356 CURRAN. ever. This, even for years, unfitted him for his profes sional pursuits; and though he struggled in the bustle of forensic exertions, to banish from recollection the cause of his unhappiness; and, on his retreat from the rolls bench, sought, by his absence from the scenes of his fame and the country of his heart, to dissipate his chagrin by varied society, and travels in England and France; still the wound was beyond remedy, and rankled in his feelings to the hour of his dissolution, which took place at his lodgings, No. 7, Amelia Place, Brompton, on the 13th of October, 1817, in the sixty-fifth year of his age. For a short time before his death, his social intercourse was confined to a very few intimate acquaintance. It was imagined that his will, which was in Ireland, might con- tain some directions as to his interment, and his funeral was deferred until that was examined. It was, however, sileut upon the subject, and his remains were conveyed, with all possible privacy, to their last depository, in Paddington church-yard, attended by a few of his most intimate friends. We intehded here to have closed the memoir of Curran, but the following eloquent character, from the pen of the Rev. George Croly, elicited our admiration so strongly that we could not resist the temptation of inserting it:- " From the period at which Mr. Curran emerged from the first struggles of an unfriended man, labouring up a jealous profession, his history makes a part of the annals of bis country; once upon the surface, his light was always before the eye, it never sank, and was never out- shone. With great powers to lift himself beyond the reach of that tumultuous and stormy agitation that must involve the movers of the public mind in a country such as Ireland then was, he loved to cling to the heavings of the wave; he at least never rose to that tranquil elevation to which his early cotemporaries had, one by one, climbed; and never left the struggle till the storm had gone down, it is to be hoped, for ever. This was his destiny, but it was his choice, and he was not without the reward which, to an ambitious mind, conscious of eminent powers, might
