"I must now, once more, thank you for your kindness, and bid you farewell. Go and do by me as I shall do by you; drink my health in a _bumper_; and I shall drink all your's in a bumper of good _Irish whiskey_!!!"
Who that reads this address will not acknowledge his majesty's genius for speaking was equal to his talents for ruling? Shades of Fox, Grattan, and Sheridan, what a display of eloquence was here, delivered, too, by the "most polished man in Europe!" We may easily account for the rapturous admiration which the Irish people evinced for their monarch! Naturally eloquent themselves, they knew how to appreciate the energy and beauty of what a _king_ addressed to their taste and understanding. When he assured them, in the _most elegant_ and _lofty_ language, that "his heart was _entirely Irish_," and that, in proof of the sincerity of his royal professions, he would "drink all their healths in a bumper of good Irish whiskey," they felt, with its superiority, the exhilirating stimulant of kingly declamation, and yielded to all the ecstacy that forms so prominent a characteristic of their sensations. The declaration of a _British_ king, that his heart was _wholly Irish_ was a kindness as highly strained, with respect to them, as disheartening to the feelings of all his other subjects. Great as was our _admiration_ of the _nobleness_, both in matter and style, of this oratorical display, we scarcely were able, for a time, to reconcile our startled judgment to the perfect equity of this _sudden_ partiality for a people who had never before experienced any mighty favours from the same quarter. But our error, we frankly confess, was the child of our stupidity: we understood his majesty to the simple letter, rather than in the _royal_ meaning, of what he addressed to his long-forsaken children, and were too dull to understand his language till some time afterwards, when he visited his German dominions. But when, after assuring his Hibernian subjects that his heart was _wholly Irish_, he, in the same _exquisite_ style, protested that his heart was _entirely Hanoverian_, we were wise enough to comprehend his majesty. There is a kind of ductility in this sort of affection that soars as much above the ordinary course of human feeling as the language in which the sentiment is conveyed surpasses the general powers of lingual eloquence. _Such goodness_ and _such eloquence_ may be ADMIRED, but we hope they will never be COPIED!