His mother had designed him for the church. When he came out of college, his tastes took another turn. But his mother never got over her disappointment at his not being a preacher. Not even his brilliant reputation at the bar and in parliament, could satisfy her maternal heart. She lived to see the nation hanging on the lips of this almost inspired orator. Yet even then she would lament over him, "O Jacky, Jacky, what a preacher was lost in you!" Her friends reminded her that she had lived to see her son one of the judges of the land. "Don't speak to me of _judges_," she would reply, "John was fit for any thing; and had he but followed our advice, it might hereafter be written upon my tomb that I had died the mother of a bishop." But no one as yet knew that he had extraordinary talent for eloquence. Indeed he did not suspect it himself. In his boyhood he had a confusion in his utterance, from which he was called by his school-fellows "stuttering Jack Curran." It was not until many years after, while studying law at the Temple, that he found out that he _could speak_. After his fame was established, a friend dining with him one day, could not repress his admiration of Curran's eloquence, and remarked that it must have been born with him. "Indeed, my dear sir," replied Curran, "it was not, it was born twenty-three years and some months after me." But when he had made the important discovery of this concealed power, he employed every means to render his elocution perfect. He accustomed himself to speak very slowly to correct his precipitate utterance. He practiced before a glass to make his gestures graceful. He spoke aloud the most celebrated orations. One piece he was never weary of repeating, the speech of Antony over the body of Cæsar. This he recommended to his young friends at the bar as a model of eloquence. And while he thus used art to smooth a channel for his thoughts to flow in, no man's eloquence ever issued more freshly and spontaneously from the heart. It was always the heart of the man that spoke. It was because his own emotions were so intense, that he possessed such power over the feelings of others. His natural sympathies were strong. Like every truly great man, he was simple as a child. He had all those tastes which mark a genuine man. He loved nature. He loved children. He sympathized with the poor. It was perhaps from these popular sympathies that he preferred Rousseau among the French writers, and that his friendship was so strong with Mr. Godwin. His nature was all sensibility. He was most keenly alive to gay, or to mournful scenes. He had a boyish love of fun and frolic. He entered into sports with infinite glee. In these things he remained a child to the end of his days; while in sensibility to tears he had the heart of a woman. Thus to the last hour of life he kept his affections fresh and flowing.