As my purpose in these observations on Mr. Daunt's work, was necessarily confined to some incidental circumstances of Mr. O'Connell's life, I beg to refer for a general narrative of his memorable history, to the biographies of his son, Mr. John O'Connell, and our excellent representative, my highly esteemed friend, William Fagan, Esq.

RECOLLECTIONS OF LORD CLONCURRY.

Personal Recollections of the Life and Times of Valentine, Lord Cloncurry. 8vo. Dublin, M'Glashan. 1848.

WE are fortunately spared any consideration of this work in its political character. Besides being an exposition of its author's views on public affairs, it contains many agreeable reminiscences of the notable people who have crossed his path through life, and we turn to that portion of the work with a pleasure which we could not have derived from its politics. We believe the writer to be much mistaken in his views of the course which would promote the welfare of his country, but he is no doubt an honest, upright man, and expresses his opinions openly and fairly.(G. M.)

Lord Cloncurry's early acquaintances in England ranged from John Horne Tooke on the one hand, to John Reeves, the treasurer of the Literary Fund, on the other: the former the impersonation of an ultra radicalism, the latter of an equally ultra toryism. Mr. Tooke introduced the author, then the Hon. V. F. Lawless, to Sir Francis Burdett and the other visitors of the cottage on Wimbledon Common, and

passes muster, in the pages before us, unblamed; Mr. Reeves receives his lordship's sneer as "the most noted pluralist of the day," (on which point his statement is very inaccurate,) in return for services rendered with honourable and friendly fidelity, when his lordship was under confinement in the Tower for suspected participation in the rebellion of 1798. The particulars in this volume respecting Mr. Reeves, who, it is unnecessary to remind our readers, was the author of the History of English Law, are valuable contributions to his biography.—(G. M.)

Lord Cloncurry gives us also a good deal of information respecting the persons who were concerned in the rebellion in which he was implicated, with many anecdotes of various Irish notabilities of that disastrous period. We will extract a specimen.-(G. M.)

Archibald Hamilton Rowan was a fine grown fellow, "a figure of the grandest proportions," and was endued with a mind "guileless and romantic to a degree that, if depicted in a novel, would be looked upon as forced and incredible." Some thirty years ago he was well known in the streets of Dublin as a 'gigantic old man," rambling about in an old-fashioned dress, and followed by the two last of the race of Irish wolf-dogs. When a young man he was himself probably the last of another extinct race, that of knights errant. Confident in his great personal strength, "he was always ready to undertake the redressal of the wrongs of distressed damsels, or of the needy and oppressed of either sex," and was ever on the look-out for that class of adventures. But the event of his life was "a grand feat" which he performed under the eyes of Marie Antoinette, the

running of a foot-race in jack-boots, against an officer of the French royal guard, in light shoes and silk stockings. The jack-boots won with ease, and Rowan was a proud and joyful man for ever afterwards. He had a fortune of £5,000 a year; but his pursuits were expensive, and he was never idle. He had always some adventure or other upon his hands. That which was his especial delight, as we are told a second time, was to rescue distressed damsels from the snares and> force of ravishers of rank." Lord Cloncurry leads us to infer that such cases were then numerous; and Rowan, we learn, was fortunate enough to fall in with two or three which made a good deal of noise. It was not, indeed, his wish that the trumpet of his fame: should be silent. The noise was a part of his delight, and, in order to secure it, he kept a private press in his house, "ready for such occasions," and, whenever anything of the kind occurred, published instantly an extraordinary gazette of his own, containing the full, true, and particular account of his personal achievements, and of all the sorrows of the rescued Pamela. We hope the Dublin bibliographical collectors have secured copies of these interesting memorials. A few years hence they will be precious evidences of a state of manners from which we have fortunately escaped. When in the full blush of his fame, Rowan and Lord Cloncurry, accompanied by Sir Thomas Frankland, were companions in a pedestrian tour through England. "A pleasant party we made," remarks his lordship, and rather an odd-looking one, we suspect, for his lordship tells us, that it was "the practice" of the Quixotic Rowan, "at starting from our inn, of a wet morning, to roll himself into the first pool he met,

in order that he might be beforehand with the rain." Certainly if Lord Cloncurry had not told us the reason of this strange, if not cleanly, practice, we never should have guessed it. Probably the travellers were not so communicative to the people they came in contact with in the course of their excursion; and some little concealment upon that head may account for the uncivil treatment which they met with from the celebrated improver of machinery, Sir Richard Arkwright. In the course of their tour the three young gentlemen (Mr. Lawless was probably about 17,) rambled into Derbyshire, and, being desirous of visiting Sir Richard's factory, they presented themselves at his door. They sent in their names, and requested permission to inspect the works. Whether the message was none of the civilest, or whether it had been one of Rowan's rolling mornings, and Sir Richard did not like the look of the travellers, or whether the good knight was a-bed and dreaming of his Jenny, does not appear, but the impetuous pedestrians were kept waiting in the hall of the residence of the recent high sheriff of the county, for what they deemed to be a "considerable time." Now we are told that Sir Thomas Frankland was "a man of very considerable ability, but what he chiefly valued himself upon was his lineal descent from Oliver Cromwell," and as soon as "the old barber," as Sir Richard is politely designated by his lordship, made his appearance in his morning gown and night-cap, Sir Thomas gave proof at once of his ability and good temper, by assailing him with a lecture on his failure in the respect that was proper to be shewn "by a person in his position," to a gentleman who "was a descendant of the great