Parliament hardly equalled their wishes, although in some respects it exceeded their anticipations. There had long been a traditional fear, that no man whose style of eloquence had been altogether formed on the Celtic side of the Channel, and who had grown habituated to the modes of thought and expression most popular there, could easily adapt himself to the tone of feeling and of criticism prevalent in the House of Commons. Few things are indeed more subtle or less possible to define than what is so often vaguely talked of as the sense of the House. It is easy enough to point out signal instances of its prompt resentment at violations of good taste; and equally striking examples of its habitual toleration of homeliness and clumsiness of expression, where the matter is weighty and the purpose sound. No board of examiners in prosody can be more cynically severe ; no dame-school class in syntax, more readily forgiving. No curious mechanism of phrase, recondite learning, or novelty of illustration, avails to hush the fatal buzz of inattention with which the young aspirant to the fame of statesmanship, who has come laden to town with an Oxford reputation, is sometimes received; and yet no complication of blunders, hesitations, and faults of every kind, seem to detract in

the least degree from the respectful anxiety with which the person who follows him in debate is listened to.

Nothing seems so capricious, so fastidious, and so wilful, as the judgment given de die in diem by the House of Commons regarding its own members; and nothing probably is more difficult to understand and appreciate thoroughly than the unwritten canons with which those judgments are in the main strictly in accordance. It takes most men years to do so; there are exceptions, doubtless, but they are rarer than either impetuous earnestness or impatient egotism can readily be brought to believe.

Mr. Sheil was fully conscious of the difficulties he had to contend with; and he knew that not the least of these arose from the nature of the rhetorical celebrity which he had acquired in the country whence he came. The failure of Flood, and the narrow escape from a similar fate of Grattan, on his first appearance in St. Stephen's; the little effect produced by North, and even by O'Connell, in the then existing Parliament; if they contributed to fire his ambition, were calculated also to excite within him. many misgivings. With instinctive discernment he felt that the great obstacle he had to overcome was his own ignorance of the feelings and susceptibilities

of the House. These he resolved to study, and he knew that they must be studied experimentally. Success to be genuine and permanent, was he believed only to be gradually acquired; and he used to laugh at the notion of any man without great fortune, high office, or the claim of being the representative of some great class or interest, essaying to take the House by surprise. He did not accordingly stake too many hopes upon his first effort. It was intended to be tentative, and it answered his purpose by enabling him to feel his way. Many things were clearer to him after he had passed that ordeal.

Talking with Moore, as they sat together at the Athenæum, he adverted to their old discussions about the use of imagery in Parliamentary speaking. He was more convinced than ever that his friend was wrong in supposing, as in his "Life of Sheridan " he seemed to do, that the days of idealism in oratory were passed. He was full of instances of fine thoughts, finely and even fancifully expressed, which he had heard applauded in the House. He did not say, but one may well believe, that the echo of the cheers he had himself obtained still rang in his ear. He admitted, however, that "rhetorical flights" were rare, and

"well

that they required to be what he called done." But the most important conviction that early forced itself upon him, was the superior if not the supreme value of the power of lucid and impressive statement. "There is nothing," he would say, "that the House is so fond of as facts; if they are new and striking, so much the better; but it is not necessary they should be new, if they are choice and in season, and look fresh, and seem as if you had gathered them yourself; facts-there is nothing so hard to manage with complete mastery; there are not half-a-dozen men in Parliament who really know how to deal with them."

A clever caricature of his first appearance in Parliament forms one of the objects in the magic lanthorn, with which "Blackwood" used to amuse the public at that time, under the name of "Noctes Ambrosianæ." In the course of the imaginary dialogue, Tickler professes to give pen-and-ink portraits of Jeffrey, Macaulay, Graham, and other well-known individuals, who took part in the debates on the Reform Bill. These sketches are full of humour, and often contain bold and life-like touches of delineation; but they

* Moore's Diary, April 22nd, 1831.

are frequently made the vehicle of party abuse and of ruthless exaggeration of personal defects and peculiarities. After dealing with most of the eminent persons on the Liberal side of the House in this fashion, North asks his after-dinner gossip whether among the declaimers he had heard Sheil? Tickler replies that he had, and that he thought him "a very clever one, too, though not so effective as Macaulay" on the occasion referred to. He was not sure whether Sheil might not be "the abler man of the two. The House gave him a most gracious hearing, and he himself for one was much edified." He then proceeds to enumerate each defect of voice, manner, and appearance, with all the particularity of spleen; and, having daubed the picture sufficiently, exclaims-" But never mind; wait a little, and this vile machinery will do wonders. To make some

amends for her carelessness to all other external affairs, nature has given him as fine a pair of eyes as ever graced human head-large, deeply set, dark, liquid, flashing like gems, and these fix you like a basilisk, so that you forget everything else about him." Upon the whole it was impossible, according to this most unsparing of critics, to listen for ten minutes "without giving oneself up to the feeling