Francis Higgins, the hero of Mr. Fitzpatrick's remarkable biographical sketch, and familiarly known by the title of "The Sham Squire," was born nobody exactly knows where, and reared nobody knows how. He commenced his career, however, in stirring times, and when great events were in their parturition, during which the history of Ireland presents a series of panoramic images--a mixture of light and shadow--instances of devoted fidelity and abounding rascality-- groupings of mistaken enthusiasm, selfish venality, and the most abhorrent domestic treason--such as we in vain look for in the annals of any other country or any other age. It is supposed that Higgins was born in a Dublin cellar, and while yet of tender years became successively "errand-boy, shoeblack, and waiter in a public-house"--improving trades for one of so ripe a spirit, but which he soon left, directed by a vaulting ambition, in order to become a writing-clerk in an attorney's office. While in this position, he commenced practice on his own account, by rejecting popery as unfashionable and impolitic, and by forging a series of legal documents purporting to show to all "inquiring friends" that he was a man of property and a government official. He had an object in this, as he was by this time to appear in a new character, as the lover of Miss Mary Anne Archer, who possessed a tolerable fortune and a foolish old father. Miss Archer happened to be a Roman Catholic, and was strong in her faith; but this was only a trifle to Higgins, who again forsook the new creed for the old, and proved thereby, like Richard, "a thriving wooer." They were married, and the Archer _père_ did at last what he ought to have done at first, ferreted out the real antecedents of his precious son-in-law, and discovered that he had a very clever fellow to deal with; while his daughter, finding, after a short time, that her husband was "by no means a desirable one," fled back to her bamboozled parent, who straightway indicted the pretender. Higgins was found guilty and imprisoned for a year, and it was during Judge Robinson's charge to the jury that he fastened the name of the "Sham Squire" on the prisoner, a sobriquet which stuck to him persistently during the remainder of his life, and proved a greater infliction to his vanity than an apparently heavier penalty would have been. This was in 1767. "Poor Mary Anne" died of a broken heart, and her parents survived her for only a short lime; while the widower, in order to make his prison life endurable, paid his addresses to the daughter of the gaoler and eventually married her, as her father was pretty well to do in the world, the situation being a {123} money-making one, as the order of that day was, as proved before the Irish House of Commons, that "persons were unlawfully kept in prison and loaded with irons, although not duly committed by a magistrate, until they had complied with the most exorbitant demands." When the