NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. JULY 1, 1826. ORIGINAL PAPERS. SKETCHES OF THE IRISH BAR.-NO. XIII. I HAVE heretofore observed that it formed no part of my plan to make my selection of subjects from the Irish Bar, according to any supposed scale of individual merit or importance, and repeat the intimation here; for were it otherwise, I should certainly have been unjust to the person whom I now take up, in having so long delayed to make any mention of his name. Mr. Wallace is in several respects a remarkable man. He has for many years held an eminent station in his profession, and is pre-eminently entitled to the self-gratulation of reflecting, that his success has been of that honourable kind, in which neither accident nor patronage had any share. Of his early life and original prospects I have heard little, besides the fact that, in his youth, he found himself alone in the world without competence or connections, and with merely the rudiments of general knowledge; and that under these disheartening circumstances, instead of acquiescing in the obscurity to which he was apparently doomed, he formed, and for years persevered in a solitary plan of self-instruction, until feeling his courage and ambition increased by the result of the experiments he had made upon himself, and measuring his strength with the difficulties to be encountered, he rejected the temporary allurements of any more ignoble calling; and with a boldness and self-reliance, which the event has justified, decided upon the Bar as the most suited to his pretensions. With this view, and with a patient determination of purpose, which is among the most trying exercises of practical philosophy, he qualified himself for Trinity College, and entering there, gave himself (what was probably his chief motive in submitting to the delay) the reputation of having received a regular and learned education. He was called to the Bar in 1798, where his talents soon bringing him into notice, he advanced at a gradual and steady pace to competence, then on to affluence, and finally to the conspicuous place which he now fills in the Irish courts. He obtained a silk gown about seven years ago—a period beyond which it could not, without consummate injustice, have been withheld; but he was known to have connected himself, in his political sympathies, with Mr. Grattan and the friends of Ireland; and this, according to the maxims by which the country was then governed, was an unanswerable reason for procrastinating to the latest moment his title to precedency. Mr. Wallace's intellectual qualities are in many particulars such as might be inferred from his history. In his character, as developed by his early life, we find none of the peculiarities of his country-no mercurial vivacity—no movements of an impatient and irregular ambition-but July, 1826.-VOL. XVII. NO. LXVII. B NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. JULY 1, 1826. ORIGINAL PAPERS. SKETCHES OF THE IRISH BAR.-NO. XIII. Mr. Wallace. I HAVE heretofore observed that it formed no part of my plan to make my selection of subjects from the Irish Bar, according to any supposed scale of individual merit or importance, and repeat the intimation here; for were it otherwise, I should certainly have been unjust to the person whom I now take up, in having so long delayed to make any mention of his name. Mr. Wallace is in several respects a remarkable man. He has for many years held an eminent station in his profession, and is pre-eminently entitled to the self-gratulation of reflecting, that his success has been of that honourable kind, in which neither accident nor patronage had any share. Of his early life and original prospects I have heard little, besides the fact that, in his youth, he found himself alone in the world without competence or connections, and with merely the rudiments of general knowledge; and that under these disheartening circumstances, instead of acquiescing in the obscurity to which he was apparently doomed, he formed, and for years persevered in a solitary plan of self-instruction, until feeling his courage and ambition increased by the result of the experiments he had made upon himself, and measuring his strength with the difficulties to be encountered, he rejected the temporary allurements of any more ignoble calling; and with a boldness and self-reliance, which the event has justified, decided upon the Bar as the most suited to his pretensions. With this view, and with a patient determination of purpose, which is among the most trying exercises of practical philosophy, he qualified himself for Trinity College, and entering there, gave himself (what was probably his chief motive in submitting to the delay) the reputation of having received a regular and learned education. He was called to the Bar in 1798, where his talents soon bringing him into notice, he advanced at a gradual and steady pace to competence, then on to affluence, and finally to the conspicuous place which he now fills in the Irish courts. He obtained a silk gown about seven years ago—a period beyond which it could not, without consummate injustice, have been withheld; but he was known to have connected himself, in his political sympathies, with Mr. Grattan and the friends of Ireland; and this, according to the maxims by which the country was then governed, was an unanswerable reason for procrastinating to the latest moment his title to precedency. Mr. Wallace's intellectual qualities are in many particulars such as might be inferred from his history. In his character, as developed by his early life, we find none of the peculiarities of his country-no mercurial vivacity-no movements of an impatient and irregular ambition-but July, 1826.-VOL. XVII. NO. LXVII, B rather the composed and dogged ardour of a Scotchman, intent upon his distant object of fame and profit, and submitting, without a murmur, to the fatigues and delays through which it must be approached. In the same way it may be said of his mind, that it has little or nothing that is strictly national. The forms in which it excels are purely abstract, and would come as appropriately from a native of any other country. It is as an advocate (as contradistinguished from a mere lawyer) that he has been most successful; and here the characteristic quality of his style and manner, or rather the compound result of all the qualities that belong to him professionally and individually, is masculine energy. He is emphatically "the strong man." There is at all times, and on all occasions, an innate constitutional imposing vigour in his topics, language, tones, and gestures; all co-operating to a common end, and keeping for ever alive in his auditory the conviction that they are listening to a singularly able-minded man. This impression is aided by his general aspect. His face, without a particle of pedantic solemnity, is full of seriousness and determination. Whatever of lofty or refined emotion may belong to the individual, never settles upon his countenance, and equally absent is every trace of sentimental discontent: but you find there a rigid statue-like stability of expression, importing consciousness of strength and immobility of purpose, and suggesting to those who know his history and character an early and deliberate preparation for the world's frown, and a determination to retort it. His features, though remarkably in unison with the intellectual and moral characters impressed upon them, have few physical peculiarities that can be conveyed by description. They are of the hardy Celtic outline, are evidently composed of the most durable materials, and still retain all the compactness and rotundity of early youth. His frame, though little above the middle size, presents the same character of vigour and durability, and contributes its due proportion towards completing that general idea of strength, which I have selected as most descriptive of the entire man. The more stern attributes, however, that I have ascribed to him, refer exclusively to the individual, as I have seen him in the discharge of his public duties. In the intercourse of private life he is, according to universal report, of the most frank and familiar manners, an extremely attractive companion, and, what is better still, a warm and constant friend. Considering as I do, Mr. Wallace's mind to be in its original constitution what may be denominated one of all-work, I should say of it, that among the multiform and dissimilar departments of intellectual exercise involved in the profession of the law, there was scarcely any for which he could not have provided a corresponding aptitude of faculty. His powers have, however, been very much confined to those classes of cases in which facts rather than legal doctrines are the subject-matter of investigation. This may have been partly accidentalfor at the Irish Bar, it is not only matter of chance whether the individual is to succeed at all, but chance, in the majority of instances, determines the particular faculties that must be developed and permanently cultivated for the purpose. There the aspirant for professional eminence cannot, as in England, select a particular department, and make it the subject of his exclusive study. One comes to the scene of exertion relying upon his stores of learned research, and his capacity for the |