said, " when Richard Kirwan first returned from abroad to Cregg 

 Castle, seeing him walk of a Sunday to the mass-house on the road 

 side, in a rich suit of embroidered clothes; his chajjeau-bras under 

 his arm, and picking his steps along the dirty road, with brilliant 

 stone buckles in his shoes. He was a tall, elegant, comely young 

 man then, and spoke good Irish, though somewhat too fond of in- 

 terlarding his discourse with foreign phrases. He was then called 

 in Irish, a ' chi shim,' or a person of remarkable appearance." 



Several portraits of him are in existence; one of them, painted 

 by Comerford, is deemed a striking likeness; it is in possession 

 of his grand-daughter, Mrs. Hurley, in the county of Kerry, and is 

 considered by his friends a more accurate resemblance than one 

 painted by Hamilton, which is in the board-room of the Dublin 

 Society. From my own recollection, I may venture to say that the 

 portrait belonging to the Eoyal Irish Academy is an excellent like- 

 ness; so also is the bust in the Dublin Library; and a small en- 

 graving, circulated several years since, conveys a very good idea of 

 him. There is also an engraving in the Philosophical Magazine,* 

 but it scarcely resembles him. 



1 have now detailed tlie more important particulars of the life 

 of this great and excellent man, and have endeavoured to sketch 

 his character, with all its perfections and peculiarities. In exe- 

 cuting the latter portion of my task, I have availed myself of several 

 anecdotes which to some might appear trifling, but which I viewed 

 otherwise, believing that in the trivialities of domestic life, we can 

 often discover the character of the person concerned better than in 

 matters of greater consequence. In important affairs, men are on 

 their guard ; conscious that they are under the observation of the 

 world, they act conformably to what they conceive society would 

 expect from them; their natural impulses are accordingly masked, 

 and a great action is sometimes no more than a display calculated 

 to disguise the workings of a mind which, without such artificial 

 inducement, would have comported itself in such a manner as rather 

 to call forth censure than applause. But in the small affairs of life, 

 when there is no particular motive to influence conduct, the unso- 



Vol. .xiii. Old Series. 



