cannoneers of those pieces that appeared to be the best served. The English presently, after this farce was over, obliged Hyder to come down from labour-in-vain hill and to give them battle in earnest. As the historian observes, “The ridiculous cannonade at the top of the hill had exhausted his ammunition, his great guns were useless to him, and he lost the day by his premature rejoicings before the battle.” A still more ancient precedent for this preposterous practical bull, of rejoicing for an anticipated victory, was given by Xerxes, we believe, who brought with him an immense block of marble, on which he intended to inscribe the date and manner of his victory over the Greeks. When Xerxes was defeated, the Greeks dedicated this stone to Nemesis, the goddess of vengeance. But Xerxes was in the habit of making practical bulls, such as whipping the sea, and begging pardon for it afterwards; throwing fetters into the Hellespont as a token of subjugation, and afterwards expiating his offence by an offering of a golden cup and Persian scimetar. To such blunders can the passions betray the most renowned heroes, although they had not the misfortune to have been born in Ireland. The impatience which induced Hyder Ali to anticipate victory is not confined to military men and warlike operations; if we descend to common life and vulgar business, we shall find the same disposition even in the precincts of Change-alley: those who bargained for South Sea stock, that was not actually forthcoming, were called _bears_, in allusion to the practice of the hunters of bears in Canada, who were accustomed to bargain for the skin of the bear before it was caught; but whence the correlative term _bull_ is derived we are at a loss to determine, and we must also leave it to the mercantile speculators of England to explain why gentlemen call themselves bulls of wheat and bulls of coals: all we can say is, that these are not Irish bulls. There is one distinguished peculiarity of the Irish bull--_its horns are tipped with brass_.[47] It is generally supposed that persons who have been dipped in the Shannon[48] are ever afterwards endowed with a supernatural portion of what is called, by enemies, impudence or assurance, by friends, self-possession or _civil courage_. These invulnerable mortals are never oppressed with _mauvaise honte_, that malady which keeps the faculties of the soul under imaginary imprisonment. A well-dipped Irishman, on the contrary, can move, speak, think, like Demosthenes, with as much ease, when the eyes of numbers are upon him, as if the spectators were so many cabbage-stalks. This virtue of _civil courage_ is of inestimable value in the opinion of the best judges. The great Lord Verulam--no one, by-the-by, could be a better judge of its value than he, who wanted it so much--the great Lord Verulam declares, that if he were asked what is the first, second, and third thing necessary to success in public