30G Montesquieu Bellew and Lawyer She'll : |^Sept. 



quaintance of the numerous petty politicians that congregate daily 

 in the vestibule of the Law : and being gifted with a capacity for 

 talking, he contrived to possess his auditors with a notion that if he 

 could not talk well himself, he had volubility and audacity enough 

 to prevent any body else from talking at aU. This is a popular quality 

 in Ireland. The man who has what Curran called " the gift of the 

 gab," is sure to become known, if not trusted. In addition to collo- 

 quial facility, Sheil superadds what is also essential to notoriety in Ire- 

 land, — the power of talking nonsense for any given period ; or in other 

 words, the science of mystifying any given subject, while he pretends to 

 argue and explain. Such recommendations as those could not glide 

 unostentatiously through a heated community. He became, not quickly, 

 but after long and almost despairing repetitions of his mystifying elo- 

 quence, a sort of stalking-horse for the scanty wit and adust chit-chat of 

 the little attornies and nominal barristers, and miscellaneous idlers of the 

 Common Pleas and King's Bench. Even the criers laughed when they 

 saw him ; and groups of tip-stafl's laid down their rods and tittered. In 

 the robing-room, where at first he was dogged and speechless, he now 

 became grotesque and comical : but his grin was sardonic. Many and 

 many a bitter joke he uttered as he descended the narrow stairs to the 

 dark, under-ground chamber where the gowns and wigs were depo- 

 sited, and which, on more occasions than one, being visited by an over- 

 flow of the neighbouring river, has floated the serges and bob-tails up 

 to the landing-place, and saved the barristers the trouble of a descent at 

 the expence of a deluge. If we would not be accused of a pun, we 

 might refer to these damp wigs tlie source of that water-on-the-brain 

 giddiness, which he has since so frequently betrayed. 



Dublin is but a village, in as far as professional reputation or personal 

 character are concerned. Farquhar, the funny attorney, was as well 

 known as Sir Boyle Roche. To be the centre of a coterie of drivellers — 

 the hero of tavern riots — the best voice in a catch — the ablest master of 

 slang — or the most potent drinker of whiskey — will ensure that sort of 

 fame which lives just so long as the distinguished fool is blind, or vigor- 

 ous enough to keep up the excitement. Easily earned by those who 

 care nothing for just and rational conduct, this kind of distinction is as 

 rapidly forfeited. Sheil might as well have been the penny tumbler of 

 a fair, as the versatile mummer of his little circle ; but chance having 

 made him a barrister, he shaped his course into the next convenient 

 avenue to which his destiny led him, and was soon the gossip-god of 

 all those who not having ability or nerve to follow O'Connell in public, 

 were needs forced to babble politics in private. All he wanted wtr=; to 

 be known — else how could he thrive in the courts .-' and, like men who 

 are destitute of manly feelings, he pursued his end with utter indif- 

 ference to the means. 



Then came the consideration of the veto — what a significant title for 

 a measure that went to invest the Government with tlie power of doing 

 that which it is the inalienable right of every Government to do. This 

 was the occasion for him to try his wings. He had long, after the 

 manner of the old woman in the fairy tale pursuing the ghost, followed 

 O'Connell, and in vain tried to catch his mantle ; and conceiving that as 

 he made nothing by acquiescence in the views and tlieories of the 

 man who supplanted Keogh, and humbugged Scully, who permitted 

 Magee to expire in Newgate, and Harding Tracey to die of want. 



