which dies in the brutes with the necessities of nature, but which reflects back again upon the human parents the unspeakable sympathies of their offspring, and all the sweet delightful relations of social existence.

"While the curtains, therefore, are yet closing upon this bridal scene, your imaginations will naturally represent to you this charming woman endeavouring to conceal sensations which modesty forbids the sex, however enamoured, too openly to reveal; wishing, beyond adequate expression, what she must not even attempt to express, and seemingly resisting what she burns to enjoy.

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Alas! gentlemen, you must now prepare to see, in the room of this, a scene of horror and of sorrow! You must prepare to see a noble lady, whose birth surely required no further illustration; who had been courted to marriage before she ever heard her husband's name; and whose affections were irretrievably bestowed upon and pledged to my honourable and unfortunate client.

"You must behold her given up to the plaintiff by the infatuation of parents, and stretched upon this bridal bed as upon a rack,-torn from the arms of a beloved and impassioned youth, himself of noble birth, only to secure the honours of a higher title, a legal victim on the altar of heraldry!"

Farther on in the same great speech Erskine introduced a fine appeal to the aristocracy of England to fulfil the high duties of their station and their privileges. And as a son of the tenth Earl of Buchan he was entitled to exhort the nobility to which he belonged to act as beseemed them.

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'I may spare a moment to render this cause beneficial to the public.

"It involves in it an awful lesson; and more instructive lessons are taught in courts of justice than the Church is able to inculcate.

Morals come in cold abstract from the pulpit; but men smart under them practically when we lawyers are the preachers.

Let the aristocracy of England, which trembles so much for itself, take heed to its own security; let the

nobles of England, if they mean to preserve that preeminence which, in some shape or other, must exist in every social community, take care to support it by aiming at that which is creative, and alone creative, of real superiority. Instead of matching themselves to supply wealth, to be again idly squandered in debauching excesses, or to round the quarters of a family shield; instead of continuing their names and honours in cold and alienated embraces, amidst the enervating rounds of shallow dissipation, let them live as their fathers of old lived before them; let them marry as affection and prudence lead the way, and, in the ardours of mutual love, and in the simplicities of rural life, let them lay the foundation of a vigorous race of men, firm in their bodies, and moral from early habits; and, instead of wasting their fortunes and their strength in the tasteless circles of debauchery, let them light up their magnificent and hospital halls to the gentry and peasantry of the country, extending the consolations of wealth and influence to the poor. Let them but do this,-and instead of those dangerous and distracted divisions between the different ranks of life, and those jealousies of the multitude so often blindly painted as big with destruction, we should see our country as one large and harmonious family, which can never be accomplished amidst vice and corruption, by wars and treaties, by informations, ex officio for libels, or by any of the tricks and artifices of the State."

A century has passed since Erskine spoke these noble words. The ancient families of England, stricken and decimated by the Great War, impoverished by confiscatory taxation, execrated by windy demagogues, and with their "magnificent and hospital halls" forlornly closed and deserted, are no longer the fit recipients of such hortations, but rather should receive the sympathy of all their countrymen for the silent and uncomplaining dignity with which they endure the devastating strokes of relentless ruin.

CHAPTER XXXVII

LORD PLUNKET

WILLIAM CONYINGHAM, Lord Plunket, had a reputation for eloquence that was said on occasion to rise to majesty.

As a young man in his thirties, he strenuously opposed the Union in the Irish House of Commons, and was fierce in his enmity to England.

Nevertheless he accepted the task of conducting the prosecution of Robert Emmett, to whom I have already alluded, in which he was fatefully successful.

Twenty years later, in 1823, when he had become the Attorney-General in Ireland, he was prosecuting the leaders of a riot, and, apparently without premeditation, he paused in his speech to make a wonderful parenthesis upon the character of William the Third, which tradition has marked as having left an indelible impression on all who heard it, coming suddenly upon them with startling magnificence:

"Perhaps, my lords, there is not to be found in the annals of history a character more truly great than that of William the Third. Perhaps no person has ever appeared on the theatre of the world who has conferred more essential or more lasting benefits on mankind; on these countries, certainly none. When I look at the abstract merits of his character, I contemplate him with admiration and reverence. Lord of a petty principality-destitute of all resources but those with which nature had endowed himregarded with jealousy and envy by those whose battles he fought; thwarted in all his counsels; embarrassed in all his movements; deserted in his most critical enterprises

-he continued to mould all those discordant materials, to govern all these warring interests, and merely by the force of his genius, the ascendancy of his integrity, and the immovable firmness and constancy of his nature, to combine them into an indissoluble alliance against the schemes of despotism and universal domination of the most powerful monarch in Europe, seconded by the ablest generals, at the head of the bravest and best disciplined armies in the world, and wielding, without check or control, the unlimited resources of his empire. He was not a consummate general; military men will point out his errors; in that respect Fortune did not favour him, save by throwing the lustre of adversity over all his virtues. He sustained defeat after defeat, but always rose adversa rerum immersabilis unda. Looking merely at his shining qualities and achievements, I admire him as I do a Scipio, a Regulus, a Fabius; a model of tranquil courage, undeviating probity, and armed with a resoluteness and constancy in the cause of truth and freedom, which rendered him superior to the accidents that control the fate of ordinary men.

"But this is not all-I feel that to him, under God, I am, at this moment, indebted for the enjoyment of the rights which I possess as a subject of these free countries; to him I owe the blessings of civil and religious liberty, and I venerate his memory with a fervour of devotion suited to his illustrious qualities and to his godlike acts.'

No doubt William III. had many great qualities, inherited from that wonderful Prince William the Silent, but nothing can purge him from his undoubted sanction of the sickening treachery of the massacre of Glencoe, to which he was privy, at the instigation of the Master of Stair.

But thrice fortunate is the man in whose service the irresistible powers of human eloquence are engaged. When the time, the place, and the opportunity conjoin eloquence can achieve great marvels.

A clergyman named Henry Melvill has said of it :

"The innocent hail it as the vindicator of its violated rights, and the preserver of its sacred reputation.

"How often in the Courts of Justice does the accused behold his arms unshackled, his character freed from suspicion, and his future left open before him with all its hopes of honours, station, and dignity!

And how often in the halls of legislation, does eloquence unmask corruption, expose intrigue, and overthrow tyranny!

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In the cause of mercy it is omnipotent, it is bold in the consciousness of its superiority. Fearless and unyielding in the purity of its motives. All opposition it destroys; all power it defies."

And, indeed, in the history of mankind it is remarkable how often eloquence is ranged on the side of right, and how seldom, if ever, on the side of wrong.