The Hall of Four Courts. in exchange for the promise of his support to the scheme of union. But Bushe was one of the few men at that time worth buy ing who were not to be bought. He declined the bribe, and it was not until 1805 that he became Solicitor-General. In 1822 he was made Chief-Justice, his predecessor having at last shown himself possessed of the only Christian virtue which, according to Hushe, he lacked, — that of resignation. He held this post for twenty years, and died in the year following his re tirement. His, above all other specimens of Irish forensic oratory, are worth reading. The wit is pure, caus tic, and refined; the imagery powerful and neverextravagant; the pathos deep, and the narration clear and distinct. Nor must Richard Lalor Sheil be omitted from the group. Born in 1791, the son of a prosperous but specu lative merchant, Sheil was educated mainly • at the English Jesuit HARÓN College at Stonyhurst. Here, doubtless, he imbibed the opinions which made him after wards famous as the exponent of the Catholic claims. He returned to Ireland in 1807, and entered Trinity College, where, like Curran, he devoted himself to classical reading to the neglect of every other study. He joined the Irish Bar in 1814, and, since his father's speculations had gone amiss, took to the writing of plays to ease his briefless years. Opportunely he conceived a plátonic affec tion for Miss O'Neill (Ireland's greatest Juliet), and under this influence wrote several fairly successful tragedies, in most of which 59
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Miss O'Neill played the heroine. In 1816 he married Miss O'Halloran, niece of the Master of the Rolls, — a match looked on as another prudent attachment, although the connection seems to have brought him little profit. Again he turned to play-writing, and pro duced three more tragedies. Thence he wandered into literature, using his knowledge of things legal and his dramatic insight in some admirable "Sketches of the Irish Bar." All this time he had been steadily gaining a practice; and when the Catholic Associa tion was started, it found in its leaders, Sheil and O'Connell, two of the leaders of the Bar. Sheil filled the gaps in O'Connell's oratory. "The Kerryman " inflamed the gallery, Sheil inspired the stalls, and the two set Ireland in a blaze. He was never a very great lawyer, but he was at the last a wellfeed advocate, and in DOWSE. knowledge of practice was supreme. In 1830 he received his silk gown, and in the next year took his seat in the House of Commons. Christopher North's description of him at this time is (as were all North's descriptions) a perfect pen-picture: — "He's another of your little fellows, — a more insignificant person as to the bodily organ I never set spectacles on. Small of the smallest in stature, shabby of the shab biest in attire, . . . and his voice is as hoarse as a deal board, except when it is piercing as the rasp of a gimlet. But Nature has given him as fine a pair of eyes as ever graced
