EVERY public speaker who can arrest the attention and act upon the feelings of an audience, is, in the most loose or enlarged acceptation of the term, an orator; even in its strict and literal sense, the same definition would almost apply. But it is needless to remind our readers that there are almost as many gradations of excellence included in that general term as there are in similar ones used in reference to painting or sculpture, or poetry or acting. As the circle of public intelligence becomes expanded, by the greater spread of general knowledge among the people, and the more universal excitement of all classes in questions of a political or social nature in reference to legislation, the number of public speakers who excite attention and maintain a hold upon the feelings of the people becomes almost indefinitely multiplied; the intellectual quality of their speeches is deteriorated in proportion as their practical utility is increased; and it becomes more and more difficult to settle the old and often-disputed question, "What is an orator?" Several speakers have already been included in this series, and more will probably follow, whom it would have been absurd to place upon the list of those, so few in names, but so brilliant in performances, who, by the common consent of mankind, by the testimony of history and the evidence of their works, happily undestroyed, are recognised as being the great masters in the art of oratory. Yet, on the other hand, the individuals so excluded exercise a direct and powerful influence over their fellowcountrymen scarcely paralleled, and certainly not exceeded, by the higher order of public speakers. Their utilitarian value fully compensates to the general mind for their want of artificial enhancement. The public, perhaps, would care little to know what were the brilliant excellencies of Mr. Sheil or Mr. Macaulay, or what a critical analysis would dis

Yet a

cover of their defects, if the plan of the writer gave them that information on the condition that in the exercise of a somewhat hypercritical judgment, he left them in ignorance of the oratorical qualifications of Lord John Russell, or Sir Robert Peel, or Mr. Cobden, or even Lord George Bentinck, men with whose names the whole country is ringing. speech from Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Brougham, Mr. Sheil, Mr. Macaulay, or Mr. Disraeli, or from Mr. Fox and some of the most distinguished platform speakers, wholly differs not merely in the degree but also in the nature of its excellence from those of the more practical orators,-they who really lead the public mind. The one is a study for the intellect and a pleasure to the imagination, for its intrinsic excellence or beauty, while the other derives its interest from extraneous causes, ceasing with the excitement of the hour; such as the position of the speaker, the nature and position of the subject he is handling, and, generally, from the exciting political causes which every year of struggling perpetuates. But the men of the higher order have their ultimate reward. The others have the applause of the present hour alone. Their lumbering speeches are duly reported in the newspapers, in their inglorious rivalry which shall produce the greater number of columns of print; but after the lapse of a week they are forgotten, or only remembered that they may be quoted at a future time against themselves, when, in the mutations of modern politics, they shall find it necessary to contradict all their former assertions and argue against all their former opinions. But the real orator of the highest class-he who has had a nobler end in view than forensic sophistry or mere clap-trap and cajolery-not only is admired at the time he utters his speech, but is remembered long after his temporary rivals are forgotten. His effusions

are read and studied as models by successive aspirants to fame; they are admired by the poet as he admires his Milton, his Wordsworth, or his Tennyson; by the artist as he admires his Titian or his Turner; and it is to them also that the most valuable praise of all is accorded —that of posterity. The practical men secure the present only, the men of genius enjoy both the present and the future.

Mr. Sheil is a man of genius, and, making allowance for some defects which shall be hereafter adverted to, an orator of the highest order. Whether his speeches be read in the closet years after they were delivered, or whether they be heard with all the advantage of that burning eloquence, that brilliancy of diction, that fiery impetuosity of action, which have now become almost associated with the name of Sheil, they are still the same powerful, beautiful, soulstirring works, still models of the finest rhetorical art. Scarcely any terms of admiration would be too strong as applied to some of his speeches, while even those which do not rise to the highest pitch of excellence have, nevertheless, so decided and so distinctive a character, that they may be at once known to be the production not only of a superior mind, but of the particular man from whom they have proceeded. The very faults of his style cease to be defects when regarded in connexion with the pervading tone of his mind, and the leading features of his character.

Mr. Sheil's parliamentary reputation is now of about fifteen years' standing. For that period he has reigned without a rival as the most brilliant and imaginative speaker, and the most accomplished rhetorician, in the House of Commons. That assembly heterogeneous as are the materials of which it is composedpossesses a marvellous instinct in the discovery and the appreciation of oratorical talent. It is their interest that they should have among them those who can occasionally charm them from the plodding realities of legislation, and the dull lucubrations of the practical men. Therefore, they are always alive to excellence, and stamp it at once. Not very long since a new member, a Mr. Cardwell,

made a remarkably valuable speech on a question of a practical nature, full of powerful reasoning, concentration, and mastery of the facts. Till the evening when he made that speech, he was comparatively unknown; but he had not been on his legs a quarter of an hour, before the unerring instinct of the House (which operates as closely upon good business speeches as on the most eloquent) discovered that, in his degree, he was a superior man, and the cheering with which he was greeted at the close of his address was the stamp they set on his ability. Sir Robert Peel was among the listeners, and in a few weeks afterwards Mr. Cardwell became a minister. If, in these days of statistics and sophistry, a modest and undistinguished individual was thus singled out, à fortiori it could not have been long before such an orator as Mr. Shiel was elevated to the highest point in the admiration of the House, at a time when high oratory was more valued. He came but to be heard and to be triumphant. Heralded by the hyperbolical praise of his Irish admirers, his first speech was looked for with a curiosity not unmingled with doubt. But he passed the ordeal successfully, and from that hour has been regarded as one of the most distinguished and remarkable of the many great orators which his country, fertile in genius as in natural riches, has ever produced.

Our mention of the Hibernian admirers of Mr. Sheil reminds us that we have something to say of that gentleman beyond what is prompted by a recollection of his speeches in the House of Commons. For, unlike most of our most distinguished men, Mr. Sheil was famous as an orator long before he entered parliament. His eloquence had not been the least important element in causing that unanimity of feeling among the people of Ireland which ultimately led to the great political and religious revolution of 1829. There are very few instances on record of men who have become famous as speakers at the bar, or at the hustings, or at public meetings, having equally stood the test of the House of Commons. It is one of Mr. Sheil's many claims on our admiration, that having been an energetic, enthusiastic, and suc

cessful leader in a great popular, or rather a great national movement, he should have had the taste and tact to so subdue his nature in the very hour of triumph, as afterwards to adapt his speaking to the tone most agreeable to the House, and to charm them as much by the fire of his eloquence as by the delicacy of his rhetorical artifices, without the aid of those stronger and more stirring stimulants to the passions which form the very essence of successful mob-oratory. In very few instances indeed has he even discarded these voluntary fetters on the exuberant vigour of his patriotism and nationality.

Not as an orator merely will Mr. Sheil assist to rescue this age from the charge of mediocrity. Thirty years ago he first began to be known and appreciated as a poet-when he was only looking forward to the bar as a profession, and long ere visions of applauding millions, or of high ministerial office, or a place in the councils of his sovereign, ever crossed his ardent and aspiring soul. As the author of the tragedies Eradne and The Apostate, Mr. Sheil already occupied a high place among the writers who were then his contemporaries-a place not very much unlike that now held by Talfourd. In the intervals of those productions, and for some time afterwards, he contributed to the periodicals of the day, and had altogether, even at the early age of twenty-two, made himself that kind of reputation for originality and a high order of talent which floats about society and interests, by some means or other, more certain in their action than perceptible, the general mind in the career of particular individuals. Still, although there were at all times vague predictions that he would "do something" some day or other, no one seems at that time to have suspected that he contained within him the powers which soon afterwards made him second but to one man as a leader of the Irish people, and ultimately have enabled him to compete with the most illustrious men of the day in those qualifications which ensure parliamentary

success.

But with the time came the man. The Roman Catholic question had of late years assumed a great parliamentary importance. The stalking

horse of an ambitious party, the cause had come at last to be regarded as "respectable." English statesmen and orators-men who in a few years became the rulers of the country-succeeded those great and eloquent Irishmen in whom the advocacy of Roman Catholic freedom from civil disabilities had always been regarded as justifiable-nay, a matter of duty. In the meanwhile, all the legal dexterity of Mr. O'Connell had been devoted to the construction of an artful but comprehensive scheme of agitation, by which the people of Ireland might be organised and an unanimous call be made on the English parliament for emancipation. This organisation went on, with more or less success, for years. Under the name of the Roman Catholic Association it rose from the most insignificant revival (after a temporary dispersion) in the year 1823, until it assumed that gigantic shape which ultimately terrified the government of England into an undignified submission. It was in that year, 1823, that Mr. Sheil and Mr. O'Connell, who were destined at no very distant time to be the great leaders of the Association, first met, under circumstances somewhat romantic, at the house of a mutual friend in the mountains of Wicklow. There a congeniality of object overcame the natural repulsion of antagonist minds, and they laid down the plan of a new agitation. That their meeting was purely an accidental one made the results which followed still more remarkable.

Their first efforts were received with indifference by the people; but in a very few weeks the Association was formed, and the rolling stone was set in motion. To those who are curious in such matters it will be instructive and amusing to observe the parallel circumstances of the origination of the Roman Catholic Association by some six or seven enthusiasts at a bookseller's shop in Dublin, and that of the Anti-Corn-Law League, by a few merchants at Manchester, or at Preston-for the cotton-heroes of the late campaign have not yet determined at which place the nucleus was formed.

We have alluded to the natural repulsion of antagonist minds. Contrast more marked could scarcely

exist than that which was exhibited

by the two great leaders of the Association.

That their mental

qualities were so different, and the sources of the admiration which each in his sphere excited so opposite, may be held to be one of the causes of the great success the Association achieved. If Mr. Sheil was great in rhetoric,-if his impassioned appeals to his countrymen and to the world stood the test not merely of Hibernian enthusiasm, but also of English criticism, Mr. O'Connell was greater in planning, in organisation, in action, and he had in his rough and vigorous eloquence a lever which moved the passions of the Irish peo ple. He perhaps had the good sense to see that as an orator, in the higher sense of the term, he could never equal his more brilliant and intellectual colleague. His triumphs lay in the council-chamber on the one hand, and in the market-place or the hill-side on the other. It was in the forum or on the platform that the more elevated and refined eloquence of Mr. Sheil, adorned with all the graces of art, charmed while it astonished a higher and more cultivated audience. Thus they never clashed. While all Europe rang with the fame of the "peaceful agitator," who had taught his countrymen to use the forms of the constitution to the subversion of its spirit and objects; every scholar, every statesman, every lover of the beautiful in oratory as an art, had already learned to admire that new, thrilling, imaginative, yet forcible style of eloquence, which ever and anon, amid the din and clamour of noisier warfare, sounded the spirit-stirring tocsin of nationality and religious liberty, breaking forth like intermittent lightning-flashes amidst the thunders of the agitation. Mr. Sheil, on the other hand, looked up to Mr. O'Connell for his indomitable energy and perseverance, his craft, cunning, caution, his thorough nationality and identification with the feelings of the people, and would as little have thought of substantially opposing his decision or resisting his general control over the proceedings of the Association, as the other would have attempted to vie with him in eloquence. So they went on together, side by side, though really exercising

so distinct an influence, with scarcely any of that jealousy or rivalry which has so often stifled similar undertakings in their very infancy. If Mr. Sheil's ideas of agitation were more grand and comprehensive; if he would fain have gone by a more direct and manly but more dangerous road to the intelligence of the English parliament and people; if, in his anxiety to impress on the world a deep and startling conviction of the union and nationality of the Irish people, and their absolute, even their slavish devotion to their leaders; if in this his superabundant energy and velocity of purpose, he would have drawn the Association into the meshes of the law, there was Mr. O'Connell at his right hand to repress and guide, to steer clear of the rocks and shoals, to accomplish by that crafty prudence and keen dexterity in escape which savours so much of political cowardice, those objects which, in the other case, would have been realised by a more manly display of political audacity. Mr. Sheil might be the braver man at the boardingpike or the gun, but Mr. O'Connell was the safer at the helm.

To Mr. Sheil was owing the idea of at once teaching the people of Ireland union and a sense of their strength, while obtaining an universal expression of their wish for emancipation, by means of simultaneous meetings throughout Ireland, in every parish in the kingdom, for the purpose of petitioning parliament to concede the Catholic claims.

He

would have gone further. He would have had a form of prayer prepared, by means of which, in every chapel in Ireland, the people might simultaneously join in an appeal to Heaven for the advancement of what they had been taught to believe was a sacred cause; that millions of men and women might breathe the same aspiration to their Creator, at the saine moment throughout the length and breadth of the land. The conception, apart from its impropriety in a religious point of view, was a grand one, and strongly illustrative of its author's character. It was an idea more likely to occur to an enthusiastic and ardent imagination like that of Mr. Sheil, than to the more practical mind of Mr. O'Con nell; who again was much more at

home in framing a resolution or organising an association, or holding a meeting, in such a manner as to evade the law. It was his successful boast that there was no act of parliament through which he would not drive a coach-and-six. Mr. Sheil had a poet's conception of agitation and organisation; Mr. O'Connell's was that of a lawyer. Characters more opposed could scarcely have been brought together; that they harmonised so well, notwithstanding the many daily causes of instinctive antagonism that must have arisen, is a miracle only to be accounted for by the influence which a popular movement always exercises on its leaders, so long as they are all pressing forward towards the same goal.

The Mr. Sheil, who now sits and speaks in the House of Commons, who is a right honourable member of her majesty's privy council, and was not, so very many years ago, one of the most ornamental, if not quite the most useful, of the members of the Whig cabinet, is, however, a very different personage, indeed, from the young, enthusiastic Irishman, barrister, poet, orator, agitator, whose fiery spirit fused into one silver flow of brilliant eloquence so many pure elements of democratic power. Except at intervals, when the old habit recurs, or when some tempting opportunity presents itself to urge the wrongs of Ireland without compromising his new associates, Mr. Sheil is one of the most quiet, silent, unobtrusive members of the House of Commons. Indeed, he has become so identified with the Whigs, that you scarcely remember him even as an Irishman, still less as one of those who, for so many years, defied the whole parliamentary power of the empire. He has of late years thrown himself almost entirely into the conventionalities of the House of Commons, and has undergone mutation from a popular leader into a partisan. This is said in no spirit of disparagement; on the contrary, however "Young Ireland" may affect to scorn such apparent lukewarmness and subserviency to circumstances, it is really one of Mr. Sheil's most solid claims to our respect. Nor is his oratorical power diminished when, on occasion, he deigns to resort to it. On several occasions he has delivered

speeches on great questions not affecting Ireland alone, but the whole empire, which, for vigour, beauty of imagery, boldness of conception, and sarcastic power, will vie with the best of those made in the very heat and fervour of his patriotism. It is not that his strength is diminished, but that it is more under the regulation of his taste and judgment.

Some of the speeches — harangues they would bear to be called — made by Mr. Sheil at the meetings of the Roman Catholic Association, will bear comparison with the most memorable ever called forth by the spirit of democracy. Almost from the first day he appeared on the platform of the Association, the attention of the political world, indeed of all thinking men, was fixed upon him. Those who could not be present to witness the powerful aid lent to his burning words by his striking and original action, still saw unquestionable genius in the exquisite language, the novel metaphors, so bold yet so well controlled, the forcible antithesis, the luxuriant imagery, the unapproachable sarcastic power, and, above all, in an irrepressible spirit of patriotism, an indignant sense of insulted national honour, that bore onwards the stream of his thoughts with a wild and reckless abandonment, perilous at every fall, yet, torrent-like, free again at a fresh bound and rushing far away in flashing beauty. By the side of the deep, steady current of Mr. O'Connell's eloquence, slow moving like a mighty river, the rapid flow of Mr. Sheil's pure, clear, poetical diction, gave a delightful and refreshing relief to the mind. Take up the proceedings of those meetings, and the very sentences, so short and exquisitely framed, scem as it were to gleam and glitter. Never was sedition clothed in more seductive language, or democratic principles made more fascinating to the most fastidious intellect. In his strong conviction of the justice of his cause, he would certainly at times broach doctrines as to the means to be employed, which it required all the moral weight of Mr. O'Connell and his timorous prudence to counteract. But if the fiery and impetuous young advocate of a people was sometimes thus hurried on, by the ardour of his imagination, to lengths