1827.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



79 



ment, made virulent philippics, in the House of 

 Commons, against the French Revolution. Hi8 

 figure was coarse and bloated, and his dress not 

 over-elegant witha)!,' &c. One evening this man 

 fell foul of a speech of Grattan's, and amongst 

 other absurdities, said in his paroxysm, that the 

 right honourable gentleman's speech had a ten- 

 dency to introduce the guillotine into the very body 

 of the house: indeed he almost thought lie could 

 already perceive it before him, (Hear him, hear 

 him! echoed Sir Boyle Roche). Grattan good- 

 humouredly replied, ' that the honourable member 

 must have a sharper sight than he had. He cer- 

 tainly could see no such thing ; but though, added 

 Grattan, looking with his glass towards Egan, I 

 may not see the guillotine, yet methiuks I can per- 

 ceive the executioner.' 



This Sir Boyle Roche Egan's sup- 

 porter was eminently the butt and bull 

 maker of the House. His bulls are, how- 

 ever pretty well known such as the one 

 he made, when some one said the house 

 had no right to load posterity with a 

 debt. * What, said he, and so we are to 

 beggar ourselves for fear of vexing pos- 

 terity. Now I would ask the honourable 

 gentleman, and this still more honourable 

 House, why we should put ourselves out 

 of our way to do any thing for posterity ; 

 for what has posterity done for us ?' Sir 

 Boyle was puzzled by the roar of laughter 

 which followed, and supposing the House 

 had misunderstood him, he assured them, 

 that by posterity, he did not at all mean 

 our ancestors, but those who were to come 

 immediately after them.' On another oc- 

 casion a bill for the Suspension of the 

 Habeas Corpus, we believe ' it would 

 surely be better, Mr. Speaker, to give up 

 not only apart, but, if necessary, even 

 the whole, of our constitution, to preserve 

 the remainder.'' 



Another, of a somewhat different cha- 

 racter quite new to us was made on the 

 petition of Dennis M'Carthy, who had 

 been Lord Lisle's postillion, and had been 

 cast in an action of damages for crim. con. 

 with his lady. Not being able to pay the 

 excessive amount (5,000) he lay in pri- 

 son many years. And what, Mr, Speaker, 

 said Sir Boyle, in presenting the petition, 

 was this poor servant's crime ? After all, 

 sure, Mr Speaker, it was only doing his 

 master's business by his mistresses orders ; 

 and is it not very hard to keep a poor ser- 

 vant in gaol for that which if he had not 

 done he would have deserved a horse- 

 whipping?' This way of putting the case 

 had the desired effect the fellow was 

 released. 



Sir Jonah professes over and over again 

 to be very superstitious by which he 

 means, that he believes in the reality of 

 ghosts , several stories are told, Irish like, 

 some to invalidate and some to establish. 

 One, a very laughable one, was the ap- 

 pearance to one David Lander, of a man, 



whom the said David knew to have been 

 hanged. Being greatly alarmed, and 

 thinking there was no better protection 

 than a prayer he endeavoured to recol- 

 lect; but being unable to recal one, he 

 started with the catechism question and 

 answer What is your name? David. Who 

 gave you that name ? My godfathers, &c. 

 &c. 



Sir Jonah, however, and his lady, and 

 his lady's maid all three of them, heard 

 a most unearthly voice, in the dead of the 

 night, under their window, cry Rossmore ! 

 Rossmore! Rossmore! and the first thing 

 they learnt in the morning was Lord Ross- 

 more's death, who had died at half past 

 two, precisely the time he, his lady, arid 

 his lady's maid, heard the dread sound of 

 Rossmore! Rosmore! Rossmore! 



Vestigia Anylicana, or Illustrations of 

 the more interesting and debatable Points 

 of the History and Antiquities of Eng- 

 land, from the earliest Age to the Ac- 

 eession of the House of Tudor, by Stephen 

 Reynolds Clarke, 2 vols. Sro.; 1826. 

 Multitudes of bulky histories of our own 

 country as we have, scarcely any one but 

 Hume's is now ever glanced at, nor has- 

 been for the last half century. The con- 

 sequence is a pretty general unacquaint- 

 ed ness with whatever is not to be found 

 in his elegant volumes; and of the earlier 

 periods those volumes confessedly present 

 a mere outline vigorous and effective no 

 doubt, and adequate perhaps to the com- 

 mon purposes of the general reader, but 

 productive of very little satisfaction to the 

 more minute inquirer. The object of Mr. 

 Clarke, then, is in some measure to fi^l 

 up this outline to furnish a supplemen- 

 tary volume or two, embracing the more 

 important omissions of the national his- 

 torian up to the accession of Henry VII. ; 

 and to this undertaking he has brought 

 considerable industry, and some judg- 

 ment. He professes to have gone, on all 

 occasions, to the original sources of facts, 

 and certainly characterises the several 

 authorities with a discrimination and pro- 

 priety, that shews some familiarity with 

 them , but for any fresh information which 

 his researches have discovered, he might 

 almost as well have spared his labour. 

 We assure him nothing new will strike 

 the reader, who has any acquaintance with 

 Mortimer, orTurner,or Henry, or the com- 

 mon "Chronicles." The general credu- 

 lity of the authorities to which he appeals 

 required the exercise not merely of sound 

 judgment, but of severe criticism ; and 

 had they been thus dealt with, we should 

 surely never have heard again of Boadi- 

 cea's killing 70,000 Romans, nor of the 

 Romans retaliating by the slaughter of 

 80,000 Britons ; nor of Alfred's hanging 

 up gold bracelets in the highway, secure 



