caresses which are here lavished, surpass our utmost imaginations. They might found pathetic romances on this basis. In a family of twenty persons, the police should place forty spies."

We have now laid before our readers the principal materials which, in our opinion, suggested the leading incidents of the Count of Monte Cristo. In our narratives we have perhaps, forgotten the duties of the critic, but our readers will recollect that explanation rather than criticism was promised when the articles on the "Romance of Life" were commenced. We have derived great satisfaction in our progress through the parterres of imagination in which Dumas has cultivated such choice flowers, and it is our hope that our readers may be pleased with our indication of the seed from which such a splendid crop has been raised. When next we seek to occupy their attention. it shall be in reference to the productions of one who either as a novelist or historian has won ample laurels, the highly gifted JAMES. We forbear quoting the peculiar sources from whence we have derived the details of this article, for peculiar reasons which at a future period may cease to exist.

F. T. P.

ART. VI.-FITZPATRICK'S LIFE OF LORD

CLONCURRY.

The Life, Times, and Cotemporaries of Lord Cloncurry, embracing the period from 1775, to 1853; with a selection from his hitherto unpublished correspondence. By William John Fitzpatrick, Esq., M.R.D.S. Dublin: Duffy. 1855. EVEN before reading this book, we were inclined to consider its author an honest Irishman. Our reason for this favorable conjecture was, that this life of Lord Cloncurry was abused by all parties. Conservatives think Mr. Fitzpatrick a leveller. Old Ireland cannot pardon him, because he gives Young Ireland credit for anything under heaven; and Young Ireland proclaims him a trimmer who has done injustice to the best men of its party. We have ever been of opinion, that a really honest and sincere man, who pins the salvation of his country not on any particular party, and sees not every man and every measure through the same glass as his political leaders, but looks, and judges, and speaks for himself, of both men and measures, will for many a year to come, be looked upon with distrust by all parties, and offending each in turn, will find himself denounced for his back-sliding, without getting credit for the good he has done, or even for the services he may have rendered to either party when he thought their objects were useful. Such a man was Lord Cloncurry, and we think his biographer has brought to his task a congenial spirit. We have been pleased by this book, we think that a great deal of time and care have been spent in collecting its materials, it is written in an agreeable style, and for these reasons we shall not criticize the book with a severity to which Mr. Fitzpatrick has occasionally left himself open. Although we shall leave to others the ungracious task, for which it is said critics have such a fancy, of tearing a writer to pieces, we cannot close our eyes to the fact, that there are, in the volume before us, some grave errors of taste, which we are sure none will judge more severely than Mr. Fitzpatrick himself, when he shall have become more experienced as a writer of Biography: a character in which we hope frequently to meet him, but he must bear in mind, that the age of tropes and metaphors has past. Fine writing

or fine speaking is dangerous ground; the subject must admit of it; it must be ventured on only by a master, and even then, sparingly, if perfect, and yet beyond the dignity of the subject or occasion, it is laughed at ; a slip is ruin. This book shews that its writer possesses many of the necessary com. ponent qualities of a biographer-honesty of purpose and judgment, a spirit of patient and laborious enquiry, a love for his task, atalent for writing agreeably and seizing interesting points in his subjects with a little more care in his arrangement, and in his selection of correspondences, and a faithfully preserved vow against every figure of speech known to the elocution book, we should welcome this gentleman as an acquisition to our biographers, and await with anticipations of pleasure and information the productions of his pen.

At first we were disposed to censure the introduction into this work of those sanguinary and disgraceful excesses, by which the people of this country were goaded into rebellion. We will not dwell upon these frightful scenes: they are recorded to the eternal infamy of the ministers who succeeded in accomplishing the legislative union of England and Ireland, and their more wretched tools. It struck us as bad taste and bad judgment, and especially at the present time, to drag again before us the hideous tragedy of '98. On consideration however, we found that it was necessary to enter upon this topic, in order to do justice to Lord Cloncurry: the writer of this biography must have thought, and in our opinion he thought correctly, that justice to his subject should be with him a primary consideration. In this view he was right in entering on these details, which if needlessly introduced, we should be the first to censure. Through life, and not alone with his own class, but amongst all of what is called pure conservative politics, Lord Cloncurry was looked on as a rebel, a man who if he saw a prospect of success, would have led an attack on throne and constitution. His intimacy with many of the leaders in the insurrection of '98, his known liberal opinions and opposition to that union, upon which English ministers had staked the integrity of the British empire and sacrificed their own characters, his ready assistance both with money and kind offices to attainted men, might lead an unprejudiced mind to suspect there were some grounds for this calumny. The history of his country, during the few years preceding the union will, however, clear away this foul

imputation. Lord Cloncurry was a generous, high-minded man, who loved his country, and felt for her distresses. His sympathies were enlisted for a suffering people, as for a persecuted individual, and though he could not approve the ill-judged and violent efforts which many who felt with him attempted, when they had failed, and languished in their dungeons, until summoned to the scaffold, for having loved their country, "not wisely but too well," Cloncurry was not the man to refuse that assistance which humanity could not deny to the fallen. Looking back on those early scenes of Cloncurry's life, we repeat that no man with those feelings of sympathy for sorrow and suffering which the Divinity has planted in the human breast, and who was not deterred by an unworthy though not unreasonable fear of consequences, or blinded by the heat of party feeling, would have acted otherwise; and when to this we add a personal friendship with many of those unfortunate men whose talents. and personal worth endeared them to all who knew them, and bear in mind the state of the country when, as Grattan said, "I could not join the rebel-I could not join the government -I could not join torture-I could not join half hanging-I could not join free quarter-I could take part with neither. I was therefore absent from the scene where I could not be active without self-reproach, nor indifferent with safety,-" remembering this, we have little fear for the verdict which pos terity will pronounce upon Cloncurry.

Without at all impeaching the title of the Cloncurry family to trace their descent from Sir Hugh de Lawless of Hoddesden, County Hertford, who came over to this country with Henry the Second in 1172, we may say that the writer leaves a very considerable gap in the line to be filled up, and that with the exception of similarity of names, we cannot see any connection between the barefooted boy, Lord Cloncurry's grandfather, who brought his brooms for sale into Dublin, and the chieftains of ancient lineage This, however, is a matter of interest rather to the immediate family of Cloncurry, and that limited number of the community who cannot appreciate worth unless in one of an ancient family, than to the great mass of readers.

To trace the gradual advance of each of the three generations of this family, is very interesting. Robert Lawless, the grandfather of the late Lord Cloncurry, made his first appearance in Dublin leading an ass with a load of heather tied into

brooms, which he had made up in the adjacent county of Wicklow, in which he had been born and reared. The boy continued his broom-selling trade for some time, principally in the liberties of Dublin, and amongst his customers was a woollen draper who conducted a respectable establishment in High-street, which was at that time (1720), one of the principal streets of the city. The intelligence of the boy attracted the draper's attention, and an offer was made to take him as a messenger and assistant in the shop, which was gladly accepted. Robert Lawless rose steadily, until he became foreman to and finally a partner with his master. After his old employer's death, he married the widow, who was of a highly respectable citizen family. Of this marrage, Nicholas, first Lord Cloncurry, was the first fruit. Robert's worldly affairs throve apace, his business became very extensive, and he realized so considerable a fortune, that the close of his life was spent in his private residence in Chancerylane, which was at the time one of the most fashionable localities in Dublin. Before he died the old man was gratified by the elevation of his son to a baronetcy, although he did not live to see him a peer. Nicholas, thanks to the penal laws which then and for many a dreary year afterwards existed, received his education abroad, like most men of his creed; on his return he turned his accomplishments to advantage, by gaining the affections of Miss Brown, the only child of one of the wealthiest merchants in Dublin, and knowing how high were the expectations of her father in marrying the young lady, he succeeded in inducing her to elope with him, and they were married. By the liberality of his father, Nicholas had been enabled to purchase the manor of Galleville, near Rouen, a Catholic being at that time incapable of purchasing real property in this country, and he retired thither with his wife. After the lapse of about five years from their marriage, during which they were childless, a daughter was born, Mary, afterwards married to a gentleman of large fortune, known as "Jerusalem Whaley;" after her came Valentina, afterwards Lady Barton, and Charlotte, afterwards Lady Dunsany; and on the 19th of August, 1773, was born to them their fourth child, Valentine second Lord Cloncurry, the subject of this biography.

After the birth of their two first children, Nicholas and his wife returned to Dublin. When the reconciliation between old Brown and his daughter and son-in-law took place does not appear, but that such took place was evidenced, much more