This was the glorious period of Grattan's public life. His task, by universal confession, was the noblest that could be enjoined on man, and he sustained it with powers fitted to its nobleness. On the later portion of his history I have no desire to touch. The most hazardous temptation of early eminence is the fondness which it generates for perpetual publicity. The almost preternatural trial of human fortitude is, to see faction with its vulgar and easy triumph seizing the fame, which was once to be won only by the purest and rarest achievements of patriotism. When the banner which had flamed at the head of the nation on their march to Right, and which was consigned to the hand of Grattan as its legitimate bearer, was raised again, in a day threatening the subversion of every throne of Europe; he exhibited a jealousy of his obscure competitors, unworthy of his renown. But he did not join in their procession. He was unstained. If he felt the avarice of ambition, he exhibited no decay of that original dignity of nature, which, in his political nonage, had made him the leader of bearded men, and a model to the maturity of his country's virtue. On this night he spoke with remarkable power, but in a style wholly distinct from his former appeals to the passions of the House. His accents, usually sharp and high, were now lingering and low; his fiery phraseology was solemn and touching, and even his gesture, habitually wild, distorted, and pantomimical, was subdued and simple. He seemed to labour under an unavowed impression of the share which the declamatory zeal of his party had to lay to its charge in the national peril. But I never saw more expressive evidence of his genius, than on this night of universal consternation. His language, ominous and sorrowful, had the force of an oracle, and was listened to like an oracle. No eye or ear strayed from him for a moment, while he wandered dejectedly among the leading events of the time, throwing a brief and gloomy light over each in passing, as if he carried a funeral lamp in his hand, and was straying among tombs. This was to me a wholly new aspect of his extraordinary faculties. I had regarded rapidity, brilliancy, and boldness of thought, as his inseparable attributes; but his speech was now a magnificent elegy. I had seen him, when he furnished my mind almost with the image of some of those men of might and mystery, sent to denounce the guilt, and heap coals of fire on the heads of nations. He now gave me the image of the prophet, lamenting over the desolation which he had once proclaimed, and deprecating less the crimes than the calamities of the land of his nativity. I never was more struck with the richness and variety of his conceptions, but their sadness was sublime. Again, I desire to guard against the supposition, that I implicitly did homage to either his talents or his political views. From the latter, I often and deeply