The Rev. Mr. O'Rorke, of Maynooth, in his third edition
of ",The Life of O'Connell," has just added a chapter containing Mr. Gladstone's personal recollections of that remarkable man. Mr. Gladstone's opinion, shortly summarised by himself, is this :--" I remember to have held from the first this opinion ,—th at as a popular leader, he was not only the first of his day, but was one who could well bear comparison with any of the greatest popular leaders recorded in history." Of course Mr. Gladstone does not mean to deny in him those coarse and ad captandum elements of character which struck so painfully on Montalembert, when, at the end of his enthusiastic pilgrimage, he found rather a suffi- ciently honest demagogue than a political knight-errant. But Mr. Gladstone does evidently mean that O'Connell had as few of the. poorer elements of a demagogue as Rienzi, for instance, and pro- bably far fewer than Cleon. And evidently as a shrewd political observer and critic, O'Connell must have had no mean qualities. For example, Mr. Gladstone records a criticism of his on Joseph Hume, which was as wittily expressed as it was true :—" He would recommend Mr. Hume," he said, "to learn to finish one sentence before he began the next but one." And certainly it is very strange that it BO often happens that practical men, who. would not dream of beginning a new task till they had done all they intended at the old one no sooner begin to talk, than they tumble about between that which they are saying, and that which they intend to say, as if method in speech had nothing to do witls method in action.
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