teers. Its solitary occupant, worn with illness, white with toil, bows awkwardly and abruptly to either side; the small, sharp eyes of him are struggling not to soften; the curved, strong mouth of him locks teeth and lips in a stern effort to seem unmoved; but as the carriage stops and the solitary occupant, swinging his long arms, struggles, hurriedly up the granite steps, on through the granite corridors, the ushers and the men-at-arms can see that instinct is more powerful than will, and those eyes which never feared the face of man are now streaming with overpowering tears. Ah! dear, dear Grattan, "kindly Irish of the Irish" -all our own!

"Inside the House of Commons the scene is, even for that brilliant period, particularly magnificent. Every member is in his place, and the representative of royalty, the courtly, cunning Duke of Portland, is on the throne. Round about the vast rotunda of the Commons Room the galleries are thronged with the rank and fashion of a gay and splendid metropolis; and yet, in expectancy of some great event, all voices are hushed, and such a stillness reigns in all that vast assemblage that-as an eye-witness describes it-one can hear the nervous fidgeting of Portland's fingers, and the impatient shuffling of the shoes of Harry Flood. The moment is indeed one big with the fate of Ireland. It is now more than two years since the Irish Parliament, under the intelligible inspiration and stern leadership of the Volunteers, has declared that Ireland was never made to be a province, and that a province she shall never be; and that no power on earth can make laws to bind her but her own Parliament and her own king. That declaration has been transmitted to the folk at Westminister; along with it the secret lovers of Westminister have transmitted very alarming reports of these stern men who have marched from Dungannon.

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The Duke of Portland at last rises. His message is very brief. In the very first sentence he announces that the Irish have won the game, and that the King, Lords and Commons of Great Britain, have acceded without reserve to the declaration of the Irish Parliament, and have acknowledged officially the Independence of Ireland. And now it is Grattan's turn. He is now just six and thirty years of age; but he looks older by at least a dozen years. His face is not by any means a handsome face; not made according to any model that painters or young ladies have ever loved. But it is essentially a face of power, and of power that looks as if it had declared everlasting war against knavery and injustice. There is terrible strength in the intense mouth, terrible pride in the intense eyes, terrible

daring in the knotted and grappling brows, and over the whole visage there is that awful self-forgetfulness which only comes from long pondering in the darkness, or long watching with the stars. As the man rises--and he rises with a painful effort which seems spasmodic--the body of him looks to be small and shrunken; below the middle height, spare and bony, and as lifting himself erect, he stretches out his uplifted hand, the fingers seem spare and knotted as an eagle's claw. For the first two or three minutes, says an onlooker, you can hardly keep from laughing, so awkward is the figure, so uncouth is the gesture; but gradually the man's voice asserts itself; soul is left alone with soul, and you are smitten through heart and brain with such a strength of speech as never since was heard except from Mirabeau, or before except from the great Demosthenes. The stillness is terrible as death and the judgment day; and out through it, as in jets of liquid fire, there dart thoughts, sharp and strong as Spartan shafts, that always hit, and when they hit destroy. At last he sits down, shaking terribly in every limb, and at once there arises from all that vast assemblage such a rapture of applause as tells even the people in Grafton street and along the quays, that Grattan has triumphed and Ireland at last is free. Men shake hands with one another, and laugh and toss their caps on high; and renewed and thunderous shouts proclaim the praises of Henry Grattan and the Irish Volunteers.'

Grattan's health was failing when he achieved this triumph, and he was obliged to retire for a time, from Parliament. On his return to public life, he devoted himself to the advocacy of the claims of his Catholic fellow-countrymen, who were, by the unrepealed penal laws, still debarred from all franchises from all professions, from all magistracies, from all juries, from both Houses of Parliament, and, so far as the law could debar them, from holding land, from education, and from freedom of worship. With the aid of the leading members of the Liberal party, Grattan succeeded, in the space of eleven years, in removing all the chief of these disabilities, and in the end he so won over the Protestant people and clergy by his extraordinary tact and eloquence, that he was able to carry the Relief Bill of 1793 with their almost universal concurrence.

The iniquitous plot of the English Minister to overthrow the legislative independence of Ireland, reached its developement in the disastrous outbreak of 1798, when Grattan, disgusted with the widespread corruption which was one of its agencies retired from Parliament, shattered in health and shaken in hope. He already saw the beginning of the end. Quitting the anxious

field of politics, "where he could not be active without self-reproach, nor indifferent with safety," he went to the Spa, at Castleconnel, near Limerick, thence to the Isle of Wight, from whence he returned to his home at Tinnahinch.

Only when the debate on the Union commenced did he emerge from his repose to do battle for the Constitution, of which he proudly declared himself the parent and the founder. His efforts at that momentous crisis surpassed all his previous oratorical achievements.

On the 15th of January, 1800, the last session of the last Irish Parliament opened its sittings. When that day dawned Grattan had no seat in Parliament. The uneasy thousands gathered, as the hour of session approached, in front of the House, spread among themselves two rumors. One was that Grattan was dying in Tinnahinch; the other, that he had been that day elected member for Wicklow. This seemed improbable, for the writ had been purposely kept back by the government till that very morning. The sitting opened. The populace of Dublin was massed in College-green. The wealth, beauty, and fashion of the then gay metropolis filled every point of accommodation in the Commons chamber. The galleries were ablaze with the stars of peers and the flashing jewels of "toasts" and titled women. All felt the crisis, for it was the final struggle for Irish freedom. The bill for the Union had been defeated in the previous session by just five votes, and it was known that every Ministerial engine had since been at work. Sir Laurence Parsons forced the Unionists from cover, and the debate began. Every speaker on each side excelled himself. The night wore on, the fateful controversy languished, when there rose suddenly a far-off swell of voices, which rolling nearer and nearer, broke in thundering cheers against the portals of the House. Ponsonby and Moore rushed out, and soon returned, leading between them a wasted and feeble man. It was Grattan. The trick of retarding the election writ had been counterfoiled by the speed with which it was forwarded by the patriots. The voters were ready, the return was made after midnight, and the chosen member, throwing himself behind swift horses, hurried to Dublin. At his appearance the whole House stood up and uncovered; while he took the oaths Castlereagh and the Ministers bowed and remained standing. Sobs of emotion burst from the galleries : the vast and brilliant assembly acknowledged the presence of genius and virtue. Weak in body and bowed by illness, he was unable to address the House standing; but the undaunted soul sparkled in his eyes and rolled from his lips in torrents of burning words. He spoke for two hours a speech of which it was

said, "If the Irish Parliament could have been saved by eloquence, Grattan would have saved it." But the doom was written, and Ireland fell. The Union was carried by 162 votes out of a house of 300; and Henry Grattan's career as an Irish statesman closed.

For some years he lived a retired life in his Wicklow home. In 1805 the friends of the Catholic cause induced him to offer himself as a candidate for the United Parliament. His English Parliamentary life gave ample proof that much of his former energy yet survived. His first speech in the strange Senate was one of the finest utterances ever delivered in that body. The old oak may have suffered by being transplanted, but it yet towered strong and stately beyond its fellows. For fifteen years he was the ceaseless advocate of Catholic Emancipation. So powerfully did he press the question, that in 1819 he all but gained the measure, having only two of a majority against him. He died, in a great degree, fighting the battle of Catholic Ireland; for, being dangerously ill in 1820, he persisted, against the representations of his physicians and his friends, in going to London to renew his motion for Emancipation, but was stricken down by the fatal fatigues of the journey.

On his death-bed, and in his last moments, his thoughts were with his country. 'Keep knocking at the Union," he whispered to Lord Cloncurry, in these words, delivering the mot de guerre that Irish patriotism has since adopted. He died on June 6th, 1820, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The motion for his public interment was made in the House of Commons, by Sir James McIntosh, who, in his speech, applied to the dead patriot these lines of Wordsworth :—

"Ne'er to those chambers where the mighty rest,
Since their foundation, came a nobler guest;

Nor e'er was to the homes of bliss conveyed
A purer spirit, a more holy shade."

The splendid memorial of Grattan (of which an engraving accompanies this sketch) was unveiled in the City of Dublin, on the 6th of January, 1876. But his enduring monument is in the grateful memory and affection of the people in whose cause he labored throughout his noble life.

"FULL many a swarthy face and stern was there," sings that elegant and accomplished poet, Mr. Myers, whose admirable "St. Paul" many of our readers will thank us for recalling to them. Nigra illis facies, nigrantia terga" was the version of an aspirant for an English university scholarship, when recently required to turn the English into Latin verse!