those in whom the startling circumstances of the present war have awoke a proper and creditable interest about the means of sustaining it with honor and valid effect; we trust we have done our part towards supplying such readers with the means of judging for themselves of the present state of that important portion of our national defences, the militia, and the measures to be adopted to make it more generally available, and secure its full efficiency.

At this moment indeed the chief, and almost the only use of the militia, in the eyes of the indifferent and superficial observer is, to supply men by periodical volunteering to the line. But every man who looks beneath the surface of things, and meditates upon the state of Europe, will easily foresee that events might very speedily and suddenly arise, when the present war would lose its merely offensive character, and assume to some degree at least that of a defensive struggle. Prussia is not with us is in fact against us, at least passively, and only waits some disaster to our arms to throw away the thin veil now covering (not her purposes, for her king is too feeble to have a purpose) but her tendencies, and to become actively hostile. Austria, crippled in monetary resources by the result of the red republican revolts of 1848, with her 300 miles of frontier exposed defenceless to the quarter of a million of soldiers, whom Russia has posted along it, and with Prussia and all Northern Germany, as well as revolutionary Italy threatening her in other directions, is unable yet to come to our assistance. France, our single powerful ally, is but the impersonation of one most remarkable man-the present Emperor-and were his life cut short by one of the innumerable accidents or ills that flesh is heir to, her suicidal factions would paralyze her action, if even they did not find a common though temporary ground of agreement in turning her arms against "la perfide Albion." The real value of the militia would then be known, and the Militia would be found, ready and willing, nobly to do its duty.

ART. VIII.-SHEIL.

1. Memoirs of the Right Honourable Richard Lalor Sheil. By W. Torrens M'Cullagh. London: Colburn, 1855.

2. Sketches, Legal and Political, by the late Right Honourable Richard Lalor Sheil. Edited, with Notes, by M. W. Savage, Esq. London: Colburn, 1855.

It is mournful to see the last of an ancient house; to think of the hopes and destinies that sleep for ever more in the family vault; to know that the career of adventure, mishap, success, ruin, and retrieval that have filled a thousand years with their memories, delighting and paining us even yet, have at length reached the term of all ambition and all existence. and that what kings, parliaments and headsmen, the blood that has been spilled by the axe or corrupted by the lawwhat the fall of dynasties and uprooting of religions had suffered to continue, has fallen away and mouldered of itself. It is sad to witness the decay and extinction of an old nationality, whether crushed by the heel of violence or wasted in the embrace of corruption; and it is almost equally sorrowful to see the character of a nation die out, though its geography survive to look in vain for anything that gave it individuality or procured it interest, and to find that the old genius of the people, with its archetypal excellencies and anomalous defects, is without a home on the Earth. With a somewhat similar feeling of melancholy, we turn to the volumes before us—a memorial of the life and death of Richard Sheil, one who for all that appears upon the surface of society, was the last of Irish orators-the last of Irish dramatists, and perhaps the last specimen of what the Irish bar was once. It was reserved for him to close the brilliant series of orators and statesmen, who preserved and transmitted so faithfully the peculiar features of the national intellect, embellished but not changed, who were purely Irish without being purely ridiculous, and whose works are not only the pride of their particular country, but the classics of the tongue. Were we less disposed to selfcomplacency in Ireland than is commonly believed, it is impossible to overlook the fact that were it not for Ireland,

the Empire would have no one orator to take his place beside the great of antiquity, or to match in later times with Mirabeau, Berryer or Montalembert. It is a strange and seemingly unaccountable circumstance, that England proper, the nurse of statesmen and patriots, the theatre of struggles as exciting as ever put men's blood into commotion, with every condition of existence favourable to the growth of oratory, and with splendid trophies from every field of literature, should be indebted to a country so singularly miserable as Ireland for all her orators, for Burke, Grattan, Sheridan, Plunkett and Sheil. It is not through inadvertence or disrespect we pass over O'Connell-He resembled La Bridaine-No one can rightly understand his reputation that did not hear his voice and watch his eye-but amongst those whose oratory was of more substantial make, Sheil appears to have been the last representative of the Irish school; and with all its faults, those of Sheil included, we cannot but regret that it has ceased to exist, and that Irish oratory is only too respectable when it does not sink below the dead level of English mediocrity or break in froth upon English impassibility. The House of Commons, as constituted at any time for the last forty years, is capricious. not fastidious, and the countenance it gave to Sheil was the result, not of interest or feeling, but of curiosity. He was regarded in that assembly as a kind of oratorical pyrotechnist, not in the best sense which would make him an artist of "words that burn," but rather as a brilliant and latterly a harmless exhibitor of rockets, wheels and bouquets, which though bright and many-coloured, were but squibs after all.

We cannot but think Sheil was by no means what he might have been. It would take us over a very wide field to speculate at large upon the secret of his failure so far as that failure extends, and in linking him on to the series of great names to which his unquestionably belongs, we are willing to forget his short comings in their merits and his own, but it is impossible to resist the conclusion, that he was capable of much greater things than he accomplished, and ought to have. filled a far greater space in the eye of the public than he actually did. It does not appear that he ever quite realised his position, and though his individual efforts were so carefully elaborated, every thing was made up for parliamentary effect rather than enduring fame. Unlike Burke, he spoke for a

success, and lived but upon cheers-his speeches resembled those moving panoramas so popular of late, which must be seen by gas light and set off by orchestral accompaniment. He required to have taken a middle course between O'Connell's and his own. The sincerity and heartiness which a vigorous though not violent participation in the struggles immediately subsequent to Emancipation must have given to his oratory, were greatly wanting to him. There was nothing to give strength to his vehemence or heat to his lustre. Right or wrong, there existed an almost universal persuasion that Sheil was not thoroughly in earnest, and we think his own conduct rather encouraged the belief. He made his election of official life too early. He forgot that he had not been rocked and dandled into statesmanship, and that he should fare hardly with those who had been, unless he made them feel that they overlooked him at their peril. Unfortunately he was satisfied to remain a convenience of the minister, to take some trifling advancement, just sufficient to save the principle that a Roman Catholic might be promoted, and instead of being a vessel of honour, to fill a place amongst the broken tea-things wisely kept for show. The fact is (to use his own expression) he had been too long used to the yoke, and never recovered his perpendicular; he continued to slouch and stoop when the pressure was removed; his ambition did not teach him that whatever was nakedly possible might be converted into reality, and that within certain limits he ought to have the choice of his position.

It will be perceived we take the very lowest ground, and endeavour to ascertain what would have been the most judicious course for one who had regard to his own character and interest. We are quite willing to believe with Mr. M'Cullagh that Sheil took higher ground himself, and that with no undue regard to personal interest, he had an attachment to his party as romantic as it was ill requited, and innocently connected the welfare of his country with the aggrandisement of his friends. What is most to be complained of in Sheil was an excess of humility, an ignorance of his own value, or an over estimate of the difficulties in his path. Indeed the modesty of his pretensions, or rather of the pretensions which he put forward on behalf of Roman Catholics generally, in his "Effects of Emancipation," will account sufficiently for the well disciplined quietness with which he took up any subaltern position assigned to him.

This was not quite judicious-what Sheil wanted in weight he ought to have made up in activity; he ought not to have kept so completely out of contact with this country, he should have condescended to ascertain the play of its pulse with his own touch; but he withdrew to a different atmosphere, and looking through a strange medium it is not surprising if his discernment was less faithful than it might have been. In such an assembly as the British Parliament, notwithstanding our boast of public opinion and public virtue, no man can reach the level of his own intellectual eminence, or secure a field for the exercise of his political abilities, unless, not having been born great, he has learned to make himself feared. It was not admiration of his eminent qualities, nor yet their poverty in what are called natural leaders, that compelled the protectionists to submit to the hardship of Mr. Disraeli. They accept him, not so much because they cannot do without him, but because he could afford to do without them, and on much the same principle as a prudent solicitor will often retain counsel, less to secure his services than to escape his opposition. Had Sheil been equally discerning, had he been as expert a tactician as he was an accomplished speaker, his place in the administration and his pedestal in history should have been far different from what one was and the other is.

There have appeared two works in connection with his name, by authors sufficiently well known to the public, the Memoirs by Mr. M'Cullagh, and the Sketches, Legal and Historical, Sheil's own production, for whose appearance in their present form the public in both countries should feel greatly indebted to Mr. Savage. In both works we have a picture of times we had almost said happily gone by, but unless we mistake the symptoms of the public mind, it is to be feared we should be premature in saying so. At all events the great actors in those scenes, the men who breathed their spirit into the passions of the period, have passed from the earth. Sheil was second to O'Connell only, and in the estimate he has given of the characters of his confederates, but especially of his leader, he is in no one instance ungenerous or disparaging, and though more than once in opposition to the latter, he maintained the struggle without bitterness, and seemed to have remembered it without rancour; the homage he rendered to O'Connell was uniform, ungrudging, and must have been disinterested; he never allowed himself to sneer when a sneer could have been