O'BRIEN, THE IRISH GIANT.

ITHIN the last seventy or eighty years several individuals of remarkable stature have exhibited themselves in this country as giants. The most distinguished of these was Patrick Cotter, commonly called Patrick O'Brien, and still more generally known by the appellation of the Irish Giant. He was born in the year 1761, in the county of Kinsale, in Ireland, of obscure parents, who were people of middling stature. At an early age, he was put to the trade of a bricklayer; but his growth was so rapid that when he had reached his eighteenth year, his uncommon size attracted the notice of a showman, who obtained permission of the simple youth to exhibit him three years in England, for which he was to pay him fifty pounds per annum. Not contented with his bargain, the showman underlet the liberty of showing him to another speculator, and when Cotter resisted this intended transfer of his person, he was saddled with a fictitious debt, and arrested at Bristol. In this situation he was accidentally noticed by a gentleman of that city, who had some business to transact with the sheriff's officer. The simplicity of his manners, and his extreme distress, induced this gentleman to make some inquiry concerning him, and having reason to think that he

was unjustly detained, he generously became his bail, and so far investigated the business, that he not only obtained him his liberty, but freed him from all kind of obligation to serve his mercenary master any longer.

It happened to be in the month of September when he was liberated, and by the assistance of his benefactor he was enabled to set up for himself in the fair then held in St. James's, Bristol. Success crowned his undertaking; instead of suffering under penury, he found himself in three days the possessor of thirty pounds.

He now commenced, and afterwards continued a regular exhibition of his person. His stature increased till he arrived at the age of twenty-five, when his growth somewhat abated, but he continued growing after that period, till he attained the height of eight feet seven inches. He was at the same time proportionably lusty. His hand, from the commencement of the palm to the extremity of the middle finger, measured twelve inches, and his shoes seventeen inches long. He could not, however, be denominated a well-made man; for though his limbs were not strikingly disproportioned, his figure wanted that general symmetry which men of ordinary size usually possess. The astonishment of the observant spectator at the extraordinary stature of Mr. O'Brien was not unaccompanied with pity, as every movement appeared to be attended with trouble and some pain. In the action of rising to salute or surprise his visitors, he generally placed both his hands on the small of his back, and, bending his body forward, rose with considerable difficulty from his seat, consisting of a common size table, on which was placed the cushion of a carriage.

During the twenty-five years that Mr. O'Brien exhibited himself, he was to be seen at different periods in the metropolis, and for four or five Bartholomew fairs at Smithfield. At such times he used frequently to walk about the streets for air and exercise, at two or three o'clock in the morning. In one of these nocturnal excursions, he was observed accompanied by two persons of common size, on whose shoulders he supported himself in the same manner as we sometimes see a well-grown man resting his hands on the shoulders of children ten or twelve years of age. In walking up Holborn-hill, he appeared to be greatly fatigued, and might be said rather to shuffle along than to walk, as he never lifted either of his feet from the stones. Proceeding along the more level pavement, his body appeared more erect, and had he not paid attention to avoid the lamps, his head would have struck against many of them.

It is a circumstance too general among those who expose their persons to public view, that to them all the rest of mankind are totally indifferent. For this reason neither connection nor friendship can possibly be established with them; every attempt to obtain information tending to elucidate their habits and manners, or the history of their lives, is regarded with jealousy, under the idea that it arises from impertinent or mischievous curiosity.

Had it not been for some such cause as this, we should probably have been enabled to collect many more particulars concerning O'Brien.

The following anecdote is related on the authority of those with whom he was most familiar. Being on a journey in his own carriage, he was one day stopped by a highwayman, on which he put his head forward to discover the cause that interrupted his progress. The highwayman, at the sight of so prodigious a figure, was struck with such a panic, that he clapped spurs to his horse, and made a precipitate retreat. It should be observed, that the carriage in which he travelled was of a peculiar construction, having a kind of box sunk to a considerable depth below the bottom of the vehicle, to admit his legs and feet.

It has been asserted that he was passionately fond of cards, and that he eagerly embraced every opportunity of engaging in that amusement, but that he could not lose with patience, not from a principle of parsimony, but the disgrace of being beaten.

In 1804, having realized an independence sufficient to keep a carriage, and to secure the conveniences of life, he declined the public exhibition of his person, which was always extremely irksome to his feelings. He was unoffending and amiable in his manners to his friends and acquaintance, of whom he had, in the last years of his life, a pretty extensive circle, as he was neither averse to a cheerful glass nor to pleasant company. During this interval he resided, we believe, entirely at Bristol, where, in September, 1806, he fell a sacrifice to a disease of the lungs, combined with an affection of the liver, in the forty-sixth year of his age. He expired without the smallest apparent pain or agony. The leaden coffin in which his body was enclosed measured nine feet two inches, and the wooden case four inches more. To prevent any attempt to disturb his remains, of which he had the greatest horror, his grave was sunk to the depth of twelve feet in the solid rock, and such precautions were taken as effectually to render abortive either violence or stratagem.

LAUDE AMBROISE SEURAT, better known by the title of "the Living Skeleton," was undoubtedly the greatest natural wonder of the period in which he lived. He was born at Troyes, in the department of Champaigne, on the 10th of April, 1797, and when exhibited to the public in England, where he excited universal astonishment, was just twenty-eight years of age. His parents were respectable but poor, and unlike their son they both possessed a good constitution, and enjoyed robust health. At his birth, there was nothing in his appearance that indicated disease, but in proportion as he grew in size, his flesh gradually wasted away. This remarkable decay continued till he arrived at manhood, when he attained his full stature, and his frame assumed the identical skeleton form which it ever afterwards retained. In France his case excited great interest, and he was deemed quite a lusus naturæ. Many proposals were made to his father for the purchase of the body of his son, in the event of his demise, but they were uniformly rejected. A medical gentleman of Burgundy, indeed, offered a carte blanche,

which the parent, with feelings highly honourable to himself, also refused, stating his determination that in the event of his son's death, he should be peaceably consigned to the cemetery of his native city. While at Rouen, no less than fifteen hundred persons flocked in one day to see Seurat on his way to England.

It was in 1825 that he arrived in the British metropolis. Numerous descriptions of him appeared in the journals of the day. Perhaps the most graphic of the whole was that which Mr. Hone published in his Every Day Book, one of the most ingenious works of the time, full of curious, instructive, and amusing information, and now a universal library companion. A portion of his description we shall proceed to quote. "It was on the first day of Seurat's exhibition," says Mr. Hone, "that I first visited him. This was on Tuesday the 9th of August. I was at the 'Chinese Saloon,' before the doors were opened, and was the first of the public admitted, followed by my friend, an artist, for the purpose of taking drawings. Seurat was not quite ready to appear; in the mean time, another visitor or two arrived, and after examining the canopy, and other arrangements, my attention was directed to the Chinese papering of the room, while Seurat had silently opened the curtains that concealed him, and stood motionless towards the front of the platform, as he is represented in the engraving. On turning round, I was instantly rivetted by his amazing emaciation; he seemed another 'Lazarus come forth' without his grave-clothes, and for a moment I was too consternated to observe more than his general appearance. My eye, then, first caught the arm as the most remarkable limb; from the shoulder to the elbow it is like an ivory German flute somewhat deepened in colour by age; it is not larger, and the skin is of that hue, and, not having a trace of muscle, it is as perfect a cylinder as a writing rule. Amazed by the wasted limbs, I was still more amazed by the extraordinary depression of the chest. Its indentation is similar to that which an over-careful mother makes in the pillowed surface of an infant's bed for its repose. Nature has here inverted her own order, and turned the convex inwards, while the nobler organs, obedient to her will, maintain life by the gentle exercise of their wonted functions in a lower region. Below the ribs, the trunk so immediately curves in, that the red band of the silk covering, though it is only loosely placed, seems a tourniquet to constrict the bowels within their prison-house, and the hipbones, being of their natural size, the waist is like a wasp's. By this part of the frame we are reminded of some descriptions of the abstemious and Bedouin Arab of the desert, in whom it is said the abdomen seems to cling to the vertebræ. If the integument of the bowels can be called flesh, it is the only flesh on the body: for it seems to have wholly shrunk from the limbs; and where the muscles that have not wholly disappeared remain, they are also shrunk. He wears shoes to keep cold from his feet, which