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 ROCHE. 495 in which the immortal Wolfe fell, and particularly at the taking of the Moro fort, at the Havannah. Shortly after his retirement from actual service in the army, he obtained a seat in the Irish House of Commons, of which he con tinued a member up to the period of the Union. In that assembly he was distinguished as a perpetual appendage to the ministerial establishment, and enjoyed from the government a small pension, together with the office of master of ceremonies at the castle of Dublin, for which he was nationally adapted, by the suavity of his provincial accent, and the good humour and gentlemanly politeness of a soldier of the old school. In Parliament, though his eloquence was not of the most polished or forcible cast, the richness of his national brogue, the humorous oddity of his rhetoric, and a supernatural propensity to that species of figure called the Bull, which might induce an astrologer to suppose him born under the influence of Taurus, rarely failed to excite continued peals of laughter when he spoke in the house; and of those qualifications the ministers of the day, whom he always supported, con stantly availed themselves, whenever the temper of the House required to be relieved from the irritating asperities of warm debate; or whenever the speech of a patriot, per haps too powerful for refutation, was more conveniently to be answered by ridicule. On those occasions it was rather amusing to see the worthy baronet, after repeated calls from the treasury benches, rising to answer some of the most splendid orations of Mr. Grattan, Mr. Ponsonby, or Mr. Curran, by observing upon them in his own way. The display made at many of those opportunities by the worthy baronet, though it excited perpetual laughter from the oddity of his language and the happy tropes which usually distinguished his stile of argument, sometimes surprised, by i t s order o f arrangement and apposite point, those who were not i n the secret o f the worthy baronet's previous arrangement for the discussion. The truth was, that whatever might have been his pitch o f intellect, b e was gifted with a most extraordinary memory; and could