[9] Such an escape as this was actually made from the dock, during the Clonmel assizes, by the bold and notorious Buck English, who afterwards found his way into the first society in Cork city and county. Indeed, the actual life of this man was parallel in many of its leading points to that of "Paul Clifford," the hero of Bulwer's brilliant fiction. The term "Buck" was usually bestowed on any fashionable bravo, in Ireland, who wore dashing attire, and indulged in all sorts of extravagances of expenditure and excess. There was "Buck Sheehy" of Dublin, as well as our own, "Buck English" of Cork. Indeed, there were sufficient of the genus in Dublin to form the majority of the "Hell-fire Club," who once set fire to their club-room, and remained in it until the flames actually burned the hair from their heads and the clothes from their bodies. This was done to decide the punishments of a future state! Most of the "Bucks" were men of family, education, and wealth. Several peers were members of the community. At one time (the author of "Ireland sixty years ago," relates) there were three noblemen, brothers, so notorious for their outrages, that they acquired singular names, as indicative of their characters. The first was the terror of every one who met him in public places—the second was seldom out of prison—the third was lame, yet no whit disabled from his Buckish achievements. They were universally known by the names of "Hell-gate," "Newgate," and "Cripplegate." There were two brothers, one of whom had shot his friend, and the other stabbed his coachman. They were distinguished as "Kill-Kelly" and "Kill-coachy." This reminds one of the Irish traveller, who said he had been to Kill-many and was going to Kill-more.
[10] The saying in Ireland, when the locality of good-looking people is to be indicated, is—"Cork lads and Limerick lasses." In Lancashire, there is something like this in the familiar manner in which the natives speak of "Wigan chaps, Bolton fellows, Manchester men, and Liverpool gentlemen."
[11] Irish miles are longer than English, in the proportion of 11 to 14. A traveller complained to the chaise-driver of the narrowness of the way. "Oh, then," said the man, "why need you be angry with the roads? Sure, we make up in the length for the scanty measure we get in the width."
[12] Created Lord Fermoy in 1855.
[13] There are full grounds for this assertion. Classical learning has flourished in Kerry (under a hedge) from time immemorial. I recollect an illustrative anecdote. Two poor scholars who were travelling through Kerry, came to a farm-house, when faint with hunger, and foot-sore with walking; they went in, and modestly wanted "a drink of water," which was given them. On leaving the house, where they had expected something better than this scant hospitality, one of them exclaimed, "Ah, Pat, that's not the way that a farmer's wife would trate a poor scholar in our part of the world. 'Tis the good bowl of milk she'd give him, and not the piggin of cold water. She's a malus mulier." The other responded, "Say mala—it must be so to agree with the feminine mulier. Don't you know that malus mulier is bad Latin?" "Hold your tongue," was the answer: "whatever it is, it is only too good for a niggard like her."
[14] This refers more particularly to the year 1770.
[15] Grattan used to say that nothing ever was finer, in delivery and effect, than Chatham's appeal, on the American question, to the bishops, the judges, and the peers:—"You talk of driving the Americans: I might as well talk of driving them before me with this crutch."
[16] O'Connell's first public speech was against the Union. It was made on January 13, 1800, at a Catholic meeting in Dublin, in unequivocal condemnation of that measure. The resolutions that day adopted were drawn up by O'Connell, and assumed an antagonistic position.
[17] It was the late Dr. England, Catholic Bishop of Charleston, S. C., who then resided near Cork, who pointed out to O'Connell the conjoint sin and folly of duelling, and induced him to promise that he would never again appeal to arms. It was reported, at the time, that O'Connell had lingered in London, when Peel expected him at Calais, awaiting news of his wife's health (he had left her ill in Dublin), and that another public character had declined a challenge on the plea of his daughter's illness. The late Chief Justice Burke thus commemorated the double event:
"Two heroes of Erin, abhorrent of slaughter,