benefit of Ireland, the Union has been left In 1804 the office of Receiver of the Duchy of Cornwall, worth about 15001. a year, was conferred on him by the Prince of Wales, who at the same time regretted that he had nothing better to give. Next year he acted a part which requires explanation. The following extract deserves to be read with at tention:- On the 10th of May, the claims of the Roman Catholics of Ireland were, for the first time, brought under the notice of the Imperial Parliament, by Lord Grenville in the House of Lords, and by Mr. Fox in the House of Commons. A few days before the debate, as appears by the following remarkable letter, Mr. Sheridan was made the medium of a communication from Carlton House, the object of which was to prevent Mr. Fox from presenting the petition. "Dear Sheridan, "I did not receive your letter till last night. "I did, on Thursday, consent to be the presenter of the Catholic petition, at the request of the delegates, and had further conversation on the subject with them at Lord Grenville's yesterday morning. Lord Grenville also consented to present the petition to the House of Lords. Now, therefore, any discussion on this part of the subject would be too late; but I will fairly own, that, if it were not, I could not be dissuaded from doing the public act, which, of all others, it will give me the greatest satisfaction and pride to perform. No past event in my political life ever did, and no future one ever can, give me such pleasure. "I am sure you know how painful it would be to me to disobey any command of his royal highness's, or even to act in any manner that might be in the slightest degree contrary to his wishes, and, therefore, I am not sorry that your intimation came too late. I shall endeavour to see stand before we meet at dinner, lest any 'It would be rash, without some further insight into the circumstances of this singular interference, to enter into any speculations with respect to its nature or motives, or to pronounce how far Mr. Sheridan was justified in being the instrument of this communication. But on the share of Mr. Fox in the transaction, such suspension of opinion is unnecessary. We have here his simple and honest words before us, and they breathe a spirit of sincerity from which even princes might take a lesson with advantage.' The Morning Chronicle' has inferred from this, that his present Majesty is averse to the Catholic claims. We do not think so. Sheridan, in one of his letters to the prince, alludes to his royal highness's delicate situation respecting Emancipation; and Mr. Moore, at page 428, speaking of the regency, has the following remarkable words :- The ready and ardent burst of devotion with which Ireland, at this moment, like the Pythagoreans at their morning worship, turned to welcome with her harp the rising sun, was long remembered by the object of her homage with pride and gratitude,-and, let us trust, is not even yet entirely forgotten."* This subject, however, requires elucidation. tered office as treasurer of the navy In the year 1806,-Sheridan enmuch against his inclination-but his embarrassed circumstances left him no choice. In the same year he was chosen representative for Westminster; but, at the next election, he was defeated by Sir Francis Burdett. He came in, however, for Ilchester. Previous to 1811 the Whigs had been split into parties; and when the king's illness gave them hopes of power under the regency, we find them, with the help of Sheridan, imprudently putting it almost out of the power of the prince to honour them with his confidence. The dothe prince to-day; but, if I should fail, cuments relative to this affair, given pray take care that he knows how things by Mr. Moore, are curious and im*This vain hope was expressed before the late decision on the Catholic question had proved to the Irish that,where their rights are concerned, neither public nor private pledges are regarded.' portant. His royal highness, it appears, sent for Lords Grenville and Grey, to draw up his answer to the address of Parliament. They did so -but in a manner injurious to his feelings, but complimentary to their own consistency. Sheridan, who disliked the coalition, drew up an answer to the address, more agreeable to the prince; and the coalesced lords afterwards sent in a kind of remonstrance; which afforded Sheridan what he thought a good opportunity of making them feel his power. Though privately alienated from thein, on personal as well as political grounds, he knew that, publicly, he was too much identified with their ranks, ever to serve, with credit or consistency, in any other. He had, therefore, in the ardour of undermining, carried the ground from beneath his own feet. In helping to disband his party, he had cashiered himself; and there remained to him now, for the residue of his days, but that frailest of all sublunary treasures, a prince's friendship. With this conviction, (which, in spite of all the sanguineness of his disposition, could hardly have failed to force itself on his mind,) it was not, we should think, with very self-gratulatory feelings that he undertook the task, a few weeks after, of inditing, for the Regent, that memorable letter to Mr. Perceval, which sealed the fate at once both of his party and himself, and, whatever false signs of re-animation may afterwards have appeared, severed the last life-lock by which the " struggling spirit of this friendship between royalty and whiggism still held ;— et una "dextra crinem secat, omnis Dilapsus calor, atque in ventos vita recessit." With respect to the chief personage connected with these transactions, it is a proof of the tendency of knowledge to produce a spirit of tolerance, that they who, judging merely from the surface of events, have been most forward in reprobating his separation from the Whigs, as a rupture of political ties and abandonment of private friendships, must, on becoming more thoroughly acquainted with all the circumstances that led to this crisis, learn to soften down considerably their angry feelings; and to see, indeed, in the whole history of the connection, from its first formation, in the hey-day of youth and party, to its faint survival after the death of Mr. Fox, but a natural and destined gradation towards the result at which it at last arrived, after as much fluctuation of political principle, on one side, as there was of indifference, perhaps, to all political principle on the other. Among the arrangements that had been made, in contemplation of a new Lord Moira should go, as lord lieutenant, ministry, at this time, it was intended that to Ireland, and that Mr. Sheridan should accompany him, as chief secretary.'— P. 662, 3. The political career of Sheridan was now drawing fast to a close. He spoke but upon two or three other occasions during the session; and among the last sentences uttered by him in the House were the following-which, as calculated to leave a sweeter flavour on the memory, at parting, than those questionable transactions that have just been related, I have great pleasure in citing: My objection to the present ministry is, that they are avowedly arrayed and embodied against a principle,-that of concession to the Catholics of Ireland,— which I think, and must always think, essential to the safety of this empire. I will never give my vote to any adminis tration that opposes the question of Catholic Emancipation. I will not consent to receive a furlough upon that particular question, even though a ministry were carrying every other that I wished. In fine, I think the situation of Ireland a paramount consideration. If they were to be the last words I should ever utter in this House, I should say, Be just to Ireland, as you value your own honour; be just to Ireland, as you value your own peace." "'P.677. On the dissolution of Parliament, in 1812, he tried his old friends at Stafford; but, as his purse was not quite so heavy as that of his oppoThe nent, he lost his election. prince regent offered to bring him in, but he declined entering Parliament with the royal mark upon him. The calamities of his life may be said now to have commenced. DruryLane Theatre, which was burnt in 1809, had been re-built; but Sheridan was excluded by the committee from having any thing further to do with it. Even the sum for which he disposed of his title was paid him grudgingly; and at one time he suffered the profanation of having been carried to a spunging-house. The disorder of Mr. Sheridan, a * Luctans anima. diseased stomach, now grew rapidly on him, while the embarrassment of his affairs helped to accelerate the approach of death. In the beginning of 1816 his powers began to fail him; but still the wretched spot where he lay down to die was not secured against the incursion of clamorous creditors; and bailiffs at length gained possession of his house. During all this time it does not appear that, with the exception of Lord Holland,* any of his noble or royal friends called at his door, or even sent to inquire after him. About this period Mr. Vaughan intimated to Dr. Bain that he was commissioned to appropriate two hundred pounds for Sheridan's use to be paid at the rate of fifty pounds at a time. Mrs. Sheridan refused receiving this petty sum, as the immediate wants of her high-minded husband had been supplied from the purse of Mr. Rogers, by the hands of Mr. Moore. Mr. Vaughan,' says the biographer, always said that the donation, thus meant to be doled out, came from a royal hand; but this is hardly credible. It would be safer, perhaps, to let the suspicion rest upon that gentleman's memory -of having indulged his own benevolent disposition in this disguisethan to suppose it possible that so scanty and reluctant a benefaction was the sole mark of attention accorded by a gracious prince and master" to the last death-bed wants of one of the most accomplished and faithful servants that royalty ever yet raised or ruined by its smiles. When the philosopher, Anaxagoras, lay dying for want of sustenance, his great pupil, Pericles, sent him a sum of money, "Take it back," said Anaxagoras; "if he wished to keep the lamp alive, he ought to have administered the oil before." In the mean time a sheriff's officer had arrested the dying man in his bed, but was deterred from removing him, in consequence of the physician representing the responsibility he should incur in case of death. At length an article in the Morning Post' arrested public sympathy in behalf of poor Sheridan, whose door was soon thronged with such visitors as the Duke of York, the Duke of Argyll, &c.: but it was now too late. Sheridan died on the 7th of July, 1816, aged sixty-five, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Seldom has there been such an array of rank as graced his funeral; and it was well remarked at the time by a French journal, that France is the place for a man of letters to live in, and England the place for him to die in.' Mr. Sheridan lost his first wife-to whose amiable character Mr. Moore has done justice-in 1792, and was married to his second wife, the daughter of the Dean of Winchester, in 1795. This lady did not long survive her husband. She had no child. Sheridan's only son died when young. Copious as have been our extracts from this interesting work, we cannot conclude without giving Mr. Moore's' character of Sheridan. His political character stands out so fully in these pages, that it is needless, by any comments, to attempt to raise it into stronger relief. If to watch over the rights of the subject, and guard them against the encroachments of power, be, even in safe and ordinary times, a task full of usefulness and honour, how much more glorious to have stood sentinel over the same sacred trust, through a period so trying as that with which Sheridan had to strugglewhen liberty itself had become suspected and unpopular-when authority had succeeded in identifying patriotism with deserted friends of freedom were reduced treason, and when the few remaining and to take their stand on a narrowing isthmus, between anarchy on one side and the angry incursions of power on the other. How manfully he maintained his ground in a position so critical, the annals of England and of the champions of her constitution will long testify. The truly national spirit too, with which, when that struggle was past, and the dangers to liberty from without seemed greater than any from within, he forgot all past differences in the one common cause of Englishmen, and, while others" gave but the left hand to the country," proffered her both of his, stamped a seal of sincerity on his public conduct, which, in the eyes of all England, authenticated it as genuine patriotism. Among the few who did not forsake him in his misfortune, the names of Rogers' Moore, and Dr. Bain, stand conspicuous. To his own party, it is true, his conduct presented a very different phasis; and if implicit partisanship were the sole merit of a public man, his movements, at this and other junctures, were far too independent and unharnessed to lay claim to it. But however useful may be the bond of party, there are occasions that supersede it; and, in all such deviations from the fidelity which it enjoins, the two questions to be asked are-were they, as regarded the public, right? Were they, as regarded the individual himself, un purchased? To the former question, in the instance of Sheridan, the whole country responded in the affirmative; and to the latter, his account with the Treasury, from first to last, is a sufficient an swer. ⚫ Even, however, on the score of fidelity to party, when we recollect that he more than once submitted to some of the worst martyrdoms which it imposes-that of sharing in the responsibility of opinions from which he dissented, and suffering by the ill consequences of measures against which he had protested;-when we call to mind, too, that during the administration of Mr. Addington, though agreeing wholly with the ministry, and differing with the Whigs, he even then refused to profit by a position so favourable to his interests, and submitted, like certain religionists, from a point of honour, to suffer for a faith in which he did not believe-it seems impossible not to concede that even to the obligations of party he was as faithful as could be expected from a spirit that so far outgrew its limits; and, in paying the tax of fidelity while he asserted the freedom of dissent,showed that he could sacrifice every thing to it, except his opinion. Through all these occasional variations, too, he remained a genuine Whig to the last; and, as I have heard one of his own party happily express it, was "like pure gold, that changes colour in the fire, but comes out unaltered." 'The transaction in 1812, relative to the household, was, as I have already said, the least defensible part of his public life. But it should be recollected how broken he was,both in mind and body,at that periodhis resources from the theatre at an endthe shelter of Parliament about to be taken from over his head also-and old age and sickness coming on, as every hope and comfort vanished. In that wreck of all around him, the friendship of Carlton House was the last asylum left to his pride and his hope; and that even character itself should, in a too zealous moment, have been one of the sacrifices offered up at the shrine that protected him, is a subject more of deep regret than of wonder. The poet Cowley, in speaking of the unproductiveness of those pursuits connected with wit and fancy, says beautifully— "Where such fairies once have danced, no grass will ever grow." But, unfortunately, thorns will grow there; and he who walks unsteadily among such thorns as now beset the once enchanted path of Sheridan, ought not, after all, to be very severely criticised. Having taken a cursory view of his literary, political, and social qualities, it remains for me to say a few words upon that most important point of all, his moral character. 'There are few persons, as we have seen, to whose kind and affectionate conduct, in some of the most interesting relations of domestic life, so many strong and honourable testimonies remain. The pains he took to win back the estranged feelings of his father, and the filial tenderness with which he repaid long years of parental caprice, show a heart that had, at least, set out by the right road, however, in many years, it may have missed the way. The enthusiastic love which his sister bore him, and retained, unblighted by distance or neglect, is another proof of the influence of his amiable feelings, at that period of life when he was as yet unspoiled by the world. We have seen the romantic fondness which he preserved towards the first Mrs. Sheridan, even while doing his utmost, and in vain, to extinguish the same feeling in her. With the second wife, a course, nearly similar, was run; the same "scatterings and eclipses" of affection, from the irregularities and vanities in which he continued to indulge, but the same hold kept of each other's hearts to the last. Her early letters to him breathe a passion little short of idolatry, and her devoted attentions beside his death-bed showed that the essential part of the feeling still remained. To claim an exemption for frailties and irregularities on the score of genius, while there are such names as Milton and Newton on record, were to be blind to the example which these and other great men have left, of the grandest intellectual powers combined with the most virtuous lives. But, for the bias given early to the mind by education, and circumstances, even the least charitable may be inclined to make large allowances. We have seen how idly the young days of Sheridan were wasted-how soon he was left (in the words of the prophet) "to dwell carelessly," and with what an undisciplined temperament he was thrown upon the world, to meet at every step that neverfailing spring of temptation, which, like the fatal fountain in the garden of Armida, died a rich apostate, instead of closing a life of patriotism in beggary. He might (to use a fine expression of his own) have hid his head in a coronet," instead of earning for it but the barren wreath of public gratitude. While, therefore, we admire the great sacrifice that he made, let us be tolerant to the errors and imprudences which it entailed upon him: and, recollecting how vain it is to look for any thing unalloyed in this world, rest satisfied with the Martyr without requiring also the Saint.' TALES OF LOW LIFE. By Thomas Furlong, Author of Plagues of Ireland,' &c. NO. II. THE DRUNKARD. ALONG Drumcondra road I strolled, 'Oh! master dear, for sake of Heaven, You'll never miss a penny given Away in charity! That I'm in want the world may see→ That I am old I'm sure appears; At Christmas next my age will be • And how did all those years go o'er? What have you through that time been at?' "Oh! it would take an hour and more For me to tell all that. When I was small, ay, very small, To service I was sent; And, by my mother, I was told But, to whatever place I went, Still to be jumping at a call, Years past, I grew, I worked my way, My sweet young mistress on me doted; That I must be promoted. She thought it wrong to have me thrust When other business could be found. My kitchen_clothes aside were laid: 1 |