312 house of their own, in Kevin street. Mr. Curran was installed grand prior of the order, and deputed to compose the charter-song. If ever there was a social board, whereat the votaries of wit, taste, and festivity might enjoy with delight " the feast of reason and the flow of soul;" it was in this convent of accomplished monks. This society continued for several years; and after its dissolution, the small statue of their patron saint was removed to Mr. Cur- CURRAN. ran's seat, called the Priory, near Dublin, and placed on the sideboard in his dining room. Of all the friends with whom Mr. Curran maintained the strictest intimacy, and who treated him with an almost parental esteem, was Barry Yelverton, whose talents had raised him to the dignity of the peerage, as Lord Avonmore. They were educated at the same school, and were fellow- students, though Yelvertoni was by some years the older This nobleman was said to make his first bound in life from a whimsical incident. While a sizar at Trinity College, he employed his vacations as an assistant-tutor at the classical school of the Reverend Doctor Buck, in North King street, and was treated as one of the family, and was a practical economist, and dictated an arrangement, by which the tutors were cashiered of their toast and tea breakfast, and placed on a morning establishment of bread and milk with the boys of the school. But Yelverton, who possessed as much as most men of the milk of human kindness, could not bear this humiliating change; he immediately quitted the school, redoubled bis diligence at college, pushed his way for the bar, where his talents soon enabled him to outstrip his competitors, and to establish his fame in public as a lawyer, an orator, and a statesman; and in private as a scholar, a poet, and a wit of the first water. His simplicity rendered bim the constant butt of Curran's playful wit; but his good-nature always forgave the prank for the sake of the joke. He had long presided as chief baron of his majesty's exchequer court. About the period of the Union he received his patent of peerage, by
