Sydney Smith, in an article in the _Edinburgh Review_, shortly after Grattan's death, thus bore testimony to his worth:--"Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time. What Irishman does not feel proud that he has lived in the days of Grattan? who has not turned to him for comfort, from the false friends and open enemies of Ireland? who did not remember him in the days of its burnings, wastings and murders? No government ever dismayed him--the world could not bribe him--he thought only of Ireland: lived for no other object: dedicated to her his beautiful fancy, his elegant wit, his manly courage, and all the splendour of his astonishing eloquence. He was so born, so gifted, that poetry, forensic skill, elegant literature, and all the highest attainments of human genius, were within his reach; but he thought the noblest occupation of a man was to make other men happy and free; and in that straight line he kept for fifty years, without one side-look, one yielding thought, one motive in his heart which he might not have laid open to the view of God or man."
The man to whom tributes such as these were voluntarily paid, must have been a mortal of no ordinary character and merit.
Daniel O'Connell, at one period called "the member for all Ireland," was born, not at, but near Derrynane Abbey, in Kerry, on the 6th of August, 1775, and died at Genoa on the 15th of May, 1847. He had nearly completed his seventy-second year. For nearly forty years of that extended period he had been a public man--perhaps the most public man in Ireland. For at least a quarter of a century his reputation was not merely Irish--nor British--nor European--but unquestionably cosmopolitan.
Fallen as we are upon the evil days of Mediocrity, it may not be useless to dwell upon the conduct and the character, the aims and the actions, of one who, think of him as we may, candour must admit to be one of the great men of the age,--one of the very few great men of Ireland's later years.
"Some men are born to greatness--some achieve greatness--and some have greatness thrust upon them." Daniel O'Connell stands in a predicament between the two latter postulates. He certainly was the artificer of his own fame and power, but, as certainly, much of it arose out of the force of circumstances. When he launched his bark upon the ocean of politics, he may have anticipated something--much of success and eminence, but he never could have dreamed of wielding such complete and magnificent power as was long at his command. Strong determination, great ability, natural facility of expression, the art of using strong words without committing himself, and a most elastic temperament, ("prepared for either fortune," as Eugene Aram said of himself)--all these formed an extraordinary combination, and yet all these, even in their unity, might have been of little worth, but for the admitted fact that circumstances happily occurred which allowed these qualities a fair scope for development. Many poets, I dare swear, have lived and died unknown--either not writing at all, or writing but to destroy what they had written. Noble orators have lived and died, "mute and inglorious," because the opportunity for display had never been given. In truth, we may say, with Philip Van Artevelde,