Among all the vivid characters which Ireland produced during Grattan’s Parliament and the following decades, the memory of Charles Kendal Bushe retains a singular freshness and gracious charm. His chief fame was as an orator and a pleader in the law courts. Charles Lever has paid tribute, in his Jack Hinton, to ‘the elegance of manner and classical perfection of wit that made Bushe the Cicero of his nation.’ Outside of Ireland his fame is less widely known; and the printers may well be pardoned for having altered the name Bushe to Burke in the first edition of Jack Hinton. This memoir of him, compiled as a labour of love by his great-grand-daughter, assisted by the old box of his papers bequeathed to her by her cousin and collaborator the late Martin Ross, presents a delightful picture of a very lovable man. Handsomely produced and copiously illustrated with portraits and with many amusing little sketches which recall the inimitable humour of the ‘Irish R.M.,’ the memoir would surely have delighted that elegant and courteous gentleman who was so devoted to his family life all through a career of great public distinction and success.

Students of the history of Catholic Emancipation will be familiar with Bushe as one of the generous-minded Protestants who in a period of shameless corruption and indifference to public justice was always a champion of Catholic claims to equality before the law. Miss Somerville might have added many striking tributes to him from the Catholic side.