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FRANCIS BLACKBURNE.

I AM one of those whose political information is derived from a perusal of "The Weekly Register,"* through the ample columns of which I disport myself upon Saturday evening, and refresh myself with news much older than the beverage with which I raise my spirit to the proper pitch of patriotism, in order to wash down the eloquence of the Catholic Association. While others busy themselves in political anticipations, and leave Time panting and toiling after them, I follow him at a distance, and am contented if, upon the eve of the Sabbath, I can collect enough of news to join in the discussions of divers Popish counsellors, who assemble at half past one o'clock to offer their devotions to "our Lady of Carmel," under the auspices of Mr. L'Estrange, in the avenues of Clarendonstreet Chapel. In this sacred spot, just after benediction, one may observe a certain convocation of politic lawyers with huge prayer-books, bound in green morocco, under their arms. After years of hebdomadal employment, the golden pages of these holy volumes look as bright and fresh as when they issued from the burnishing hands of the bookseller to Maynooth College, and bear evidence of the care which the pious A newspaper of great influence in those days (1827) and for twenty years after. It sided with Mr. O'Connell through the great struggle for Emancipation, and the various efforts to obtain Repeal, by means of a Parliamentary enactment. When Mr. Duffy, in The Nation, and Mr. John Mitchel, in The United Irishman, advocated the bolder policy of force (argument having wholly failed) the Weekly Register, which was opposed to physical force, fell to the ground.-M.

votaries of Themis have taken not to profane them with too frequent an application of their forensic fingers.

But this is parenthetically observed-I was going on to say, that I merely prepared myself upon Saturday evening to talk over the memory of Lord Wellesley with Mr. Farrel; the lamentable increase of crime upon the Munster circuit with Mr. Wolfe ;* sacerdotal riots at Birr, and the validity of excommunication with Mr. Cruise; and the recollections of Wolfe Tonet with Mr. Sheil. Such being my indifference to political events, it not unfrequently happens that a great incident takes place of which I do not hear until after its more immediate effects upon the public mind have subsided-until after Mr. O'Connell has ordered a gown of Irish silk in the Liberty; Mr. Sergeant Lefroy has sought the consolations of religion

* Stephen Wolfe, a good lawyer and a liberal man, obtained neither notice nor preferment from the anti-liberal Governments preceding the grant of Emancipation. In 1834, he was made third Sergeant: Solicitor-General in 1836, Attorney-General in 1837, and Chief Baron of the Exchequer in 1838, on the death of Joy. Mr. Wolfe earnestly pressed the Government to appoint Mr. Pennefather, as fittest for this post, and that he (Wolfe) should merely take the puisne judgeship to be vacated by the promotion of Pennefather. But the Government, whose politics differed very much from those of Mr. Pennefather, declared that, under no circumstances, would they consider his claims; whereupon Mr. Wolfe was appointed Chief Baron. He died, June, 1840.— M.

t Theobold Wolfe Tone, actual founder of the "Society of United Irishmen," was born in 1763; called to the bar in due course; published a pamphlet against British mis-government in 1790; and founded the above society in 1793. From that time,

"Per varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum,"

Tone devoted himself to negotiations with the French Government to send men and arms to win back "Ireland for the Irish." One such expedition, under General Hoche, actually sailed, but a hurricane dispersed the fleet (consisting of 17 sail of the line, 13 frigates, &c., with 14,000 soldiers, and 40,000 stand of arms, besides artillery) before it could reach Bantry Bay, in the south of Ireland, and the French Government declined sending another large expedition. A petty armament was despatched, but beaten in a contest with an overpowering British fleet. Tone, who had fought bravely, was captured, tried by a Court Martial, and sentenced to be hanged, which he evaded by suicide. On the publication of Tone's autobiography, seven-and-twenty years after his death, Sheil attempted "to point a [political] moral" from it, in one of his Catholic Association Speeches, and was prosecuted for it by Mr. Plunket, then Attorney-General, but never brought to trial.— M.

in the College chapel, and Mr. Sergeant Blackburne, the subject of the present article, has bitten his nails to the roots for having, in a moment of weakness, yielded to the solicitations of Master Ellis, and allowed himself to be debauched so far from his characteristic prudence as to sign the anti-Catholic petition.

I have mentioned this habit of mine in order to account for my surprise at the strange appearance which was exhibited not very long ago by the Hall of the Four Courts, when I was struck by the sudden change of aspect and of manner which several individuals had, in the course of a few hours, undergone. Had I been acquainted with the news which had that morning arrived in Dublin, I should not have wondered at the transformation of the loyal portion of the bar; but I should have been prepared for something extraordinary, for, in my way to the Hall, I observed Mr. Secretary O'Gorman coming down Mass-lane, and just as he turned the corner, Mr. Peter Fitzgibbon Henchey (although Mr. Saurin and the Chancellor happened at the moment to be passing!) gave a look of unqualified recognition to the great plenipotentiary, which was returned with an air of official affability which became so eminent a functionary as Mr. O'Gorman.

The appearance of the latter gentleman, indeed, was sufficient to intimate that some momentous incident had taken place. Upon occasions of great importance, Mr. O'Gorman puts on a pair of white silk stockings, striped with black, such as he observed to be worn by Lord Grey, when the Secretary attended the Catholic Deputation.* The hosiery of the ultrapatriot Earl struck the fancy of Mr. O'Gorman, and ever since, upon great occasions, I have observed a fac-simile of his Lordship's stockings distended upon the herculean symmetries of the Irish orator; and it must be owned that, being a little spattered, and not much the better for the wear, they are not a little emblematic of some part of Lord Grey's recent

*The descent upon England, of O'Connell, Sheil, and others forming "The Catholic Deputation," in the spring of 1825, is the subject of one of the following Sketches-certainly inferior to none in personal, as well as in political interest. O'Gorman was secretary to the Irish Catholics.-M.

parliamentary conduct." The conjecture which I had formed from the Catholic Secretary's inferior habiliments was confirmed by the cognizance which was taken of him by Mr. Henchey, who, although his ancestors were deprived of their estates in the county of Clare for their creed, is now a devout adherent to the Chancellor's religion.

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Mr. Henchey has three manners of recognition. If he walk to court, and meet a junior counsel, who has held a brief with him in the matter of Lord French a bankrupt, this gentleman, who has inherited his prenomen from Lord Clare, gives a nod of rather equivocal intimacy, in which the consciousness of his own consequence is not altogether merged. If Mr. Henchey has started on horseback from his splendid residence in Merrion-square (which was once the town mansion of Lord Wicklow), with a servant-riding in gorgeous livery on a prancing palfrey behind him, he throws a casual look upon his pedestrian brethren, and following those canons of conduct, which Malvolio lays down for himself upon his anticipated elevation, 'quenches his familiar smile with an austere regard of control.” But when Peter Fitzgibbon Henchey, one of his Majesty's counsel at law, seats himself in his carriage, and rolls in all the pomp of legal state along the rattling pavement of Nassau street, he would be a bold man indeed, unless placed in immediate vicinage to the bench, who, by any intrusive salutation, should attempt to disturb Peter's meditations on his own dignity, and seek to attract an eye, that, bordered with deeplypursed and half-closed lids, seems to be abstracted from all external objects, and to have fixed itself in an inward contemplation of the importance of the eminent person in whose solemn and mysterious visage it is awfully and profoundly set. Recollecting the habits of Mr. Henchey, when I observed a person hitherto so conspicuous for his loyalty, according to the sense attached by Lord Manners to the word, even in the presence of the Chancellor, leaning from the window of his carriage, and suddenly recovering his natural faculty of telescopic vision, waving his hand to the Secretary of all the Cath

* The late Lord Grey's determined and personal opposition to Canning, the liberal Premier, in 1827.-- M.

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olics of Ireland (Mr. Henchey's nearest relatives inclusive), I concluded that something marvellous must have happened.

I entered the Hall of the Four Courts, and found in the looks of Barclay Scriven, who was sitting on the basement of one of the pillars, a farther ground for surmise. A few days before he was in the height of hilarity, when Master Ellis was putting the anti-Catholic Petition into circulation, with the assistance of a young gentleman, whose aunt ex-parte paternâ is the abbess of a convent. But now Barclay Scriven would have furnished Cruikshank with a model for a burlesque of Ugolino. He formed a strong contrast with Sergeant Goold, whom I observed tripping it on a toe (which, although no longer light, is still fantastic), with a renovation of his former alacrity, around the Hall. He has been lately looking a little autumnal, and has fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf. He is no longer what he was, when he danced a pas-seul in the vagaries of his youth at Fishamble street; for although he retains his gracefulness of attitude, he has sustained some diminution of agility, and is no longer so well qualified to dispute the palm with the "god of dance" upon the stage. But now his vivacity seemed to be in a great measure restored. He looked as if he had been newly boiled in Medea's caldron, or had received from Mr. Godwin a recipe for everlasting youth, and had started back some twenty years to life again. I was de

*

* William Godwin's striking romance of "St. Leon" (the interest of which turns on the hero having obtained the elixir vite, which was to give perpetual youth, and become master of the art of transmuting the meaner metals into gold), will be recollected, by posterity, when his "Political Justice" is forgotten. That work, the boldest piece of republicanism ever published in England, made Godwin a marked man during the greater part of his life-long after he had laid politics aside. He published "St. Leon," in 1799, and wrote several other works of fiction. He died in April, 1836, aged eighty, and for the last five years of his life, had a competency from a small sinecure place to which Lord Grey's Reform Administration had appointed him.-Mary Wolstoncroft who wrote the once famous "Vindication of the Rights of Women," was his wife (she had previously lived with him, "on principle," as his mistress), and died in giving birth to a daughter, who is known in the world of letters, as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the poet (who was drowned, July, 1822), and was herself a distinguished writer, as her "Frankenstein" shows:- she was born in 1797, and died in 1851.-M.