CURRAN. 305 under the weight of obligations. They have been benefited, they have in their different degrees partaken that bounty which he could no longer withhold. During his life, he for- got to exercise that generosity by which his memory might now be embalmed in the hearts of disinterested affection. Such consolation, however, as these purchased praises could inpart to his spirit, I would not, by any impiety tear from him. Cold in death is this head, but not colder than that heart, when living, through which no thrill of nature did ever vibrate. This has thrown the errors of my youth, and of an impulse too obedient to that affection which I still cherisb, into poverty and sorrow, heightened beyond hope by the loss of him who is now in heaven, and still more by the tender pledges he has left after him on earth. But I sball not add to these reflections the bitter remorse of inflicting even a merited calumny; and because my blood coursed through his veins, I shall not have bis memory scored or tortured by the expression of my disap- pointment, or of the desolation which now sweeps through my heart. It therefore best becomes me to say, that his faith and honour, in the other relations of life, were just and exact, and that these may have imposed a severity on his principles and manners. The tears whichi now swell my eyes, I cannot check, but they rise like bubbles in the mountain stream, and burst, to appear no more." Such was the pathetic oration from which Mr. Curran ac- knowledged to have caught the early flame of his eloquence and no where does the pabulum of natural eloquence more abound, than in the very region of his birth and education. Commerce or refinement had not yet polished away the feelings of the heart, and every passion of the soul held undiminished vigour in the popular mind: the barbarous only, because obsolete language of their Celtic ancestors (the most copious on earth, if the learned Colonel VAL- LANCEY deserves credit) had not yet vanished. Those who relish the language of Ossian, can form some judg- ment of the style and idiom common in the dialeet of the Munster peasantry. VOL.I.
