Martinsburg Gazette And Public Advertiser

A portrait of O'Connell, the great Irish Liberator. He is a tall man, of gentlemanly appearance, somewhat inclined to stoop, and, as I thought, betwixt fifty and sixty years of age. His face is pleasing, I would almost say handsome; and his oratory is of a fluent, easy, confident sort, which bespeaks in him a perfect consciousness of his own powers, and creates in his auditors a feeling that they are listening to a man of talent and a gentleman. O'Connell may err—Irish enthusiasm may carry, as it has already, in many instances, carried him too far, but he is not to be sneered at, nor one who is to be regarded as nothing more than a violent declaimer. Let any one see him and hear him in the Four Courts, and in the Associate rooms, as I have heard him, and he will confess that O'Connell is a talented man, as well as an elegant orator, ingenious, and gifted with the extraordinary tact of suiting his efforts in an instant to the feelings and intelligence of his auditory. It was such a man that took his seat in the decorated chair at Ennis, and it is such a man that now directs the energies of the Catholic population of Ireland.