while the English part yawned and laughed, seeing others laugh, and sought relief in each other's countenances. One of them not wishing to leave: the whole joke to the Irish, and stung by a nettle he had not perceived, turned round to his friends and exclaimed: "Well, Jack, did not I always tell you, mother never liked cats?" They felt it as a late lord chancellor of great learning, understood some strokes of the Cervantie gravity, and inimitable and unimitated points and turns of Mr. Plunkett*.

Though the frequency of these anecdotes may tend to reduce the dignity of history, and may justly diminish the value of any collection, yet the boldest Goth, not even Alaric himself, would scarcely dare to destroy one vestige of them. By making breaks in the main narrative, one comes relieved from the fatigue of looking on one straight road, on one continuous and interminable line, such as India presents to the traveller.

In England, the ruinous system of obtaining money on fictitious bills, is known by the expression of raising the wind, in Ireland, by flying a kite. This latter, (not understood by the noble lord who presided,) Mr. Plunkett had occasion frequently to use, in animadverting upon its injurious effects: being asked by the judge what he meant by flying a kite, Mr. Plunkett answered, "Your lordship knows, that in England the wind raises the kite, but in Ireland, my lord, the kite raises the wind." It is doubtful if this were then, or even after understood.

Five hundred miles, even to Agra, is too much; nor will the stately palm, nor all the spicy odours, nor all the paintings of an oriental scenery impart that delight which the cheerful undulations of hill and vale, alternately intermixed, afford to the eye eagerly seeking for novelty and variety. In one case it sees infinity before it, and pants to be relieved and refreshed from the weariness and disgust produced by continuity. What the acute Hume, and the spoiler of our language the overornamented Gibbon, have done, so may the humble recorder of these memoirs be permitted to attempt to break up his matter so as to give a resting place on each stage.

Socrates said, if any man, however private, had courage to give a true diary of his own history, and of the events which had taken place in all matters connected with him; such would furnish not only an agreeable, but a moral and instructive work. How he may succeed who would delineate the mind of another, whether he possesses equal or superior advantages, I stop not to enquire. Locke felt the difficulty the mind had to place itself at a distance from itself, so as justly to estimate its own operations, and it is hard to conceive it to be so circumstanced as to have nothing to conceal. The Grecian philosopher well knew the difficulty of his scheme, which was never capable of being carried into perfect practical effect

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from the resistance it always met in man's amour propre. The confessions of Rousseau did not much advance the suggestions of the Greek sage; in every effort of this nature, it never occurred that the whole truth was told, even by the most candid. When another philosopher was thrown on an island supposed to be inhabited only by savages, and found mathematical figures traced on the sand, he announced to his companions, that this place was peopled by an enlightened race of men they were at first surprised, but shortly discovered his opinion to be well founded. So when the slightest traits of the human mind are delineated, reason speedily discovers in the most minute shadings, the value of the picture. Even in the small circumstance of tying the bundle of sticks together, and placing the smaller inside, contrivance and intelligence are to be deduced; and were the common newspapers of different countries to be handed down to posterity, unaccompanied by any other vestige, some future Miller from these apparently light documents would deduce the actual state of society, and give to the world an accurate account of its ranks. Thus here are supplied the materials of history, which may produce another and more instructive volume.

Between the spoken and written productions of Mr. Curran, there always appeared a great

inequality. The latter were of a much inferior stamp; but if Mr. Addison could pass down to future ages with the merited praise of being the greatest ornament to his own as a writer, and that of being an equally distinguished orator was denied to him, so it may content the ambition of Mr. Curran that his mind was not confined to one track of excellence. To few are given that enlargement, so as to embrace all, or to march at the head of separate grand divisions of intellect. There are many mansions in that house.

The two persons who best combined the extraordinary qualities of great action and of great reflection, belonging to distinct ages and at immense distances, were probably Cicero and Edmund Burke. The elasticity of Mr. Curran's mind was always bounding, when excited by praise or competition. It was early accustomed to admiration; and a crowded theatre, and the vastness of the occasion, drew forth all the energies of his productive mind, and all its best acting and its best exertions, when ignited by his subject, and by these appliances. It was not in the cave of Trophonius, but at Delphi he set forth his oracles.

Such was the food he banqueted upon, and without some of these, his wing soon tired: yet he

was but inferior to himself. Without these adventitious aids in his study, he became, comparatively with himself, tame and languid; and though his poetry affords some proofs of taste and marks of genius, it is feared his immortality must rest on some more solid basis. It was in conversation when he was properly in his own climate; when in high tone, and harmonised by fit accompaniments, that he "discoursed most excellent music." Often happiest when his subject was gravest, or when letters, men, taste, past, or passing events were touched. On these topics he entered with a curious felicity, so as to swell the listener's mind to participate in the proud consciousness of human superiority, of which he could be scarcely apprized till he heard him. And whether he courted the mournful muse, or were his even the sallies of gaiety and mirth, such was the sombre of his pencil, or such the playfulness and airiness of his imagery; and so surprising were the rapid transitions to the most exquisite comedy, that days and nights passed thus with him were truly in his own phrase (on some other occasion)" the refections of the gods."

His quotations, though frequent, were never pedantic: he melted down the classic sentiment, and it became more pure, and you felt the allusion or illustration in all the freshness of its original force. It was on these occasions his soul resem