4to. The duchess of Buckingham figured conspicuously in the intrigues, as well as in the fashions, of the day. She was reputed the natural daughter of James II., by Catherine Sedley, Lady Dorchester; but was believed to be really the daughter of Colonel Graham, a man of gallantry of the time. The duchess was extravagantly vain of her supposed royal descent. She maintained a kind of royal state, and affected to be the head of the Jacobite party in England. Horace Walpole gives a number of anecdotes respecting her, which show that she was almost mad with pride. When Pope wrote his famous character of Atossa he showed it to the duchess of Marlborough, pretending that it was levelled at the duchess of Buckingham. But old Sarah was too shrewd to be thus deceived, and at once recognized her own portrait.—J. T.
SHEFFIELD. See Holroyd.
SHEIL, Richard Lalor, dramatist, orator, and politician, was born on the 17th of August, 1791, at Drumdowney, near the city of Waterford. In his eleventh year he was transferred to a school established at Kensington house, conducted by M. C. Prince de Broglie. In 1804 he went to the Roman catholic college of Stoneyhurst, where he remained till 1807, when he entered Trinity college, Dublin. Here he distinguished himself by his love of poetry and the drama. The bar was the profession of his choice; but, unfortunately, his father was involved in mercantile speculations, which led to his ruin, and Richard was indebted to the liberality of a relative, who allowed him £100 a year till he should be called to the bar. The family removed to Dublin, and Sheil was a constant attendant at the College Historical Society. In 1810 he first came forward as a political speaker, and on several occasions attracted favourable notice. Having taken his degree of A.B. in 1811, he entered as a law student at Lincoln's inn, visiting Dublin at intervals, and taking a leading part in the debates at the catholic board. In 1814 he was called to the Irish bar, and produced his first drama, "Adelaide," which was played at Crow Street theatre, and well received. Miss O'Neil representing the heroine. Sheil did not make much progress in his profession, though he appears to have been diligent; nor did his marriage with Miss O'Halloran, the niece of Sir William M'Mahon, the master of the rolls, improve his position. In 1817 his tragedy of the "Apostate" was produced at Covent Garden, and met with complete success. This was followed in 1818 by "Bella mira," which for a time was successful. The following year Sheil put on the stage "Evadne," which, for poetic merit, originality, and dramatic power, may be considered the finest production of the author, and still continues to be an acting play. In 1820 his serious drama of "Montoni" was acted, and though abounding in passages of great poetic merit, had but little success. It was in 1821 that Sheil again essayed to take a standing in politics. O'Connell had advocated the postponement of catholic emancipation to the agitation for parliamentary reform. Sheil opposed his views in an elaborate letter, which was answered by the demagogue with such a caustic humour as injured the popularity of Sheil, and threw him back on literature and law. The idea struck him of adapting the works of the older dramatists to the modern stage, and with this object he adapted Massinger's Fatal Dowry, which was produced at Drury Lane in 1824 with great success. In 1822 Sheil lost his wife, after the birth of their first son; and the same year he commenced, in conjunction with W. H. Curran, the "Sketches of the Irish Bar" in the New Monthly, which obtained high reputation as masterly and original portraitures of the great men of the day. "The Huguenot" was his next drama, which was brought out at Covent Garden; but notwithstanding its merits, it failed. On the formation of the celebrated Catholic Association in 1823, Sheil became a leading member. He prepared the great petition to parliament for an inquiry into the mode of administering the laws in Ireland, was one of the delegates to London in 1825, and continued throughout to be a frequent speaker. With him originated the ideas of a Roman catholic census, and of those aggregate meetings through the country which became so formidable to the government, and at which he delivered many of his brilliant harangues. The articles, too, in French, published in L'Etoile, on the catholic grievances were from his pen. During the general election of 1826 Sheil took an active part in promoting the return of liberal candidates. Meantime he was getting into practice, especially as a nisi prius and criminal lawyer; and, though never a profound legist, his readiness and oratorical powers gave him great weight with juries. In political influence, too, he occupied a very high position, so that, in 1827, the government thought fit to institute a state prosecution against him for a seditious libel. The bills were found. Sheil traversed in prox. to the next term, before which Mr. Canning succeeded as prime minister upon the death of Lord Liverpool, and the prosecution was abandoned. Sheil was present at the great protestant meeting held at Penenden in 1828, to petition against catholic emancipation, and delivered a very powerful speech on behalf of his co-religionists. The uproar, it is true, rendered him totally inaudible; but having prepared his speech verbatim, he took the precaution of giving a copy to an evening London paper, and thus succeeded in publishing a harangue which Bentham pronounced a "masterly union of logic and rhetoric." Upon the passing of the catholic relief bill in 1829, Sheil naturally looked forward to be one of the first representatives of those of whose political rights he was one of the ablest champions. Nevertheless he was defeated in his contest for the county of Louth, and was indebted to Lord Anglesea for a seat in parliament for the borough of Milborne Port. In 1830 Sheil was called to the inner bar, and married his second wife, the widow of William Power of Gurteen, in the county of Waterford. Ere long Sheil took part in the debates, his first speech being on the second reading of the reform bill; and from that period he continued through his life to take an active part on all great questions, and attained a high character as an orator. Upon the formation of the Repeal Association, Sheil for a time held aloof, but at length joined the body, and was returned for the county of Tipperary in the first reformed parliament. It must, however, be admitted, that he never had any belief in the reality of what he termed "a splendid phantom." In February, 1838, Sheil was appointed commissioner of Greenwich hospital, and in August, 1839, vice-president of the board of trade, which post he exchanged in 1841 for that of judge-advocate; and in the new parliament in that year he was returned for the borough of Dungarvan. In the great state trial against O'Connell and others for conspiracy in 1844, Sheil was retained as counsel for John O'Connell, and made a most powerful and brilliant speech to evidence, the last which he made at the bar. Politics now entirely engrossed him, and he took a high position in the house both as an orator and a statesman. The declining health of his only child induced him to visit Madeira in 1845. After his son's death he returned to England in 1846, and again resumed political life; and upon the formation of Earl Russell's ministry in 1846 he was appointed master of the mint. With the session of 1850 Sheil's parliamentary career reached its close—a career of twenty years, during which he had occupied a prominent place in the senate, and took a distinguished part in all the great controversies of the period. Failing health and repeated attacks of gout made retirement from labour desirable, and on the 4th of November, 1850, he was appointed minister at Florence, where he arrived in January, 1851, and died there on the 21st of May. Undoubtedly Sheil must be ranked amongst the distinguished men of his age. Like Demosthenes, he became a great orator in spite of physical defects, which he overcame by unceasing perseverance. His voice was naturally shrill and unmusical, his stature small, and his personal appearance without dignity; but he had an car exquisitely correct and sensitive, and "nature had given him," as Professor Wilson said, "as fine a pair of eyes as ever graced human head—large, deeply set, dark, liquid, flashing like gems, and these fix you like a basilisk, so that you forget everything else about him." "There is," says M. Duvergier, "in Sheil something of Juvenal, of Pindar, and of Mirabeau. His satire is shrewd and biting; his poetry dazzles; his enthusiasm carries you away." Bushe, in speaking of Sheil, observed, "His mind is one of the richest in poetry and eloquence I ever knew. For the purpose of producing an effect upon a popular audience in Ireland I consider him as standing in the very first rank. He seems to me to have high powers for didactic poetry. The rich poetical invectives with which his speeches abound, if versified, would be fine satirical poems." with all this his speeches were well considered and closely argumentative, and beneath the glitter of genius and the play of fancy there were ever to be found the skilful arrangement that addressed itself to the judgment, and the logical force that sought to convince the reason.—J. F. W.
SHELBURNE, William Petty, second earl of, and first marquis of Lansdowne, a distinguished English statesman, was
