that if he could be convinced that the treaty was violated, he would at once give way. Mr. Wallace undertook to convince him, with what success is well known. The consciousness which he must have of his capacity probably induced him to feel solicitous to return to Parliament. He flung two thousand pounds away on the adventure, and discovered at that cost that the power of the Corporation was not to be resisted. Mr. North was returned. He is thus once more in Parliament; but when will he be again elected for any Irish borough?-Reform will extinguish his political life. I am sorry that he has exhibited so strange a contrast between his faculties and his discretion. With great abilities, he has contrived to render himself of little practical weight in the House, and an object of great aversion to his country. An advocate of Emancipation, he perpetually shocked the Catholics by his sustainment of the Bible institutions, which they held in abhorrence; and although a supporter of the Kildare-street Society, he created among the Protestant faction an irreconcilable hostility by his voting for Emancipation. In the House of Commons he fell into the same mistakes. His attack on Mr. O'Connel was ill-timed, because it was no part of his duty to fall on a man whom Mr. Doherty had officially assailed. In his recent speeches in Parliament on Reform, although he has evinced abundance of ability, he has constantly permitted himself to be carried away by his emotions into the utterance of language offensive to an entire nation; and while others asserted their principles with as much zeal, he has committed himself by the use of unfortunate phrases, which gave great offence to one party, and proved no recommendation to the other. I fear that he will not be elected after the dissolution, and think it matter of regret. He is one of the few members in whose oratory the traces of the Pitt and Canning school are to be discovered, and nothing but that blindness of party, which shuts men's eyes so close, could fail to perceive in his eloquence a more than ordinary splendor.

The University of Dublin, true to its principles, and anxious to have a representative in the House in whom its politics and literary eminence should be faithfully represented, has sent Mr. Lefroy a second time to the House of Commons. As the University has never deemed it requisite to give any evidence of the progress made by

Science, or by the Arts, in its cloisters, and not a book of any kind appears in the course of years to rescue its professors from the imputation of incompetence, it was not unnatural that it should choose for its member a gentleman who had never obtained any sort of distinction within its walls, and who has as studiously concealed his own great proficiency in learning, and his extraordinary talents, as the very venerable body which he represents in the House of Commons. On the other hand, the known abilities, the scholarship, and literary and scientific qualifications of Mr. Crampton, who had obtained a fellowship in the college with great éclat, were quite sufficient to disentitle him to the honour of sitting for the "silent sister" in the House of Commons. It is true that Mr. Lefroy has in one instance departed from the character of his constituents and violated a prudential taciturnity. I did not hear him, but have understood that it was exceedingly improbable that the House would ever permit such a deviation from his parliamentary character again.

But what shall I say of the County of Carlow?--what of Sir John Miley Doyle and of Mr. Walter Blakeney?-and what, above all, of their nominator, who turned them into Members of Parliament with a single touch of his magic crosier, Doctor Doyle? Strange vicissitudes! Who could have conjectured that a "Bachelor of Salamanca," (for there, I believe, the Doctor was initiated into theology,) and afterwards a Parish Priest in some part of Wexford, and then a Professor of dogmatic divinity at the sacerdotal College of Carlow, should now with a mitre, lofty as that of Becket, (although without a gem in it,) on his brow, and a pastoral staff of Bellarmine potency in his hand, legislate for the passions of the people, and not only summon and dismiss at his bidding the popular emotions, but without stretch or effort, and by the simple intimation of his will, accomplish that which not a Peer in the empire could have effected? Where is the man, except James or John, (I forget which,) Bishop of Leighlin and Kildare, who could return two county members? Even the great Daniel himself could not achieve so much in any single Irish county. He can recommend the principle, but not prescribe the men-but the episcopal Franciscan can with a hint of his sacred predilection return two members without a struggle. It must be confessed that his choice was singular. Sir John Miley Doyle had been hitherto famous as a walking Wellington testimonial (so he was called from the profusion of his military decorations), for his prodigal whiskers that are spread in minacious profusion over his jaws, and his being the best whistler in Ireland. He was an excellent officer, and served with great distinction in the Peninsula, but his genius as a legislator was not conjectured, until it was detected by the sagacity of Doctor Doyle. Mr. Blakeney is a country gentleman, who did not even take a part in Catholic politics, and was unknown in the Association. His only claim to public honours must have been confined to the great respectability of his family, and to his personal virtues and worth. It is not the least derogation from his real merits to say, that no one ever regarded him as likely to become the trustee of the interests of the empire-yet these gentlemen were not only placed in Parliament by Doctor Doyle, but Mr.