But the effect of those vehement appeals was singularly heightened by the orator's facility of turning at once from the severe to the ludicrous, and by the flashings of his wit giving force and distinctness to his deepest-toned pictures of national calamity. In allusion to the state trials of 1794, he contemptuously said, "that he never pretended to preternatural valour, and that, having but one neck to lose, he should be as sorry to find his undergoing the operation of the lamp-post, as any honourable gentleman in that house; but that he must confess he felt himself considerably cheered by the discovery that the danger existed all within the vision of the treasury bench. He could not help thinking, with the chief-justice, that it was much in favour of the accused, that they had neither men, money, nor zeal."

He then ridiculed the fears of government. "I own," said he, "that there was something in the case, quite enough to disturb the virtuous sensibilities and loyal terrors of the right honourable gentleman. But so hardened is this side of the house, that our fears did not much disturb us. On the first trial one pike was produced. That was, however, withdrawn. Then a terrific instrument was talked of, for the annihilation of his majesty's cavalry; it appeared, upon evidence, to be a tetotum in a window in Sheffield. But I had forgot, there was also a camp in a back shop; an arsenal provided with nine muskets; and an exchequer containing the same number of pounds, exactly nine, no, let me be accurate, it was nine pounds and one bad shilling.

On the rumours of the Scottish conspiracy,"There is now," exclaimed he, "but one way of wisdom and loyalty, and that is panic. The man who is not panic-struck is to be incapable of common sense. My honourable friend (Windham) has acquired this new faculty, and has been a sage on the new plan above a week old. Another friend (Burke) was inspired in the same fortunate manner. He has been

so powerfully affected, that he saw in the sky nothing but cloud, on the earth nothing but a bleak opposition, where there was not a politic bush or a shrub to shelter him from the coming tempest. But he has luckily taken refuge in the ministerial gabardine, where, I hope, he may find security from the storm.' "The alarm had been brought in with great pomp and circumstance on a Saturday morning. At night, the Duke of Richmond stationed himself, among other curiosities, at the Tower! and a great municipal officer, the lord mayor, made a discovery in the east. He had found out that there was in Cornhill a debating society, where people went to buy treason at sixpence a-head: where it was retailed to them by inch of candle; and five minutes, measured by the glass, were allowed to each traitor to perform his part in overturning the state.-In Edinburgh an insurrection was planned; the soldiers were to be corrupted; and this turned out to be-by giving sixpence for porter. Now, what the scarcity of money may be in that country I cannot tell, but it does not strike me that the system of corruption had been carried to any great extent. Then, numbers were kept in pay, they were drilled in dark rooms by a sergeant in a brown coat, and on a given signal they were to sally from the back parlour and overturn the constitution."

His quotations from the classics were often happy. The allusion to the motto of the Sun newspaper, which had been commenced under ministerial patronage, was universally cheered.—“ There was one paper in particular, said to be the property of members of that house, which had for its motto a garbled part of a beautiful sentence, when it might, with much more propriety, have assumed the whole :

"

Solem quis dicere falsum

Audeat? Ille etiam cæcos instare tumultus

Sæpe monet, fraudemque et operta tumescere bella."

The prince, himself remarkable for his dexterity in telling a story, was fond of collecting instances of the whim and humour of the Irish peasantry. One of those was-the history of Morgan Prussia.

Morgan, the gay and handsome son of a low Irish farmer, tired of home, went to take the chances of the world, and seek his fortune. By what means he traversed England, or made his way to France, is not told. But he at length crossed France also, and, probably without much knowledge or much care whether he were moving to the north or the south pole, found himself in the Prussian territory. This was in the day of the first Frederic, famous for his tall regiment of guards, and for nothing else; except his being the most dangerous compound of fool and madman among the crowned heads of the Continent. He had but one ambition, that of inspecting twice a-day a regiment of a thousand grenadiers, not one of whom was less than six feet and a half high. Morgan was an Irish giant, and was instantly seized by the Prussian recruiting sergeants, who forced him to volunteer into the tall battalion. This turn of fate was totally out of the Irishman's calculation; and the prospect of carrying a musket till his dying day on the Potsdam parade, after having made up his mind to live by his wits, and rove the world, more than once tempted him to think of leaving his musket and his honour behind him, and fairly trying his chance for escape. But the attempt was always found impracticable; the frontier was too closely watched, and Morgan still marched up and down the Potsdam parade with a disconsolate heart; when one evening a Turkish recruit was brought in: for Frederic looked to nothing but the thews and sinews of a man, and the Turk was full seven feet high.

"How much did his majesty give for catching that heathen?" said Morgan to his corporal. "Four hundred dollars," was the answer. He burst out into an exclamation of astonishment at this waste of royal

treasure upon a Turk. "Why, they cannot be got for less," replied the corporal. "What a pity_my five brothers cannot hear of it!" said Morgan, "I am a dwarf to any one of them, and the sound of half the money would bring them all over immediately." As the discovery of a tall recruit was the well-known road to favouritism, five were worth at least a pair of colours to the corporal; the conversation was immediately carried to the sergeant, and from him through the gradation of officers to the colonel, who took the first opportunity of mentioning it to the king. The colonel was instantly ordered to question Morgan. But he at once had lost all memory on the subject.-"He had no brothers; he had made the regiment his father and mother and relations, and there he hoped to live and die." But he was urged still more strongly, and at length confessed, that he had brothers, even above the regimental standard, but that "nothing on earth could stir them from their spades."

After some time, the king inquired for the five recruits, and was indignant when he was told of the impossibility of enlisting them. "Send the fellow himself," he exclaimed, "and let him bring them back." The order was given, but Morgan was "broken hearted at the idea of so long an absence from the regiment." He applied to the colonel to have the order revoked, or at least given to some one else. But this was out of the question, for Frederic's word was always irrevocable; and Morgan, with a disconsolate face, prepared to set out upon his mission. But a new difficulty struck him. "How was he to make his brothers come, unless he showed them the recruiting money?" This objection was at last obviated by the advance of a sum equal to about three hundred pounds sterling, as a first instalment for the purchase of his family. Like a loyal grenadier, the Irishman was now ready to attempt any thing for his colonel or his king, and Morgan began his

journey. But, as he was stepping out of the gates of Potsdam, another difficulty occurred; and he returned to tell the colonel, that of all people existing, the Irish were the most apt to doubt a traveller's story, they being in the habit of a good deal of exercise in that style themselves; and that, when he should go back to his own country and tell them of the capital treatment and sure promotion that a soldier met with in the guards, the probability was, that they would laugh in his face. As to the money, "there were some who would not scruple to say that he stole it, or tricked some one out of it. But, undoubtedly, when they saw him walking back only as a common soldier, he was sure that they would not believe a syllable, let him say what he would, about rising in the service."

The objection was intelligible enough, and the colonel represented it to Frederic, who, doubly outrageous at the delay, swore a grenadier oath, ordered Morgan to be made a sous officier, or upper sergeant, and, with a sword and epaulette, sent him instantly across the Rhine to convince his five brothers of the rapidity of Prussian promotion. Morgan flew to his home in the County Carlow, delighted the firesides for many a mile round with his having outwitted a king and a whole battalion of grenadiers, laid out his recruiting money on land, and became a man of estate at the expense of the Prussian treasury.

One ceremony remains to be recorded. Once a year, on the anniversary of the day in which he left Potsdam and its giants behind, he climbed a hill within a short distance of his house, turned himself in the direction of Prussia, and, with the most contemptuous gesture which he could contrive, bade good-by to his majesty! The ruse was long a great source of amusement, and its hero, like other heroes, bore through life the name earned by his exploit, Morgan Prussia.

L