to its honour," it was felt that he had completely vindicated himself.'

On Canning becoming Premier, Plunket was raised to the peerage, and first the Great Seal of Ireland, and then the English Mastership of the Rolls, were intended for him; when he wrote, April 20, 1827, to a friend: 'Things have taken a turn, to me very distressing the result, in short, is, I am a peer, and for the present without office. The Rolls I declined, not being able to reconcile myself to act against the feeling of a great number of the profession against the appointment of an Irishman, or rather an Irish barrister. Tell my friends not to question me or be surprised.' The double disappointment was somewhat mitigated by the Chief Justiceship of the Common Pleas in Ireland, Lord Norbury having been induced to retire in his favour, and in January, 1830, he at length reached the Irish Woolsack, which he retained till June, 1841, when he was literally jockeyed out of it by the Whigs to make way for Lord Campbell, or (as the late Sir Robert Peel put it) to gratify the vanity of, certainly, an eminent and distinguished lawyer by a six weeks' tenure of office.' The series of manœuvres by which this undeniable job was carried might not have been attempted, or might have been met and counteracted, if Lord Plunket's judicial career had been as successful as his forensic and political. The contrary is confessedly the fact. His admirers are compelled to admit that he discharged the duties of his high office in a hasty and perfunctory manner. 'He would not stoop to the mechanical drudgery of writing out his judgments whenever he could possibly avoid it; and he was indifferent as to their revision and correction; nor, so far as appears from his own judgments, did he take much trouble to acquaint himself with the decisions of contemporary judges.' This negligence has been injurious to his reputation; and little or nothing beyond fragments and scattered sayings-disjecta membra-has been preserved of what fell from him on the Bench.

A ruffian, wrought up to the verge of madness by drink and temper, was brought before the Court of Chancery for insulting and threatening the officers. The Lord Chancellor addressed him in these words:

'You offer, sir, in your own person, an apt illustration of the legal term furiosus, which defines the condition of mind that a man attains by the long and uncontrollable indulgence of a brutal and savage temper, till at length he stands on the narrow isthmus-the thin line of demarcation-which separates the end of ruffianism from the beginning of insanity.'

The

The most celebrated of his images is that of Time with the hourglass and the scythe, which he employed to illustrate the effect of the Statute of Limitations. We give what strikes us to be the best among several versions:

'If Time destroys the evidence of title, the laws have wisely and humanely made length of possession a substitute for that which has been destroyed. He comes with his scythe in one hand to mow down the immunity of our rights; but, in his other hand, the lawgiver has placed an hour glass, by which he metes out incessantly those portions of duration, which render needless the evidence he has swept away.'

This passage was introduced with striking fitness and effect by Lord Lytton in one of his admirable House of Commons speeches. When Plunket, having become a reformer in 1831, was twitted with having been an anti-reformer at an antecedent period, he replied:

'Circumstances are wholly changed. Formerly Reform came to our door like a felon-a robber to be resisted. He now approaches like a creditor: you admit the justice of his demand, and only dispute the time and instalments by which he shall be paid.'

There is no satisfactory definition of wit. We cannot accept Sydney Smith's, which makes it consist in surprise or unexpectedness, and Barrow's description is too full and discursive to be precise. But Plunket had wit in every sense of the term, from the flash which lights up an argument or intensifies a thought, to the fanciful conceit or comic suggestion which plays round the heartstrings-circum præcordia ludit-and aims at nothing higher than to raise a good-humoured laugh.

A very ugly old barrister arguing a point of practice before him, claimed to be received as an authority. I am a pretty old practitioner, my Lord.' 'An old practitioner, Mr. S.'

The treasurer of a party returning from a dinner at the Pigeon House on the Liffey, found he had got a bad shilling, and said he would throw it as far as possible into the water to put it beyond the possibility of circulation. 'Stop,' cried Plunket, 'give it to Toler,'-Lord Norbury was remarkable for penuriousness,—' he can make a shilling go farther than any one."

On Lord Essex saying that he had seen a brother of Sir John Leech, whom he almost mistook for Sir John himself, so much did the manner run in the family,-Plunket remarked: I should have as soon thought of a wooden leg running in the family.'

All the great Irish orators of the last generation were devoted to the Greek and Roman classics. Grattan said of Plunket that

'the

'the fire of his magnificent mind was lighted from ancient altars.' After his retirement from office he visited Rome. On his return, when a new work of merit was recommended as a companion of his journey from London to Ireland, he said he had promised Horace a place in his carriage. Surely you have had enough of his company at Rome, where he was your constant companion.' 'Oh, no. I never am tired of him. But then, if he don't go, I have promised the place to Gil Blas.' Curran read Homer once a year, and has been seen wrapt up in Horace in the cabin of a Holyhead packet with everybody else sick around him. Lockhart records that amongst the things to which Sir Walter Scott reverted with the highest admiration after his visit to Ireland in 1825, were the acute logic and brilliant eloquence of Plunket's conversation.

The luminous career of this boast and ornament of his country was destined to close in darkness and gloom. He shared the fate of Marlborough and Swift: his fine intellect became overclouded; and his fame exclusively belonged to history, being, so to speak, a thing of the past, before his death. He died in his ninetieth year, January 5th, 1854.

Of the six eminent men* who have held the Great Seal of Ireland since Lord Plunket's compelled retirement, four are still living. Mr. O'Flanagan has consequently thought right to conclude his series with Lord Plunket: and nothing remained but to take a pathetic leave of his book, bid it good speed, and commend it to the charitable construction of his readers. This he does much in the manner of Gibbon, who says in his Memoirs that, after writing the last sentence of the 'Decline and Fall' on his terrace at Lausanne, 'a sober melancholy spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that, whatever might be the fate of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.' Mr. O'Flanagan's hopes and fears, pleasures and affections, have been similarly bound up in his Lives; which he almost endows with vitality as he parts from them :

'I cannot part with those who have been my companions for nearly half a life-time, without deep anxiety as to how they shall be received by the extensive acquaintances to whom I now entrust them, happily under the best possible auspices. . . . . These lives have formed my most agreeable occupation, morning and evening, for a great many years, while my days were passed in the monotony of official routine, in nearly the same labours for twenty years, uncheered by the prospect of promotion; or, if a hope still clung to Pandora's box, it was hitherto

Lord Campbell, Lord St. Leonards, the Right Hon. Mazière Brady, the Right Hon. Francis Blackburn, the Right Hon. Abram Brewster, and Lord O'Hagan.

doomed

doomed to speedy and certain disappointment. As my official duties have been to the best of my ability most honestly and punctually discharged, so, I hope, my literary labours partake of the same character; and, however modified by the creed I profess, and the love of country which has grown with my life, I trust a favourable opinion may be entertained of the way in which I have written the "Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland."

Of the spirit certainly, although doubts may be entertained of the way. Good intentions do not make good writing; and Mr. O'Flanagan is only a fresh instance of the best-natured man with the worst-natured Muse. The Muse of History (her province includes biography) has been decidedly cold to his advances; and, as might have been expected from her sex, she was not to be won by mere honesty and punctuality; excellent titles (as we hope they will yet practically prove) to official promotion; none whatever to literary fame. An Irishman and a Roman Catholic, he has been constantly treading on dangerous ground; yet his candour and impartiality, his sense of justice and soundness of principle, are without a flaw: we rise from the book with the most favourable impression of the author as an enlightened patriot; and we can cordially congratulate him on having done good service to his beloved country by compelling attention to the best specimens of her virtue and genius, her gallantry, eloquence and wit.

ART. VII.-1. Chansons Nationales et Populaires de France. Dumersan et Noel Ségur. Paris, 1866.

2. Le Chansonnier Patriote. Paris, An I. de la République.

IT

T is an old saying that 'l'ancien gouvernement de la France était une monarchie absolue tempérée par les chansons ;' and a more recent French writer has observed that, the French sang while the English were dismembering France, through the civil war of the Armagnacs, during the League, the Fronde, and the Regency; and it was to the sound of songs by Rivarol and Champcenetz that the monarchy fell to pieces at the close of the eighteenth century.'

This passage points to a peculiarity which distinguishes French patriotic songs from those of most other nations, namely, that they generally owe their origin to civil dissensions or party conflicts. Hence it has come to pass that the songs which express the patriotism of to-day, often symbolise the treason of to-morrow. They thus become of historical value, and we propose to confine our attention at present to those connected

with the history of the revolutionary governments of France from the end of last century, first devoting a few words to one of an earlier date.

It would seem natural that the French should possess some poem equivalent to our National Anthem, when most nations of Europe have some one song, whose words are on every tongue and whose sounds are in every ear, ready to break forth in a hearty chorus whenever any occasion of national interest arises. The Austrians have their Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser;' the Prussians, 'Heil dir im Siegerkranz;' the Belgians, their 'Brabançonne;' Russia and Poland, each their national song; and every one of these is wedded to music of a grand heart-stirring character, while the words are certainly in most instances (as in our own National Anthem) easily convertible to the occasional changes of rulers' names, unless indeed (as in the case of Poland), they apostrophise the native country once for all. But the nearest approach in France to any ancient song of this kind is the 'Vive Henri Quatre.' The words which we subjoin will also illustrate a peculiarity which we shall have to notice in several later French songs, which have obtained in their day a great political importance. This peculiarity lies in the fact that the words of the song may have no sort of political importance at all; but either a passing reference to an individual, or the supposition that some particular person composed the words or music of the song, or even had some special pleasure in hearing it, has been sufficient to endow it either with a party or patriotic importance. The first stanza of 'Vive Henri Quatre' is the only one really dating from his time. The second was added at the commencement of the reign of Louis XVI., and the third and fourth were written a little later by Collé, when his play, 'Le Partie de Chasse de Henri IV.,' was performed for the first time in Paris. The song itself became of such royalist importance as to be proscribed during the Revolution and reinstated at the Restoration. The air is that of a dance, of which Henri IV. himself is said to have been especially fond. The first and second stanzas will suffice by way of specimen :

VIVE HENRI QUATRE.

Vive Henri Quatre!

Vive ce roi vaillant!

Ce diable à quatre

A le triple talent

De boire et de battre

Et d'être un vert galant.

Chantons l'antienne

Qu'on chant'ra dans mille ans :

66

Que Dieu maintienne

En paix ses descendants,

Jusqu'à ce qu'on prenne

La lune avec les dents."

Another song became a sort of royalist war-cry, from the part it played in exciting, by its remarkable opportuneness, the pas

sions