At the bar, his career had been one of unexampled rapidity. He had scarcely appeared, when he burst through the crowd, and took the stand to which all the dignities of the profession seem the natural inheritance. He had scarcely set his foot on the floor, before he overtopped the bench. But the courts of justice were too narrow for him. It was in Parliament that he found the true atmosphere for his loftiness of flight, and keenness of vision. At that time the study of public speaking had become a fashion, and the genius of the country, singularly excitable, always ardent, and always making its noblest efforts under the spell of public display, exhibited the most brilliant proofs of its title to popularity. But in the very blaze of those triumphs, the Attorney-general showed that there were other weapons of public warfare, not less original and not less triumphant. No orator, and even no rhetorician, he seemed to despise alike the lustre of imagination and the graces of language. But he substituted a force, that often obtained the victory over both. Abrupt, bold, and scornful, his words struck home. He had all the power of plain things. He brought down no lightning from the heaven of invention, he summoned no flame from below; but the torch in his hand burned with withering power, and he wielded it without fear of man. By constitution haughty, his pride actually gave him power in debate. Men, and those able men too, often shrank from the conflict with one whose very look seemed to warn them of their temerity. But to this natural faculty of overthrow he added remarkable knowledge of public life, high legal repute, and the incomparable advantage of his early training in a profession which opens out the recesses of the soul, habitually forces imposture into light, and cross-examines the villain into reluctant veracity. There never was in Parliament a more remorseless or more effectual hand, in stripping off the tinsel of political pretension. His logic was contemptuous, and his contempt was logical. His blows were all straightforward. He wasted no time in the flourish of the sword; he struck with the point. Even to the most powerful of his opponents this assault was formidable. But with the inferior ranks of Opposition, he threw aside the sword and assumed the axe. Obviously regarding them as criminals against common sense and national polity, he treated them as the executioner might treat culprits already bound to the wheel, measuring the place for his blows with the professional eye, and crushing limb after limb at his leisure. The imperfect reports of debating in his day, have deprived parliamentary recollection of the most memorable of those great displays. But their evidence is given in the fact, that with the most numerous, powerful, and able Opposition of Ireland in his front, and the feeblest Ministerial strength behind him, the Attorney-general governed the parliament until