common friend told me he was commissioned by the Master of the Rolls to invite me to dinner that day at the Priory, a little country villa about four miles from Dublin. Those who recollect their first introduction to a really great man, may easily comprehend my delight and my consternation. Hour after hour was counted as it passed, and like a timid bride I feared the one which was to make me happy. It came at last, the important five o'clock, the ne plus ultra of the guest who would not go dinnerless at Curran's. Never shall I forget my sensations when I caught the first glimpse of the little man through the vista of his avenue. There he was, as a thousand times afterwards I saw him, in a dress which you would imagine he had borrowed from his tip-staff-his hands in his sides-his face almost parallel with the horizon-his under lip protruded, and the impatient step and the eternal attitude only varied by the pause during which his eye glanced from his guest to his watch, and from his watch reproachfully to his dining-room-it was an invincible peculiarity-one second after five o'clock, and he would not wait for the Viceroy. The moment he perceived me, he took me by the hand, said he would not have any one introduce me, and with a manner which I often thought was charmed,

at once banished every apprehension, and completely familiarized me at the Priory. I had often seen Curran-often heard of him-often read him-but no man ever knew any thing about him who did not see him at his own table with the few whom he selected. He was a little convivial deity! he soared in every region, and was at home in all he touched every thing, and seemed as if he had created it--he mastered the human heart with the same ease that he did his violin. You wept, and you laughed, and you wondered, and the wonderful creature who made you do all at will, never let it appear that he was more than your equal, and was quite willing, if you chose, to become your auditor. It is said of Swift that his rule was to allow a minute's pause after he had concluded, and then, if no person took up the conversation, to recommence himself. Curran had no conversational rule whatever; he spoke from impulse, and he had the art so to draw you into a participation, that, though you felt an inferiority, it was quite a contented one. Indeed nothing could exceed the urbanity of his demeanour. At the time I spoke of, he was turned of sixty, yet he was as playful as a child. The extremes of youth and age were met in him; he had the experience of the one and the simplicity

of the other. At five o'clock we sat down to dinner, at three in the morning we arose from table and certainly half the wish of the enthusiastic lover was at least conceded-" Time"-during that interval, was “annihilated." From that day till the day of his death I was his intimate and his associate. He had no party to which I was not invited; and party or no party, I was always welcome. He even went so far as to ask me to become his inmate, and offered me apartments in his town residence. Often and often he ran over his life to me to the minutest anecdote-described his prospects-his disappointments and his successes-characterized at once his friends and his enemies; and in the communicative candour of a six year's intercourse repeated the most secret occurrences of his history. Such is the claim, which I have, to be his biographer. I have said I do not mean to be a laborious, but I hope to be a faithful one, withholding what was confidential, sketching whatever appeared to be characteristic, writing solely from his own authority, and, as far as that goes, determined to be authentic.

He was born in the little village of Newmarket, in the county of Cork, a place quite as obscure as his own parentage. His father, James Curran

Seneschal of the Manor, was possessed, besides the paltry revenue of the office, of a very moderate income. Strange as it may seem, their paternal ancestor came over to Ireland one of Cromwell's soldiers, and the most ardent patriot she ever saw owed his origin to her most merciless and cruel plunderer! Old James Curran's education was pretty much in the ratio of his income. Very different, however, in point of intellectual endowments, was the mother of my friend, whose maiden name, Philpot, he bore himself and preserved in his family. From his account she must have been a very extraordinary woman. Humble in her station, she was of course uneducated; but nature amply compensated her for any fortuitous deficiencies in that respect. Witty and eloquent, she was the delight of her own circle, and the great chronicle and arbitress of her neighbourhood. Her legends were the traditions of the "olden time," told with a burning tongue, and echoed by the heart of many a village Hampden. Her wit was the record of the rustic fireside; and the village lyric and the village jest received their alternate tinge from the truly national romance or humour of her character. Little Jacky, as he was then called, used to hang with ecstacy upon her accents; he repeated her tales-he re

echoed her jest he caught her enthusiasm; and often afterwards, when he was the delight of the senate and the ornament of the bar, did he boast with tears that any merit he had, he owed to the tuition of that affectionate and gifted mother. Indeed, there cannot be the least doubt that the character of the man is often moulded from the accidental impression of the childhood; and he must have been but an inaccurate observer who did not trace all the maternal features in the filial piety that delighted to portray them. After her death he placed an humble monument over her remains, upon which he inscribed the following memorial, as well as I can recollect, from his very frequent recital:

"Here lieth all that was mortal of MARTHA CURRAN a woman of many virtues-few foibles-great talents and no vice. This tablet was inscribed to her memory by a son who loved her and whom she loved."

Indeed, his recurrences to her memory were continual. He often told me that, after his success at the bar, which happily she lived to see, and the fruits of which to her death she shared, Mrs. Curran has said to him, “O Jacky, Jacky, what a preacher was lost in you!" The observation

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