evening so far advanced, that the court consented to a temporary adjournment; and before it resumed its sitting, the material witness arrived.

The most successful, if not the most eloquent, effort that Mr. Curran made at the bar was in the defence of Patrick Finney, who was tried for high treason in 1798. It was also the most important, since the fate of fifteen other persons depended The principal witness on this trial was the informer, James O'Brien, whose subsequent crimes rendered him so notorious in Ireland. This fellow had extorted money by assuming the character of a revenue officer, and Mr. Curran, with great skill, contrived to make him develope his own character to the jury, in the course of a very curious crossexamination. But this was not sufficient a witness necessary to prove O'Brien's perjury lived a few miles from Dublin, and in order to afford time for his being brought, it was agreed by Mr. Curran that his colleague, Mr. M'Nally, should commence the prisoner's defence, and continue speaking as long as he could find a syllable to say. This he did with great ability until he was exhausted, and the

SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY.

As a student, Sir Samuel Romilly seems to have had no

his future career. We find him writing despondingly to a friend in 1783: I sometimes lose all courage, and wonder what fond opinion of my talents could ever have induced me to venture on so bold an undertaking; but it often happens (and I fear it has been in my case) that men mistake the desire for the ability of acting some distinguished part.'

It was observed by Mr. Whitbread in the House of Commons, that although posterity, as most advantaged by the efforts of Sir Samuel Romilly to reform the criminal code, would be loudest in their praise of his exertions, yet he was sure that the country was now ready, with one voice, to say

Presenti tibi largimur honores.

Romilly, after attending the courts of criminal law for a period of fifteen years, was no sooner seated in the Legislature, than he devoted his talents and his experience to ameliorating the penal code. This object formed the most distinguished feature of his Parliamentary life, and he persevered in it every

succeeding session with unremitting zeal. If this virtuous senator did not possess the influence sufficient to carry the important measures he contemplated, his eloquence pleaded so powerfully, and excited such a host of advocates in his favour, that in time many of his proposals came to be adopted. The repeal of the 39th of Elizabeth, which constituted it a capital offence punishable with death in soldiers and sailors found to beg in the streets, the erection of a Penitentiary for confining and employing convicts, and the mitigation of punishment in cases of larceny, were all principally the fruits of his enlightened exertions.

·

The persevering industry of Sir Samuel Romilly is thus described by M. Dumont in his Recollections of Mirabeau: 'Romilly, always tranquil and orderly, has an incessant activity. He never loses a minute; he applies his mind to all he is about. Like the hand of a watch, he never stops, although his equal movements in the same way almost escape observation.'

Romilly's melancholy end is well known. The shock of his wife's death proved too much for him. In his agony, he fell into a delirium, and, in a moment when unwatched, sprang from his bed, cut his throat, and expired in a few minutes. This sad event took place in his house in Russell Square, Lon

don, on the 2d of November 1818.

When Lord Eldon next morning took his seat on the bench, and saw the vacant place within the bar, where for years Romilly had pleaded before him, iron man though he was, his eyes filled with tears. 'I cannot stay here!' he exclaimed, and rising in great agitation, broke up his court.

SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. One of the ablest coadjutors of Sir Samuel Romilly in the mitigation of the severity of the penal code is Sir James Mackintosh. After filling the important office of Judge of Bombay for seven years, he could, on taking leave of his office in 1811, thus address the Grand Jury: 'Since my arrival here in May 1804, the punishment of death has not been inflicted by this court. Now, the population subject to our jurisdiction, either locally or personally, cannot be estimated at less than 200,000 persons.' He then entered into a comparative view of the state of crime previous to and during his judgeship, which he proved had diminished considerably during the latter period. The annual average of capital convictions up to the time Sir James Mackintosh became Recorder of Bombay was twenty; the annual average of persons who suffered death, seven. During his judgeship, the average of

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GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER, the father of English poetry, as he has been styled, is one of whose birth and family nothing has been decided. The date of his birth was about the year 1328, and he died in 1400. His fame rests on his Canterbury Tales, written about the close of his career. As to what English poetry owes to Chaucer, Dr. Johnson has pronounced him the first of our versifiers who wrote poetically;' and Mr. Warton has proved that 'in elevation and elegance, in harmony and perspicuity of versification, he surpasses his predecessors in

an infinite proportion that his genius was universal, and adapted to themes of unbounded variety: that his merit was no less in painting familiar manners with humour and propriety, than in moving the passions and in representing the beautiful or the grand objects of nature with grace and sublimity.'

We may say of Chaucer's muse, as Overbury of his milkmaid, 'Her breath is her own, which scents all the year long of June like a new-made haycock.' Chaucer was the first great poet, too, who has treated to-day as if it were as good as yesterday, the first who held up a mirror to contemporary life in

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its infinite variety of high and low, of humour and pathos.

'In spite of some external stains,' says Mr. James R. Lowell, 'which those who have studied the influence of manners will easily account for without imputing them to any moral depravity, we feel we can join the pure-minded Spenser in calling him "most sacred, happy spirit." If character may be divined from works, he was a good man, genial, sincere, hearty, temperate of mind, more wise, perhaps, for this world than the next, but thoroughly humane, and friendly with God and men. I know not how to sum up what we feel about him better than by saying (what would have pleased most one who was indifferent to fame) that we love him more than we admire. We are sure that here was a true brother man, so kindly, that in his House of Fame, after naming the great poets, he throws in a pleasant word for the oatenpipes:

"Of the little herd-grooms That keepen beasts among the brooms."

No better inscription could be written on the first half of his works than that which he places over the gate in his Assembly of Fowls, and which contrasts so sweetly with the stern lines of Dante from which they are imi

tated:

song

O'er all the mazes of enchanted ground.'

His greatest work, as every one knows, was The Faerie Queene. The first three books of this immortal production were published in 1590, and they were very favourably received. In 1595 the second part of The Faerie Queene, containing three more books, appeared. The poet intended to complete the work in twelve books, and it is said that the last six were lost on his way from Ireland to England.

No poet that ever lived had a more exquisite sense of the beautiful than Spenser. Of profounder passion many poets have been blest or cursed with the power. His words were indeed 'thoughts that breathe,' but not 'words that burn.' His words have a lambent light; reading him is like gazing on the starry skies, or on the skies without a star-except perhaps one-the evening star-and all the rest of the heavens in still possession of the moon.

When Spenser had finished

L