unaffected by the great political disappointment of his life. After the rejection of the Catholic Relief Bill of 1813, which was accompanied by a clause reserving to the English sove reign the power of veto in the election of Catholic bishops, the Catholic board repudiated the proposed compromise and declined to entrust Grattan further with their cause. He, however, gave it the same energetic support as formerly, and after 1815 he never spoke in the English parliament on any other subject. In 1819 his motion was defeated by the small majority of two ; and on the reassembling of parliament in the following May, he undertook, con trary to the advice of his physician, a journey to London in order again to bring forward the subject, but died a few days after his arrival, 4th June 1820. He received the honour of a public funeral and a grave in Westminster Abbey, where he lies near the tombs of Pitt and Fox. Lord Byron, who had heard Grattan only in the English House of Commons, says that he would have come near to his ideal of a perfect orator but for his harlequin manner ; and he also states that Curran was in the habit of taking him off by bowing to the very ground and thanking God that he had no peculiarities of gesture or appearance. His features were large and plain, and he was low in stature and so awkwardly formed that probably he never could have acquired a very graceful gesture ; but the gravity and impressiveness of his bearing banished all sense of the ridiculous, and perhaps even the odd ness and violence of his attitudes assisted to dissipate the feeling in his hearers of his personal insignificance. His voice, though not harsh, was deficient both in mellowness and volume, and when not elevated by emotion into shrillness had a low drawling accent. He succeeded, however, by virtue of appropriate emphasis and of concentrated energy, in bring ing home to his hearers all the various shades of the passion and purpose of his discourse, arid this perhaps with greater vividness than if it had been accomplished by means of an elocution which, if less faulty, would not have expressed so well his own peculiar individuality. In private life he was simple, genial, and courteous, and the felicity of his language, flavoured by an enunciation and manner that were all his own, lent to his conversation a rare and peculiar charm. His speeches suffer much from imperfect reporting, but their leading characteristics can be determined with con siderable accuracy. Great labour, direct and indirect, was bestowed on their preparation, and few speeches show so many traces of art; but it is art transfused and palpitating with enthusiasm, and therefore, though defective in ease and simplicity, they cannot be charged with artificiality or affectation. In regard to the chief fault of his style, the excessive use of epigram, it must be remembered that he made it supply the place both of wit and of direct argument; and that it never wearied his audience by a monotony of stilted smartness, but, by its incisive vigour and its startling- originality, rendered his speeches perhaps unequalled for sustained brilliancy and interest. His oratorical triumphs were won, not by the stately marshalling of arguments and illustrations towards a climax, but by sudden surprises from so many directions, and so closely following each other that resistance to his attacks soon became impossible. In regard to subject-matter his speeches do not suffer from compari son even with those of Burke, His favourite method of enforcing his arguments was by illustrations either of "simi larity or of contrast drawn from history or from contem porary events ; and while in this way he exhibited in every possible light the plausibility of his contentions, he gave dignity and elevation to his theme by removing it from the narrow sphere of party politics, and connecting it with principles of universal and permanent consequence. Much of the effect of his eloquence was due to the boldness of his statements and of his allusions and imagery, a boldness which, though often amounting to hardihood, never over stepped the boundaries between the sublime and the ridi culous. In remarkable contrast to other Irish orators, and especially to his great contemporary Curran, he possessed neither wit nor humour, and this no doubt accounts for the sustained and pitiless vehemence of his invectives against opponents who had thoroughly roused his auger. These attacks were rendered the more formidable from his power of delineating character by epithets, the graphic force of which had an almost electrical effect. This power he ex ercised, however, more frequently for purposes of laudation than censure, and perhaps the finest examples of it in his speeches are two short incidental allusions to Fox and Burke. A remarkable union of boldness with moderation and restraint characterized his statesmanship as it did his oratory, for while he embraced within his scheme of reform the whole circle of Ireland s wrongs and disabilities, and was prepared to face the consequences of all constitutional changes, however great, which justice seemed to demand, his unswerving aim, in the face both of strong provocation from the Government and of the powerful assaults of popular clamour, was not to loosen but to cement the ties which bound Ireland to Great Britain. That his political conduct was governed too much by abstractions, and had too little regard to expediency, is a conclusion which has been both affirmed and denied, but in any case it will be admitted by most that his beneficial influence on Irish politics has been less felt by the direct accomplishment of his aims than through the moral effect of his enlightened and incorruptible patriot ism, and the gradual change which has taken place in the mental attitude of English statesmen towards his country.
Grattan s Sficcches, ivith prefatory observations, the whole com prising a brief rcvicvi of the most important political events in the history of Ireland were published at Dublin in 1811. His Speeches in Hie Irish and in the Imperial Parliament, edited by his son, in 4 volumes, appeared at London in 1822, and his Miscellaneous Works also in the same year. See his Memoirs by his son Henry Grattau, Esq., M.P., in 5 volumes, London, 1839-46; Lecky s Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, 2d edition, 1872; and, among various notices by contemporaries, especially that in vol. vii. of the Dublin University Magazine, which, notwithstanding political bias, gives a remarkably unprejudiced representation of his character and abilities, and that by Lord Brougham in the 1st vol. of his collected works. The political events of the period are of course graphically narrated by Mr Froude in his English in Ireland, vols. ii. and iii., but his principal design is to show the pernicious effects of Grattan s efforts. Among the ablest criticisms of Mr Fronde s work is that by W. E. H. Lecky in Macmillan s Magazine for January 1873 and June 1874.
GRATZ, or Graz,1 the capital of the Austrian crownland
of Styria, is situated in the broad and fertile valley of the
Mur, and the beauty of its position has given rise to the
punning French description, La ville des Graces sur la riviere
de rAmotir. From Vienna it is distant about 90 miles as
the crow flies, and about 139 miles by rail. Its latitude is
47 49 N., its longitude 15 27 E., and its height above
the sea 1499 feet. The main town lies on the left bank
of the river, at the foot of the Schlossberg or castle-hill,
but two of the principal suburbs, Lend and Gries, occupy
an extensive area on the right bank, and communication is
maintained by four bridges besides the railway bridge.
Among the numerous churches of the city the most im
portant is the Gothic cathedral of St yEgidius, founded by
the emperor Frederick III. in 1450-1462, on the site of a
previous church mentioned as early as 1157. It has been
several times modified and redecorated, more particularly
1 The name was frequently written Gratz, Gretz, or Grez, but in 1843 it was decided, through the influence mainly of Hammer-Purg- stall, that the official form should be Graz, in accordance at once with the local pronunciation and the derivation of the word, which was originally, it is believed, the Slavonic for "little castle," Gradats or
Gratsa in Servian, and Hradek in Bohemian.
