Certain it was that he could repeat the _Deprofundis_, and the Seven Penitential Psalms, and the _Dies Iræ_, in that language. We need scarcely add, that in these learned exhibitions he dealt largely in false quantities, and took a course for himself altogether independent of syntax and prosody; this, however, was no argument against his natural talents, or the surprising force of his memory. Tom was also an easy and happy _Improviser_ both in prose and poetry; his invention was indeed remarkably fertile, but his genius knew no medium between encomium and satire. He either lashed his friends, for the deuce an enemy he had, with rude and fearful attacks of the latter, or gave them, as Pope did to Berkley, every virtue under heaven, and indeed a good many more than ever were heard of beyond his own system of philosophy and morals. Tom was a great person for attending wakes and funerals, where he was always a busy man, comforting the afflicted relatives with many learned quotations, repeating _ranns_, or spiritual songs, together with the Deprofundis or Dies Iræ, over the corpse, directing even the domestic concerns, paying attention to strangers, looking after the pipes and tobacco, and in fact making himself not only generally useful, but essentially necessary to them, by his happiness of manner, the cordiality of his sympathy, and his unextinguishable humour. At one time you might see him engaged in leading a Rosary for the repose of the soul of the departed, or singing the Hermit of Killarney, a religious song, to edify the company; and this duty being over, he would commence a series of comic tales and humorous anecdotes, which he narrated with an ease and spirit that the best of us all might envy. The Irish heart passes rapidly from the depths of pathos to the extremes of humour; and as a proof of this, we can assure our readers that we have seen the nearest and most afflicted relatives of the deceased carried away by uncontrollable laughter at the broad, grotesque, and ludicrous force of his narratives. It was here also that he shone in a character of which he was very proud, and for the possession of which he was looked up to with great respect by the people; we mean that of a polemic, or, as it is termed, “an arguer of Scripture,” for when a man in the country parts of Ireland wins local fame as a controversialist, he is seldom mentioned in any other way than as a great arguer of Scripture. To argue scripture well, therefore, means the power of subduing one’s antagonist in a religious contest. Many challenges of this kind passed between Tom and his polemical opponents, in most or all of which he was successful. His memory was infallible, his wit prompt and dexterous, and his humour either broad or sarcastic, as he found it convenient to apply it. In these dialectic displays he spared neither logic nor learning: where an English quotation failed, he threw in one of Irish; and where that was