of happiness, that he could scarcely hope for the recurrence of so much felicity; and that "if the poniard were lifted against his bosom, he would bid the assassin strike." This somewhat melodramatic sentiment was delivered very much in the manner of Kean, and both in conception and enunciation certainly savoured of "The Boulevards." But, altogether, the speech, with a few of such imperfections, was a piece of noble, and, I believe, of sincere eloquence. The meeting dispersed with an unqualified feeling of admiration for the nobleman who had given so fine an utterance to his generous sentiments, and expressed so genuine and so rare an affection for his country. Lord Wellesley's reply added to the exasperation of the Orange party; and the events which succeeded, raised it to its height. The grand jury, composed in a great degree of affiliated Orangemen, threw out the bills of indictment tendered by the Crown against the perpetrators of the outrage at the Theatre. Mr. Plunket announced his resolution to proceed by ex officio information; and a day was appointed for a trial at bar. The most anxious suspense awaited its arrival. A deep pulsation throbbed through the city. The ordinary occupations of life appeared to be laid aside in the agitating expectation of the event which was to set à seal upon the future government of Ireland. It engrossed the thoughts and tongues of men, and exercised a painful monopoly of all their hopes and anticipations. At length the day of trial appeared amidst the heaviness of a grey and sombre morning. It was announced beforehand, that the judges would take their seats precisely at nine o'clock; the doors of the court to be opened at half-past seven. The earliness of the hour, immaterial as it may seem, had the effect of throwing society out of its ordinary habits. Whiskey-punch, and early rising, are sworn foes. The citizens of Dublin are much fonder of putting on their nightcaps than their morning dress at cock-crowing. But on this occasion all accustomed comforts were nobly sacrificed. Politicians of every class and mind,-corporators, beef-eaters, catholic, Orange, liberal and radical,—all bravely started up at half-past six to exchange the soothing glories of a tipsy dream, for the raw encounter of the cold realities of a winter morning. I reached the hall of the Four Courts about eight o'clock, but had the mortification to find that I was too late. The Orangemen, true to their principle of making a push on every occasion for the Protestant ascendancy, were in the field before me. As soon as the doors were opened, one tremendous rush filled in an instant the galleries and every avenue of the court. However, I remembered the Irish saying, that with patience and perseverance a man may open an oyster with a rolling-pin. I acted upon this doctrine, and by dint of shoving and insinuation, contrived, after a full hour's hard work, to attain a place in one of the dark side-lobbies of the court, from which, by standing on tiptoe, I could catch a view of what was going on within. Even this I could achieve only through one small aperture; and the effect was as if I had been looking at some gorgeous spectacle through the eye-hole of a rareeshow-box. The proceedings had not yet commenced, and I had time to examine in detail the silent scene. There was not a murmur in the court; but the first glance at the auditory would have satisfied you that deep passions were working there, and could not long be hushed. The signs of this were most apparent in the galleries. You saw it in the scowling brows

of the Orange partisans-and few else were there;-in the compressed lip-in the roll of ferocious confidence with which their eyes went round the scene that reminded them of their strength-in the glare of factious recognition with which they greeted the accused, and assured them of a triumph. My eye next rested upon the crowded benches of the bar. They, too, betrayed a consciousness of being themselves upon their trial. Instead of the legal nonchalance with which they usually await the coming on of the most important cause, they now presented a series of countenances quivering with political resentment. Of all the classes in the community, this body had felt perhaps the most intensely the late determination to controul the pretensions of the Protestant ascendancy; for with them all prescriptive privileges had been most complete and undisputed. It was easy to trace their emotions in their looks,-in the fixed and deadly sneerin the flush of haughty indignation-in the impassioned gestures, with which, in whispers among themselves, they arraigned the whole proceeding, and foretold the disasters it would bring upon the land. The sentiment of alarm and exasperation extended to many who had heretofore been regarded by others, and by themselves, as free from the taint of party; but in the heat of the times, their countenances (like their native marble when brought near the fire) had broken out in spots and stains which had hitherto lain concealed beneath the surface. As I looked round upon this scene of prejudice and anger, the first question that pressed upon me was, whether the present was an occasion upon which impartial justice could be expected;-whether in such an audience a jury could be found (for the panel was dispersed through the galleries) who could shake off the passions of even that single morning, and remember nothing but the evidence and their oaths. I could not venture to pronounce in the affirmative. Still it was quite refreshing to perceive, that in despite of every obstacle that faction could interpose, the cause of justice had one great and certain stay. When I turned to the bench and witnessed the steadfast and cheerful dignity of the judges, I felt assured that in that quarter the public interests were secure. The appearance, and the respective characters of the men, forced this cheering conviction upon the mind. There was Bushe, pledged by his whole life against the cause of religious persecution, and too strong and proud to be panic-struck. Burton, a gift to Ireland, from a country where law is sacred-cautious, sagacious, and enlightened-vigorous and independent at all times, and "best when provoked." Jebb and Vandeleur— gentle and efficient in the discharge of their ordinary functions as yet untried upon any great occasion, but sure to be firm and upright upon an emergency. It seems fated that in this tragicomic nation, however a public proceeding may terminate, it should not pass away without many a hearty laugh. In the present instance, the business of the day opened with a joke. Mr. Plunket rose "to call the attention of the court to a matter of some importance:"-a dead silence prevailed. The Attorney-General proceeded with much gravity to state," that he had been anxiously awaiting the arrival of his colleagues, the SolicitorGeneral and Mr. Sergeant Lefroy; and that, after a long search for them in all directions, it had been just discovered that they were both in one of the avenues of the court, firmly wedged in among the popu

lace, with a prospect of immediate suffocation, unless their lordships should be pleased to interfere in their behalf!" The political tenets of the two learned sufferers were well known; and the most bigoted Orangeman in the galleries could not refrain from a loud giggle at the notion of two such personages writhing under the horrors of a popular embrace. The Chief Justice contrived to draw the veil of judicial gravity over the rising smile, while he gave the necessary orders; and Mr. Sheriff Thorpe, with the most heroical alertness, rushed out of court, breathing from his looks the determination to employ all the powers vested in his Lilliputian person by the constitution, to rescue his friends from so novel a situation. He soon returned triumphantly, producing the two learned bodies in proof of what his civil prowess could achieve; and the proceedings of the day were no longer deferred. The proceedings of this singular trial are now before the public; I take it for granted you have read them-if you have not, they are far too voluminous for me to detail; nor will my limits permit me to offer any thing in the way of minute criticism upon the specimens of Irish oratory elicited upon this occasion. Mr. Plunket's speech was on a level with his subject, but scarcely with himself. The SolicitorGeneral's was tame and technical: he felt too much sympathy with Orange principles, and he openly avowed them, to prove a formidable denouncer of Orange excesses. Mr. North's address was the most applauded; but had I space, I should hardly think it fair to forestall the ingenious author of the Bar sketches, by whom Mr. North's admirers expect to see him presented, ere long, in vivid colours to the public. By the way, it was whispered about, during the present trial, that this forensic portrait-painter, respecting whom much grave conjecture has been afloat here, was actually in attendance; and no other than a lady of rank-Lady R- (not the Dowager of the name, who was resuscitated at eighty-six to give evidence upon this trial, and who looked like Erichtho, filled with the re-animating spirit of faction.) The fair reporteress daily occupied a prominent situation in the gallery, where her Scotch physiognomy was contrasted with the Cromwellian visages that glared about her. She held a silver pen, that was pressed occasionally against her lips, while her eyes gleamed with the most intense anxiety for the fate of the prisoners, with whom she seemed to participate in emotion; and the instant the least circumstance was mentioned at all favourable to them, her white hand darted to the paper before her, on which she scrawled, with an agitating velocity, for a moment, and then assumed her attitude of restless vigilance again. This "recording angel," the only person of her sex in the gallery, pressed and jammed collaterally, and a posteriore, by the incum. bent mass of low Orangemen among whom she was stowed, struck me as one of the most singular features in this strange and fantastic scene. The final result of the trial was what many had anticipated; and under the peculiar circumstances of this distracted province, it was perhaps the most fortunate that could have occurred. The Orangemen fondly counted upon a verdict of acquittal to the last. Their sympathy never flagged for an instant. During each succeeding day of the proceedings they were the first to fill the court; and the space outside was regularly occupied by a phalanx of them in close columns, where they remained from nine to six, insensible of fatigue, with outstretched necks,

to catch a rumour of what was going on within; and communing in muttered curses with each other, as often as the report was wafted to them, that the prophane hand of the Attorney-General was farther withdrawing the veil which had heretofore enveloped the sublime mysteries of their association. But I feel that I have exceeded the boundaries which I had prescribed to myself, and must postpone to some future letter, the detail of the events which took place subsequent to the trial, and which are now passing before my eyes. The Dublin election the chairing the conflict between the College and the mob -the beef-steak club-the Chancellor and Sir Charles Vernon, will furnish materials for my next communication. It is probable that further subjects will in the interval start up. The dragons' teeth will never cease to spring from this prolific soil-and every hour will add to the abundance of the disastrous harvest. "Alas! poor Country." CRITO.

PEVERIL OF THE PEAK.

THIS is, to our feelings, the least agreeable of all the productions of its author. We risk something in making this frank declaration, for we believe the opinion is contrary, not only to that of the great mass of readers, but to the judgment of some whose praise is fame. It makes unquestionably more pretension to rank as a complete and well-digested whole; it has more semblance of beginning, middle and end, than several of his later romances. But we have never admired the Scottish novelist for any supremacy in those qualities which give attraction to the tales of ordinary writers: his plots have usually been rambling and ill-connected; and with one remarkable exception, the Bride of Lammermuir, his novels have had little consistency, except that of character. He is the very reverse of Richardson, whose most impressive scenes derive their interest from a thousand minute traits elaborately dwelt on, and are realized to us by a routine of preparation, which compels us to believe in the author as we involuntarily put faith in a circumstantial narrative. His best scenes are lighted up by a few masterly touches; a fine, free, glancing pencil; and each of them has an interest of its own, independent of the links by which they are connected. We think of him, not as associated with a certain succession of events, in the midst of which we seemed to live and have our being, but as the author of a crowd of delightful characters: as the great magician, at whose touch the noblest groups have started from the canvass of history and glowed with present feeling; as the fine detecter of the redeeming qualities of our nature, who has not elicited them by the spade of laborious philosophy, but the divining rod of intuitive genius; as the inventor of grand, heart-stirring scenes, which are not thought of as chapters of Waverley, the Antiquary, or Old Mortality, but of the great book of human life. We mention the names of the works, but it is not of them we speak; it is of Nicol Jarvie, of Elspeth, of Meg Merrilies, of Rebecca, of Rob Roy, and of a hundred more that we are ruminating; and when we recur to the fisher's funeral, to the last moments of Fergus M'Iver, to the dying revelations of Elspeth, to the death of the Smuggler in the glen of Derncleugh, or

to the tremendous situation of Henry Morton, bound before the clock, which visibly announces his doom, they have distinct places in our recollection, and an interest which the context can neither increase nor diminish.

In the work before us. the author has given us less matter with more attempt at art. He would make the show of labour pass for the unlaboured exhibition of characteristic, descriptive, pathetic, and imaginative power. Instead of giving us pictures of nature and manners, hints of terrific superstitions, and glimpses into the inmost grandeurs of the soul, he presents us with facts as facts, and tries to weave a long and ingenious puzzle of events, which he solves very indifferently, and which is not worth solving at all. To this we prefer the lightest and least coherent of his sketches. The Monastery, for example, has the least possible momentum as a story; and yet we would rather have The White Lady of Ayenel gleaming delicately in the dubious horizon of literature, than a whole labyrinth of intrigues of the Court of Charles the Second. The" Legend of Montrose" is full of impossibilities, and is entirely without interest as a story; and yet is Captain Dalgetty, or even his horse Gustavus, worth the whole line of the Peverils. "Nigel" is very loosely put together, and no one can care for the result; but its vivid description of the tribe of gallant apprentices; its masterly picture of Duke Hildebrod in his Alsatian state; the deeply tragic scenes in the usurer's dwelling; the beautiful pettishness of Margaret Ramsay, her dimpled chin resting in the hollow of her little hand; and the exquisite feminineness of the frail Dame Christie, are not dependent on the light thread by which they are connected for vitality, but will live till Waverley is forgotten. It is, then, because Peveril is not replete with treasures like these that we regard it as inferior, rather than because the attempt to supply their place by an intricate plot has utterly failed in its execution. Let us, before we glance at the demerits of its story, just run over the list of its principal characters.

The first of these, and intended manifestly to be the most prominent, is Major Bridgnorth, the Presbyterian gentleman of the age of Charles the Second. To say that this picture has not the vigour of Balfour of Burley, or even of the humbler Covenanters, would not be censure; for the enthusiasm of the English Puritans had rarely the military fierceness, and never the traits of wild grandeur which rendered the folly of the Scottish sectaries romantic. But the character is not only comparatively feeble, but inconsistent: it is exhibited in three different aspects without any intermediate gradations; first, it is reasonable, though scrupulous; then it changes, without any assignable cause, to a ferocious bigotry; and at last it degenerates into absolute madness. The Major, too, is perpetually introduced as a mere agent to push on the story, and yet frequently makes long speeches, which seem to have no object but to retard it. Sir Geoffrey Peveril, the stout supporter of church and king, is well imagined, but faintly drawn; and there are no very good fellows (though we might reasonably expect them) among his servants. Lady Derby, who affects to play the queen in the Isle of Man, and shews her decision by ordering a brave man to be shot dead without lawful authority, is to us exceedingly revolting. We can endure Helen Macgregor, in the moment of agony and rage, directing a wretched exciseman to be thrown into the Highland lake; for she