Venedy, the German, whose descriptions I have quoted, was last year a member of that most incongruous, imbecile, and yet mischievous absurdity, the Frankfort Parliament. I am sorry to say that I believe he showed no greater wisdom than the bulk of his colleagues. Biernatski, whom he mentions, was a Polish refugee of the Revolution of 1831. He had been Minister of Finance for a time during the Revolution in Warsaw. He was settled quietly in Paris when I knew him, and his name has not appeared in any of the disturbances of last year.

CHAPTER X.

MR. MACAULAY.-SECTARIAN

BIGOTRY.PERSECUTION IN SWITZER

LAND. INCREASE OF REPEAL COMMITTEE.-REPEAL ASSOCIATION REPORTS.-MR. O'CONNELL'S SUGGESTIONS.-PROCEEDINGS OF REPEAL COMMITTEE.

AMONG the denouncers of the Repeal Agitation in parliament during the summer of the year 1843, was Thomas Babington Macaulay, poet, orator, historian, and quondam "Cabinet Minister!"

Mr. Macaulay, in the debates of ten years previously, on the Irish Coercion Bill of 1833, in his first great display in a reformed (or, I believe, any) House of Commons, experienced the fate which genius most richly merits when it degrades itself to ignoble purposes. He came out with an elaborately prepared oration in favour of the new measure of tyranny for Ireland; and it proved most elaborate and utter failure.

On the occasion of the only time that the lyre of the great Magician of the North was heard to creak-that of his "carmen triumphale" on the victory of Waterloo-some such distich as the following was addressed to him:

"Then none by pistol or by shot

Fell half so flat as Walter Scott!"

It might have been paraphrased with regard to the brilliant Macaulay's assault upon Ireland and defence of coercion, for he fell flat indeed, and flat in the mud !*

How admirably he has since redeemed his fame it is not at all needful here to detail. The gushing richness and fulness of his eloquence absorbs, fascinates, and carries away his auditory, making them utterly oblivious, or, at least, disregardful of the occasional too great evidences of art and study. He never showed himself ready at an impromptu speech; but the sparkling brilliancy of his prepared efforts excused, covered, and most abundantly atoned for the attendant delays and infrequencies of their exhibition.

* Might the paraphrase run thus ?

"Then none did show so shy and smally,

As Thomas Babington Macaulay !"

There was, however, a repetition of the fall in his declamation against Repeal in 1843. Sentence after sentence came out ore rotundo, stating alternative after alternative that he would prefer to the measure demanded by the people of Irelandthe restoration of their own parliament — each sentence ending with a "no, never!" strongly suggestive of the popular song, or burden of a song,

"Did you

ever? No, I never!" &c. &c.

In sober sadness, it was not worthy of his talents and character to set himself thus up in petulant and puny opposition to a constitutional demand of an aggrieved people. It ought not to have been made an occasion for an oratorical display, and for what might indeed be called an empty oratorical bravado. No party in the State has ever yet been impeded in its labours for its object by frantic and unreasoning declamations against it. The repeal of an act of parliament is not a thing that can be proscribed or prevented by a claptrap speech. And if Lords Brougham and Beaumont, in the Lords, and Sir Robert Peel and a few officials, in the Commons, found themselves moved, the two former from a love of mischief

and notoriety, the right honourable baronet for some politic purpose of the passing moment, and the others because he did it,-to commit themselves to the monstrous absurdity of declaring, that they would prefer civil war, with all its inevitable evils and horrors, to the possible, but yet only conjectural, inconveniences of reverting to the old constitutional system of separate parliaments, under which a foreign war was successfully conducted, a domestic rebellion crushed, and Ireland advanced many steps towards permanent prosperity; such conduct on their parts ought not to have been held worthy of imitation by a man who could not be uncertain of his own position in the eyes of the public; who had no passing interest of party or of office to subserve; and who, assuredly, can afford to be original in his opinions and actions.

Of Mr. Macaulay's achievements in the world of poesy, it would be difficult to speak in terms of admiration such as they deserve. In fact, it would need his own glowing language, and brilliancy of thought and expression, adequately to praise them.

Of his History, any criticism here would be out of place: but, as a Catholic, I enter protest against