successive changes of ill fortune; and as no one passion is permitted to continue very long, they mingle and vary like shades of light and darkness playing upon the surface of a sullen stream: or, like those blazes intermittingly shot forth by the Persian fire-flies * on the Meinham tree, which glittering in their confusion, shed their most beautiful lights in regular irregularity,

At one of those national carnivals, where the common excitements of snuff, tobacco, and whiskey, and the fruits of plundered orchards, are abundantly supplied, Mr. Curran felt the first dawn, the new-born light, and favourite transport which almost instantly seized upon his imagination, and determined his mind to the cultivation and pursuit of oratory. It was produced by the speech of a tall, finely shaped woman, with long black hair flowing loosely down her shoulders; her stature and eye commanding; her air and manner austere and majestic. On such occasions nothing is prepared; all arises out of the emotion excited by the surrounding circumstances and objects; and if the Corinne has been highly celebrated by Madame De Stael, this woman has found in Mr. Curran an eulogist not surpassed even by the enthusiastic and rapturous descriptions of the French novelist, by a re

!

*See Note A. at the end of the volume.

corder not less national, certainly not less touching.

Some of the kindred of the deceased had made funeral orations on his merits: they measured their eulogies by his bounties; he was wealthy; his last will had distributed among his relations his fortune and effects; but to this woman, who married without his consent, to her, his favourite niece, a widow, and with many children, he carried his resentment to the grave, and left her poor and totally unprovided for. She sat long in silence, and at length, slowly, and with a measured pace, approaching the dead body from a distant quarter of the room, with the serenest calm of meditation, laying her hand on his forehead, she paused; and whilst all present expected a passionate and stormy expression of her anger and disappointment, she addressed these few words to him: "Those of my kindred who have uttered praises, and poured them forth with their tears to the memory of the deceased, did that, which by force of obligation they were bound to do. They have been benefited; they have, in their different degrees, profited by that bounty which he could no longer withhold. He forgot in his life the exercise of that generosity by which his memory might now be held regarded and embalmed in the hearts of a disinterested affection. Such consolation, however, as these purchased praises could

impart to his spirit, I would not, by any impiety, tear from him. Cold in death is this head, not colder than that heart when living, through which no thrill of nature' did ever vibrate. This has 'thrown the errors of my youth, and of an impulse too obedient to that affection which I still cherish, into poverty and sorrow, heightened beyond hope by the loss of him who is now in Heaven, and still more by the tender pledges he has left after him on earth. But I shall not add to these reflections the bitter remorse of inflicting even a merited calumny; and because my blood coursed through his veins, I shall not have his memory scored or tortured by the expression of my disappointment, or of the desolation which sweeps through my heart. It therefore best becomes me to say, his faith and honour in the other relations of life were just and exact; and that these may have imposed a severity on his principles and manners. The tears which now swell my eyes are those I cannot check; but they rise like bubbles on the mountain-stream, they burst never more to appear*"

By accidentally meeting a treatise on painting, the mind of Sir Joshua Reynolds was, in like manner, determined to that beautiful art, of which

*The speech of Logan, in Morse's Geography of America, has touches equally striking.

he afterwards became the boast, the honour, and the brightest ornament. To that occasion we owe the great master of the British school; and the latter strange incident fixed the resolution of Mr. Curran to the study of eloquence. He had but to give that direction to the material which he found in his own nature; all the elements were there, and the best combinations were easily formed by the union of capacity and of desire.

It was not among the rhetoricians he formed himself, though they founded a great society in the best times of the Greek republics, and persuaded Athens to appoint them generals and ambassadors, and to confide to them the management of state affairs, under the fatal error, that because they could speak well, they could act well, and advise with discretion. Though this false and hypocritical set of jugglers ran a long race of success, yet, like every thing deceitful, they were detected; they were exposed by one of their own sophisms, which is worth retaining for its ridicule*.

* Epimenides was a Cretan; Epimenides said that all the Cretans were liars; Epimenides being a Cretan, all the Cretans could not be liars: therefore Epimenides was a liar: therefore all the Cretans could not be liars, et sic de cæteris.

Nor was it in those debating societies, which seem to be modelled from the early sophists, that he fed the lamp of his youthful mind. He found within himself the happy power of giving shapes and exquisite forms to the beings of his own creation. Whether passing from images of terror to the soft and tender touches of pathos; whether he sported in the laugh of comedy, or in the broad grin of farce, he was equally successful in all. If he would hurl the bolt of a Jupiter, shake thrones, and appal tyrants, you might conceive it was the work of Homer! Would he move to pity, you had all the effect of Virgil; and would he excite to mirth or laughter, you might have fancied yourself conversing with a Congreve. Such was his excellence in each of these departments, that he may have placed himself nearly at the head of each; yet, though he rejected with fastidiousness to form himself either on the plans of the sophists, or of those societies which prefer words to ideas, talking to thinking, he furnished his mind from the great stores of antiquity, and enriched it with much of the best and purest modern literature. By both he chastened the wanderings of his own luxuriant imagination, and regulated the branches without injuring the tree; the sap was directed to feed the trunk, not to waste its aliment in idle foliage, or in gaudy flowers.