It must have been nine o'clock precisely when we entered the breakfast room. So much I know by an a priori argument, and could wish, therefore, that it had been scientifically important to know it—as important, for instance, as to know the occultation of a star, or the transit of Venus to a second. For the urn was at that moment placed on the table; and though Ireland, as a whole, is privileged to be irregular, yet such was our Sackville Street regularity, that not so much nine o'clock announced this periodic event, as inversely this event announced nine o'clock. And I used to affirm, however shocking it might sound to poor threadbare metaphysicians incapable of transcendental truths, that not nine o'clock was the cause of revealing the breakfast urn, but, on the contrary, that the revelation of the breakfast urn was the true and secret cause of nine o'clock—a phenomenon which otherwise no candid reader will pretend that he can satisfactorily account for, often as he has known it to come round. The urn was already throwing up its column of fuming mist; and the breakfast table was covered with June flowers sent by a lady on the chance of Lord Westport's arrival. It was clear, therefore, that we were expected; but so we had been for three or four days previously; and it illustrates the enormous uncertainties of travelling at this closing era of the eighteenth century, that for three or four days more we should have been expected without the least anxiety in case any thing had occurred to detain us on the road. In fact, the possibility of a Holyhead packet being lost had no place in the catalogue of adverse contingencies—not even when calculated by mothers. To come by way of Liverpool or Parkgate, was not without grounds of reasonable fear; I myself had lost acquaintances (schoolboys) on each of those lines of transit. Neither Bristol nor Milford Haven was entirely cloudless in reputation. But from Holyhead only one packet had ever been lost; and that was in the days of Queen Anne, when I have good reason to think that a villain was on board, who hated the Duke of Marlborough; so that this one exceptional case, far from being looked upon as a public calamity, would, of course, be received thankfully as cleansing the nation from a scamp.

* * * * *

Ireland was still smoking with the embers of rebellion; and Lord Cornwallis, who had been sent expressly to extinguish it, and had won the reputation of having fulfilled this mission with energy and success, was then the lord lieutenant; and at that moment he was regarded with more interest than any other public man. Accordingly I was not sorry when, two mornings after our arrival, Lord Altamont said to us at breakfast, "Now, if you wish to see what I call a great man, go with me this morning, and you shall see Lord Cornwallis; for that man who has given peace both to the east and to the west—taming a tiger in the Mysore that hated England as much as Hannibal hated Rome, and in Ireland pulling up by the roots a French invasion, combined with an Irish insurrection—will always for me rank as a great man." We willingly accompanied the earl to the Phoenix Park, where the lord lieutenant was then residing, and were privately presented to him. I had seen an engraving (celebrated, I believe, in its day) of Lord Cornwallis receiving the young Mysore princes as hostages at Seringapatam; and I knew the outline of his public services. This gave me an additional interest in seeing him; but I was disappointed to find no traces in his manner of the energy and activity I presumed him to possess; he seemed, on the contrary, slow or even heavy, but benevolent and considerate in a degree which won the confidence at once. Him we saw often; for Lord Altamont took us with him wherever and whenever we wished; and me in particular (to whom the Irish leaders of society were as yet entirely unknown by sight) it gratified highly to see persons of historical names—names, I mean, historically connected with the great events of Elizabeth's or Cromwell's era—attending at the Phoenix Park. But the persons whom I remember most distinctly of all whom I was then in the habit of seeing, were Lord Clare, the chancellor, the late Lord Londonderry, (then Castlereagh,) at that time the Irish chancellor of the exchequer, and the speaker of the House of Commons, (Mr. Foster, since, I believe, created Lord Oriel.) With the speaker, indeed, Lord Altamont had more intimate grounds of connection than with any other public man; both being devoted to the encouragement and personal superintendence of great agricultural improvements. Both were bent on introducing through models diffused extensively on their own estates, English husbandry, English improved breeds of cattle, and, where that was possible, English capital and skill, into the rural economy of Ireland.

Amongst the splendid spectacles which I witnessed, as the most splendid I may mention an installation of the Knights of St. Patrick. There were six knights installed on this occasion, one of the six being Lord Altamont. He had no doubt received his ribbon as a reward for his parliamentary votes, and especially in the matter of the union; yet, from all his conversation upon that question, and from the general conscientiousness of his private life, I am convinced that he acted all along upon patriotic motives, and in obedience to his real views (whether right or wrong) of the Irish interests. One chief reason, indeed, which detained us in Dublin, was the necessity of staying for this particular installation. At one time, Lord Altamont had designed to take his son and myself for the two esquires who attend the new-made knight, according to the ritual of this ceremony; but that plan was laid aside, on learning that the other five knights were to be attended by adults; and thus, from being partakers as actors, my friend and I became simple spectators of this splendid scene, which took place in the Cathedral of St. Patrick. So easily does mere external pomp slip out of the memory, as to all its circumstantial items, leaving behind nothing beyond the general impression, that at this moment I remember no one incident of the whole ceremonial, except that some foolish person laughed aloud as the knights went up with their offerings to the altar; the object of this unfeeling laughter being apparently Lord Altamont, who happened to be lame—a singular instance of levity to exhibit within the walls of such a building, and at the most solemn part of such a ceremony, which to my mind had a three-fold grandeur: 1st, as symbolic and shadowy; 2d, as representing the interlacings of chivalry with religion in the highest aspirations of both; 3d, as national; placing the heraldries and military pomps of a people, so memorably faithful to St. Peter's chair, at the foot of the altar. Lord Westport and I sat with Lord and Lady Castlereagh. They were both young at this time, and both wore an impressive appearance of youthful happiness; neither, happily for their peace of mind, able to pierce that cloud of years, not much more than twenty, which divided them from the day destined in one hour to wreck the happiness of both. We had met both on other occasions; and their conversation, through the course of that day's pomps, was the most interesting circumstance to me, and the one which I remember with most distinctness of all that belonged to the installation. By the way, one morning, on occasion of some conversation arising about Irish bulls, I made an agreement with Lord Altamont to note down in a memorandum book every thing throughout my stay in Ireland, which, to my feeling as an Englishman, should seem to be, or should approach to, a bull. And this day, at dinner, I reported from Lady Castlereagh's conversation what struck me as such. Lord Altamont laughed, and said, "My dear child, I am sorry that it should so happen, for it is bad to stumble at the beginning; your bull is certainly a bull; [1] but as certainly Lady Castlereagh is your countrywoman, and not an Irishwoman at all." Lady Castlereagh, it seems, was a daughter of Lord Buckinghamshire; and her maiden name was Lady Emily Hobart.

One other public scene there was, about this time, in Dublin, to the eye less captivating, but far more so in a moral sense; more significant practically, more burdened with hope and with fear. This was the final ratification of the bill which united Ireland to Great Britain. I do not know that any one public act, or celebration, or solemnity, in my time, did, or could, so much engage my profoundest sympathies. Wordsworth's fine sonnet on the extinction of the Venetian republic had not then been published, else the last two lines would have expressed my feelings. After admitting that changes had taken place in Venice, which in a manner challenged and presumed this last and mortal change, the poet goes on to say, that all this long preparation for the event could not break the shock of it. Venice, it is true, had become a shade; but, after all,—

"Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade Of that which once was great has passed away."

But here the previous circumstances were far different from those of Venice. There we saw a superannuated and paralytic state, sinking at any rate into the grave, and yielding, to the touch of military violence, that only which a brief lapse of years must otherwise have yielded to internal decay. Here, on the contrary, we saw a young eagle, rising into power, and robbed prematurely of her natural honors, only because she did not comprehend their value, or because at this great crisis she had no champion. Ireland, in a political sense, was surely then in her youth, considering the prodigious developments she has since experienced in population and in resources of all kinds.

This great day of UNION had been long looked forward to by me; with some mixed feelings also by my young friend, for he had an Irish heart, and was jealous of whatever appeared to touch the banner of Ireland. But it was not for him to say any thing which should seem to impeach his father's patriotism in voting for the union, and promoting it through his borough influence. Yet oftentimes it seemed to me, when I introduced the subject, and sought to learn from Lord Altamont the main grounds which had reconciled him and other men, anxious for the welfare of Ireland, to a measure which at least robbed her of some splendor, and, above all, robbed her of a name and place amongst the independent states of Europe, that neither father nor son was likely to be displeased, should some great popular violence put force upon the recorded will of Parliament, and compel the two Houses to perpetuate themselves. Dolorous they must of course have looked, in mere consistency; but I fancied that internally they would have laughed. Lord Altamont, I am certain, believed (as multitudes believed) that Ireland would be bettered by the commercial advantages conceded to her as an integral province of the empire, and would have benefits which, as an independent kingdom, she had not. It is notorious that this expectation was partially realized. But let us ask, Could not a large part of these benefits have been secured to Ireland remaining as she was? Were they, in any sense, dependent on the sacrifice of her separate parliament? For my part, I believe that Mr. Pitt's motive for insisting on a legislative union was, in a small proportion, perhaps, the somewhat elevated desire to connect his own name with the historical changes of the empire; to have it stamped, not on events so fugitive as those of war and peace, liable to oblivion or eclipse, but on the permanent relations of its integral parts. In a still larger proportion I believe his motive to have been one of pure convenience, the wish to exonerate himself from the intolerable vexation of a double parliament. In a government such as ours, so care-laden at any rate, it is certainly most harassing to have the task of soliciting a measure by management and influence twice over—two trials to organize, two storms of anxiety to face, and two refractory gangs to discipline, instead of one. It must also be conceded that no treasury influence could always avail to prevent injurious collisions between acts of the Irish and the British Parliaments. In Dublin, as in London, the government must lay its account with being occasionally outvoted; this would be likely to happen peculiarly upon Irish questions. And acts of favor or protection would at times pass on behalf of Irish interests, not only clashing with more general ones of the central government, but indirectly also (through the virtual consolidation of the two islands since the era of steam) opening endless means for evading British acts, even within their own separate sphere of operation. On these considerations, even an Irishman must grant that public convenience called for the absorption of all local or provincial supremacies into the central supremacy. And there were two brief arguments which gave weight to those considerations: First, that the evils likely to arise (and which in France have arisen) from what is termed, in modern politics, the principle of centralization, have been for us either evaded or neutralized. The provinces, to the very farthest nook of these "nook-shotten" islands, react upon London as powerfully as London acts upon them; so that no counterpoise is required with us, as in France it is, to any inordinate influence at the centre. Secondly, the very pride and jealousy which could avail to dictate the retention of an independent parliament would effectually preclude any modern "Poyning's Act," having for its object to prevent the collision of the local with the central government. Each would be supreme within its own sphere, and those spheres could not but clash. The separate Irish Parliament was originally no badge of honor or independence: it began in motives of convenience, or perhaps necessity, at a period when the communication was difficult, slow, and interrupted. Any parliament, which arose on that footing, it was possible to guard by a Poyning's Act, making, in effect, all laws null which should happen to contradict the supreme or central will. But what law, in a corresponding temper, could avail to limit the jurisdiction of a parliament which confessedly had been retained on a principle of national honor? Upon every consideration, therefore, of convenience, and were it only for the necessities of public business, the absorption of the local into the central parliament had now come to speak a language that perhaps could no longer be evaded; and that Irishman only could consistently oppose the measure who should take his stand upon principles transcending convenience; looking, in fact, singly to the honor and dignity of a country which it was annually becoming less absurd to suppose capable of an independent existence.

Meantime, in those days, Ireland had no adequate champion; the Hoods and the Grattans were not up to the mark. Refractory as they were, they moved within the paling of order and decorum; they were not the Titans for a war against the heavens. When the public feeling beckoned and loudly supported them, they could follow a lead which they appeared to head; but they could not create such a body of public feeling, nor, when created, could they throw it into a suitable organization. What they could do, was simply as ministerial agents and rhetoricians to prosecute any general movement, when the national arm had cloven a channel and opened the road before them. Consequently, that great opening for a turbulent son of thunder passed unimproved; and the great day drew near without symptoms of tempest. At last it arrived; and I remember nothing which indicated as much ill temper in the public mind as I have seen on many hundreds of occasions, trivial by comparison, in London. Lord Westport and I were determined to lose no part of the scene, and we went down with Lord Altamont to the house. It was about the middle of the day, and a great mob filled the whole space about the two houses. As Lord Altamont's coach drew up to the steps of that splendid edifice, we heard a prodigious hissing and hooting; and I was really agitated to think that Lord Altamont, whom I loved and respected, would probably have to make his way through a tempest of public wrath—a situation more terrific to him than to others, from his embarrassed walking. I found, however, that I might have spared my anxiety; the subject of commotion was, simply, that Major Sirr, or Major Swan, I forget which, (both being celebrated in those days for their energy, as leaders of the police,) had detected a person in the act of mistaking some other man's pocket handkerchief for his own—a most natural mistake, I should fancy, where people stood crowded together so thickly. No storm of any kind awaited us, and yet at that moment there was no other arrival to divide the public attention; for, in order that we might see every thing from first to last, we were amongst the very earliest parties. Neither did our party escape under any mistake of the crowd: silence had succeeded to the uproar caused by the tender meeting between the thief and the major; and a man, who stood in a conspicuous situation, proclaimed aloud to those below him, the name or title of members as they drove up. "That," said he, "is the Earl of Altamont; the lame gentleman, I mean." Perhaps, however, his knowledge did not extend so far as to the politics of a nobleman who had taken no violent or factious part in public affairs. At. least, the dreaded insults did not follow, or only in the very feeblest manifestations. We entered; and, by way of seeing every thing, we went even to the robing room. The man who presented his robes to Lord Altamont seemed to me, of all whom I saw on that day, the one who wore the face of deepest depression. But whether this indicated the loss of a lucrative situation, or was really disinterested sorrow, growing out of a patriotic trouble, at the knowledge that he was now officiating for the last time, I could not guess. The House of Lords, decorated (if I remember) with hangings, representing the battle of the Boyne, was nearly empty when we entered—an accident which furnished to Lord Altamont the opportunity required for explaining to us the whole course and ceremonial of public business on ordinary occasions.

Gradually the house filled; beautiful women sat intermingled amongst the peers; and, in one party of these, surrounded by a bevy of admirers, we saw our fair but frail enchantress of the packet. She, on her part, saw and recognized us by an affable nod; no stain upon her cheek, indicating that she suspected to what extent she was indebted to our discretion; for it is a proof of the unaffected sorrow and the solemn awe which oppressed us both, that we had not mentioned even to Lord Altamont, nor ever did mention, the scene which chance had revealed to us. Next came a stir within the house, and an uproar resounding from without, which announced the arrival of his excellency. Entering the house, he also, like the other peers, wheeled round to the throne, and made to that mysterious seat a profound homage. Then commenced the public business, in which, if I recollect, the chancellor played the most conspicuous part—that chancellor (Lord Clare) of whom it was affirmed in those days, by a political opponent, that he might swim in the innocent blood which he had caused to be shed. But nautical men, I suspect, would have demurred to that estimate. Then were summoned to the bar—summoned for the last time—the gentlemen of the House of Commons; in the van of whom, and drawing all eyes upon himself, stood Lord Castlereagh. Then came the recitation of many acts passed during the session, and the sounding ratification, the Jovian

"Annuit, et nutu totum tremefecit Olympum,"

contained in the Soit fait comme il est desir, or the more peremptory Le roi le veut. At which point in the order of succession came the royal assent to the union bill, I cannot distinctly recollect. But one thing I do recollect—that no audible expression, no buzz, nor murmur, nor susurrus even, testified the feelings which, doubtless, lay rankling in many bosoms. Setting apart all public or patriotic considerations, even then I said to myself, as I surveyed the whole assemblage of ermined peers, "How is it, and by what unaccountable magic, that William Pitt can have prevailed on all these hereditary legislators and heads of patrician houses to renounce so easily, with nothing worth the name of a struggle, and no reward worth the name of an indemnification, the very brightest jewel in their coronets? This morning they all rose from their couches peers of Parliament, individual pillars of the realm, indispensable parties to every law that could pass. Tomorrow they will be nobody—men of straw—terrae filii. What madness has persuaded them to part with their birthright, and to cashier themselves and their children forever into mere titular lords? As to the commoners at the bar, their case was different: they had no life estate at all events in their honors; and they might have the same chance for entering the imperial Parliament amongst the hundred Irish members as for reentering a native parliament. Neither, again, amongst the peers was the case always equal. Several of the higher had English titles, which would, at any rate, open the central Parliament to their ambition. That privilege, in particular, attached to Lord Altamont. [2] And he, in any case, from his large property, was tolerably sure of finding his way thither (as in fact for the rest of his life he did) amongst the twenty-eight representative peers. The wonder was in the case of petty and obscure lords, who had no weight personally, and none in right of their estates. Of these men, as they were notoriously not enriched by Mr. Pitt, as the distribution of honors was not very large, and as no honor could countervail the one they lost, I could not, and cannot, fathom the policy. Thus much I am sure of—that, had such a measure been proposed by a political speculator previously to Queen Anne's reign, he would have been scouted as a dreamer and a visionary, who calculated upon men being generally somewhat worse than Esau, viz., giving up their birthrights, and without the mess of pottage." However, on this memorable day, thus it was the union was ratified; the bill received the royal assent without a muttering, or a whispering, or the protesting echo of a sigh. Perhaps there might be a little pause—a silence like that which follows an earthquake; but there was no plain-spoken Lord Belhaven, as on the corresponding occasion in Edinburgh, to fill up the silence with "So, there's an end of an auld sang!" All was, or looked courtly, and free from vulgar emotion. One person only I remarked whose features were suddenly illuminated by a smile, a sarcastic smile, as I read it; which, however, might be all a fancy. It was Lord Castlereagh, who, at the moment when the irrevocable words were pronounced, looked with a penetrating glance amongst a party of ladies. His own wife was one of that party; but I did not discover the particular object on whom his smile had settled. After this I had no leisure to be interested in any thing which followed. "You are all," thought I to myself, "a pack of vagabonds henceforward, and interlopers, with actually no more right to be here than myself. I am an intruder; so are you." Apparently they thought so themselves; for, soon after this solemn fiat of Jove had gone forth, their lordships, having no further title to their robes, (for which I could not help wishing that a party of Jewish old clothes men would at this moment have appeared, and made a loud bidding,) made what haste they could to lay them aside forever. The house dispersed much more rapidly than it had assembled. Major Sirr was found outside, just where we left him, laying down the law (as before) about pocket handkerchiefs to old and young practitioners; and all parties adjourned to find what consolation they might in the great evening event of dinner.

Thus we were set at liberty from Dublin. Parliaments, and installations, and masked balls, with all other secondary splendors in celebration of primary splendors, reflex glories that reverberated original glories, at length had ceased to shine upon the Irish metropolis. The "season," as it is called in great cities, was over; unfortunately the last season that was ever destined to illuminate the society or to stimulate the domestic trade of Dublin. It began to be thought scandalous to be found in town; nobody, in fact, remained, except some two hundred thousand people, who never did, nor ever would, wear ermine; and in all Ireland there remained nothing at all to attract, except that which no king, and no two houses, can by any conspiracy abolish, viz., the beauty of her most verdant scenery. I speak of that part which chiefly it is that I know,—the scenery of the west,—Connaught beyond other provinces, and in Connaught, Mayo beyond other counties. There it was, and in the county next adjoining, that Lord Altamont's large estates were situated, the family mansion and beautiful park being in Mayo. Thither, as nothing else now remained to divert us from what, in fact, we had thirsted for throughout the heats of summer, and throughout the magnificences of the capital, at length we set off by movements as slow and circuitous as those of any royal progress in the reign of Elizabeth. Making but short journeys on each day, and resting always at the house of some private friend, I thus obtained an opportunity of seeing the old Irish nobility and gentry more extensively, and on a more intimate footing, than I had hoped for. No experience of this kind, throughout my whole life, so much interested me. In a little work, not much known, of Suetonius, the most interesting record which survives of the early Roman literature, it comes out incidentally that many books, many idioms, and verbal peculiarities belonging to the primitive ages of Roman culture were to be found still lingering in the old Roman settlements, both Gaulish and Spanish, long after they had become obsolete (and sometimes unintelligible) in Rome. From the tardiness and the difficulty of communication, the want of newspapers, &c., it followed, naturally enough, that the distant provincial towns, though not without their own separate literature and their own literary professors, were always two or three generations in the rear of the metropolis; and thus it happened, that, about the time of Augustus, there were some grammatici in Rome, answering to our black-letter critics, who sought the material of their researches in Boulogne, (Gessoriacum,) in Arles, (Arelata,) or in Marseilles, (Massilia.) Now, the old Irish nobility—that part, I mean, which might be called the rural nobility—stood in the same relation to English manners and customs. Here might be found old rambling houses in the style of antique English manorial chateaus, ill planned, perhaps, as regarded convenience and economy, with long rambling galleries, and windows innumerable, that evidently had never looked for that severe audit to which they were afterwards summoned by William Pitt; but displaying, in the dwelling rooms, a comfort and "cosiness," combined with magnificence, not always so effectually attained in modern times. Here were old libraries, old butlers, and old customs, that seemed all alike to belong to the era of Cromwell, or even an earlier era than his; whilst the ancient names, to one who had some acquaintance with the great events of Irish history, often strengthened the illusion. Not that I could pretend to be familiar with Irish history as Irish; but as a conspicuous chapter in the difficult policy of Queen Elizabeth, of Charles I., and of Cromwell, nobody who had read the English history could be a stranger to the O'Neils, the O'Donnells, the Ormonds, (i. e., the Butlers,) the Inchiquins, or the De Burghs, and many scores beside. I soon found, in fact, that the aristocracy of Ireland might be divided into two great sections: the native Irish—territorial fixtures, so powerfully described by Maturin; and those, on the other hand, who spent so much of their time and revenues at Bath, Cheltenham, Weymouth, London, &c., as to have become almost entirely English. It was the former whom we chiefly visited; and I remarked that, in the midst of hospitality the most unbounded, and the amplest comfort, some of these were conspicuously in the rear of the English commercial gentry, as to modern refinements of luxury. There was at the same time an apparent strength of character, as if formed amidst turbulent scenes, and a raciness of manner, which were fitted to interest a stranger profoundly, and to impress themselves on his recollection.

FOOTNOTES

[1] The idea of a bull is even yet undefined; which is most extraordinary, considering that Miss Edgeworth has applied all her tact and illustrative power to furnish the matter for such a definition, and Coleridge all his philosophic subtlety (but in this instance, I think, with a most infelicitous result) to furnish its form. But both have been too fastidious in their admission of bulls. Thus, for example, Miss Edgeworth rejects, as no true bull, the common Joe Miller story, that, upon two Irishmen reaching Barnet, and being told that it was still twelve miles to London, one of them remarked, "Ah! just six miles apace." This, says Miss E., is no bull, but a sentimental remark on the maxim, that friendship divides our pains. Nothing of the kind: Miss Edgeworth cannot have understood it. The bull is a true representative and exemplary specimen of the genus.

[2] According to my remembrance, he was Baron Monteagle in the English peerage.



CHAPTER IX.

FIRST REBELLION.

In our road to Mayo, we were often upon ground rendered memorable, not only by historical events, but more recently by the disastrous scenes of the rebellion, by its horrors or its calamities. On reaching Westport House, we found ourselves in situations and a neighborhood which had become the very centre of the final military operations, those which succeeded to the main rebellion; and which, to the people of England, and still more to the people of the continent, had offered a character of interest wanting to the inartificial movements of Father Roche and Bagenal Harvey.

In the year 1798, there were two great popular insurrections in Ireland. It is usual to talk of the Irish rebellion, as though there had been one rebellion and no more; but it must satisfy the reader of the inaccuracy pervading the common reports of this period, when he hears that there were two separate rebellions, separate in time, separate in space, separate by the character of their events, and separate even as regarded their proximate causes. The first of these arose in the vernal part of summer, and wasted its fury upon the county of Wexford, in the centre of the kingdom. The second arose in the autumn, and was confined entirely to the western province of Connaught. Each, resting (it is true) upon causes ultimately the same, had yet its own separate occasions and excitements; for the first arose upon a premature explosion from a secret society of most subtle organization; and the second upon the encouragement of a French invasion. And each of these insurrections had its own separate leaders and its own local agents. The first, though precipitated into action by fortunate discoveries on the part of the government, had been anxiously preconcerted for three years. The second was an unpremeditated effort, called forth by a most ill-timed, and also ill-concerted, foreign invasion. The general predisposing causes to rebellion were doubtless the same in both cases; but the exciting causes of the moment were different in each. And, finally, they were divided by a complete interval of two months.

One very remarkable feature there was, however, in which these two separate rebellions of 1798 coincided; and that was, the narrow range, as to time, within which each ran its course. Neither of them outran the limits of one lunar month. It is a fact, however startling, that each, though a perfect civil war in all its proportions, frequent in warlike incident, and the former rich in tragedy, passed through all the stages of growth, maturity, and final extinction within one single revolution of the moon. For all the rebel movements, subsequent to the morning of Vinegar Hill, are to be viewed not at all in the light of manoeuvres made in the spirit of military hope, but in the light of final struggles for self-preservation made in the spirit of absolute despair, as regarded the original purposes of the war, or, indeed, as regarded any purposes whatever beyond that of instant safety. The solitary object contemplated was, to reach some district lonely enough, and with elbow room enough, for quiet, unmolested dispersion.

A few pages will recapitulate these two civil wars. I begin with the first. The war of American separation touched and quickened the dry bones that lay waiting as it were for life through the west of Christendom. The year 1782 brought that war to its winding up; and the same year it was that called forth Grattan and the Irish volunteers. These volunteers came forward as allies of England against French and Spanish invasion; but once embattled, what should hinder them from detecting a flaw in their commission, and reading it as valid against England herself? In that sense they did read it. That Ireland had seen her own case dimly reflected in that of America, and that such a reference was stirring through the national mind, appears from a remarkable fact in the history of the year which followed. In 1783, a haughty petition was addressed to the throne, on behalf of the Roman Catholics, by an association that arrogated to itself the style and title of a congress. No man could suppose that a designation so ominously significant had been chosen by accident; and by the English government it was received, as it was meant, for an insult and a menace. What came next? The French revolution. All flesh moved under that inspiration. Fast and rank now began to germinate the seed sown for the ten years preceding in Ireland; too fast and too rankly for the policy that suited her situation. Concealment or delay, compromise or temporizing, would not have been brooked, at this moment, by the fiery temperament of Ireland, had it not been through the extraordinary composition of that secret society into which the management of her affairs now began to devolve. In the year 1792, as we are told, commenced, and in 1795 was finished, the famous association of United Irishmen. By these terms, commenced and finished, we are to understand, not the purposes or the arrangements of their conspiracy against the existing government, but that network of organization, delicate as lace for ladies, and strong as the harness of artillery horses, which now enmeshed almost every province of Ireland, knitting the strength of her peasantry into unity and disposable divisions. This, it seems, was completed in 1795. In a complete history of these times, no one chapter would deserve so ample an investigation as this subtile web of association, rising upon a large base, expanding in proportion to the extent of the particular county, and by intermediate links ascending to some unknown apex; all so graduated, and in such nice interdependency, as to secure the instantaneous propagation upwards and downwards, laterally or obliquely, of any impulse whatever; and yet so effectually shrouded, that nobody knew more than the two or three individual agents in immediate juxtaposition with himself, by whom he communicated with those above his head or below his feet. This organization, in fact, of the United Irishmen, combined the best features, as to skill, of the two most elaborate and most successful of all secret societies recorded in history; one of which went before the Irish Society by centuries, and one followed it after an interval of five-and-twenty years. These two are the Fehm-Gericht, or court of ban and extermination, which, having taken its rise in Westphalia, is usually called the secret Tribunal of Westphalia, and which reached its full development in the fourteenth century. The other is the Hellenistic Hetaeria, (Aetairia)—a society which, passing for one of pure literacy dilettanti, under the secret countenance of the late Capo d'Istria, (then a confidential minister of the czar,) did actually succeed so far in hoaxing the cabinets of Europe, that one third of European kings put down their names, and gave their aid, as conspirators against the Sultan of Turkey, whilst credulously supposing themselves honorary correspondents of a learned body for reviving the arts and literature of Athens. These two I call the most successful of all secret societies, because both were arrayed against the existing administrations throughout the entire lands upon which they sought to operate. The German society disowned the legal authorities as too weak for the ends of justice, and succeeded in bringing the cognizance of crimes within its own secret yet consecrated usurpation. The Grecian society made the existing powers the final object of its hostility; lived unarmed amongst the very oppressors whose throats it had dedicated to the sabre; and, in a very few years, saw its purpose accomplished.

The society of United Irishmen combined the best parts in the organization of both these secret fraternities, and obtained their advantages. The society prospered in defiance of the government; nor would the government, though armed with all the powers of the Dublin police and of state thunder, have succeeded in mastering this society, but, on the contrary, the society would assuredly have surprised and mastered the government, had it not been undermined by the perfidy of a confidential brother. One instrument for dispersing knowledge, employed by the United Irishmen, is worth mentioning, as it is applicable to any cause, and may be used with much greater effect in an age when every body is taught to read. They printed newspapers on a single side of the sheet, which were thus fitted for being placarded against the walls. This expedient had probably been suggested by Paris, where such newspapers were often placarded, and generally for the bloodiest purposes. But Louvet, in his "Memoirs," mentions one conducted by himself on better principles: it was printed at the public expense; and sometimes more than twenty thousand copies of a single number were attached to the corners of streets. This was called the "Centinel;" and those who are acquainted with the "Memoirs of Madame Roland" will remember that she cites Louvet's paper as a model for all of its class. The "Union Star" was the paper which the United Irishmen published upon this plan; previous papers, on the ordinary plan, viz., the "Northern Star" and the "Press," having been violently put down by the government. The "Union Star," however, it must be acknowledged, did not seek much to elevate the people by addressing them through their understandings; it was merely a violent appeal to their passions, and directed against all who had incurred the displeasure of the society. Newspapers, meantime, of every kind, it was easy for the government to suppress. But the secret society annoyed and crippled the government in other modes, which it was not easy to parry; and all blows dealt in return were dealt in the dark, and aimed at a shadow. The society called upon Irishmen to abstain generally from ardent spirits, as a means of destroying the excise; and it is certain that the society was obeyed, in a degree which astonished neutral observers, all over Ireland. The same society, by a printed proclamation, called upon the people not to purchase the quitrents of the crown, which were then on sale; and not to receive bank notes in payment, because (as the proclamation told them) a "burst" was coming, when such paper, and the securities for such purchases, would fall to a ruinous discount. In this ease, after much distress to the public service, government obtained a partial triumph by the law which cancelled the debt on a refusal to receive the state paper, and which quartered soldiers upon all tradesmen who demurred to such a tender. But, upon the whole, it was becoming pain fully evident, that in Ireland there were two coordinate governments coming into collision at every step, and that the one which more generally had the upper hand in the struggle was the secret society of United Irishmen; whose members individually, and whose local head quarters, were alike screened from the attacks of its rival, viz., the state government at the Castle, by a cloud of impenetrable darkness.

That cloud was at last pierced. A treacherous or weak brother, high in the ranks of the society, and deep in their confidence, happened, when travelling up to Dublin in company with a royalist, to speak half mysteriously, half ostentatiously, upon the delicate position which he held in the councils of his dangerous party. This weak man, Thomas Reynolds, a Roman Catholic gentleman, of Kilkea Castle, in Kildare, colonel of a regiment of United Irish, treasurer for Kildare, and in other offices of trust for the secret society, was prevailed on by Mr. William Cope, a rich merchant of Dublin, who alarmed his mind by pictures of the horrors attending a revolution under the circumstances of Ireland, to betray all he knew to the government. His treachery was first meditated in the last week of February, 1798; and, in consequence of his depositions, on March 12, at the house of Oliver Bond, in Dublin, the government succeeded in arresting a large body of the leading conspirators. The whole committee of Leinster, amounting to thirteen members, was captured on this occasion; but a still more valuable prize was made in the persons of those who presided over the Irish Directory, viz., Emmet, M'Niven, Arthur O'Connor, and Oliver Bond. As far as names went, their places were immediately filled up; and a hand-bill was issued, on the same day, with the purpose of intercepting the effects of despondency amongst the great body of the conspirators. But Emmet and O'Connor were not men to be effectually replaced: government had struck a fatal blow, without being fully aware at first of their own good luck. On the 19th of May following, in consequence of a proclamation (May 11) offering a thousand pounds for his capture, Lord Edward Fitzgerald was apprehended at the house of Mr. Nicholas Murphy, a merchant in Dublin, but after a very desperate resistance. The leader of the arresting party, Major Swan, a Dublin magistrate, distinguished for his energy, was wounded by Lord Edward; and Ryan, one of the officers, so desperately, that he died within a fortnight. Lord Edward himself languished for some time, and died in great agony on the 3d of June, from a pistol shot which took effect on his shoulder. Lord Edward Fitzgerald might be regarded as an injured man. From the exuberant generosity of his temper, he had powerfully sympathized with the French republicans at an early stage of their revolution; and having, with great indiscretion, but an indiscretion that admitted of some palliation in so young a man and of so ardent a temperament, publicly avowed his sympathy, he was ignominiously dismissed from the army. That act made an enemy of one who, on several grounds, was not a man to be despised; for, though weak as respected his powers of self-control, Lord Edward was well qualified to make himself beloved; he had considerable talents; his very name, as a sone of the only [1] ducal house in Ireland, was a spell and a rallying word for a day of battle to the Irish peasantry; and, finally, by his marriage with a natural daughter of the then Duke of Orleans, he had founded some important connections and openings to secret influence in France. The young lady whom he had married was generally known by the name of Pamela; and it has been usually supposed that she is the person described by Miss Edgeworth, under the name of Virginia, in the latter part of her "Belinda." How that may be, I cannot pretend to say: Pamela was certainly led into some indiscretions; in particular, she was said to have gone to a ball without shoes or stockings, which seems to argue the same sort of ignorance, and the same docility to any chance impressions, which characterize the Virginia of Miss Edgeworth. She was a reputed daughter (as I have said) of Philippe Egalit; and her putative mother was Madame de Genlis, who had been settled in that prince's family, as governess to his children, more especially to the sister of the present [2] French king. Lord Edward's whole course had been marked by generosity and noble feeling. Far better to have pardoned [3] such a man, and (if that were possible) to have conciliated his support; but, says a contemporary Irishman, "those were not times of conciliation."

Some days after this event were arrested the two brothers named Shearer, men of talent, who eventually suffered for treason. These discoveries were due to treachery of a peculiar sort; not to the treachery of an apostate brother breaking his faith, but of a counterfeit brother simulating the character of conspirator, and by that fraud obtaining a key to the fatal secrets of the United Irishmen. His perfidy, therefore, consisted, not in any betrayal of secrets, but in the fraud by which he obtained them. Government, without having yet penetrated to the very heart of the mystery, had now discovered enough to guide them in their most energetic precautions; and the result was, that the conspirators, whose policy had hitherto been to wait for the cooperation of a French army, now suddenly began to distrust that policy: their fear was, that the ground would be cut from beneath their feet if they waited any longer. More was evidently risked by delay than by dispensing altogether with foreign aid. To forego this aid was perilous; to wait for it was ruin. It was resolved, therefore, to commence the insurrection on the 23d of May; and, in order to distract the government, to commence it by simultaneous assaults upon all the military posts in the neighborhood of Dublin. This plan was discovered, but scarcely in time to prevent the effects of a surprise. On the 21st, late in the evening, the conspiracy had been announced by the lord lieutenant's secretary to the lord mayor; and, on the following day, by a message from his excellency to both Houses of Parliament.

The insurrection, however, in spite of this official warning, began at the appointed hour. The skirmishes were many, and in many places; but, generally speaking, they were not favorable in their results to the insurgents. The mail coaches, agreeably to the preconcerted plan, had all been intercepted; their non-arrival being every where understood by the conspirators as a silent signal that the war had commenced. Yet this summons to the more distant provinces, though truly interpreted, had not been truly answered. The communication between the capital and the interior, almost completely interrupted at first, had been at length fully restored; and a few days saw the main strength (as it was supposed) of the insurrection suppressed without much bloodshed. But hush! what is that in the rear?

Just at this moment, when all the world was disposed to think the whole affair quietly composed, the flame burst out with tenfold fury in a part of the country from which government, with some reason, had turned away their anxieties and their preparations. This was the county of Wexford, which the Earl of Mountnorris had described to the government as so entirely well affected to the loyal cause, that he had personally pledged himself for its good conduct. On the night before Whitsunday, however, May 27, the standard of revolt was there raised by John Murphy, a Catholic priest, well know henceforwards under the title of Father Murphy.

The campaign opened inauspiciously for the royalists. The rebels had posted themselves on two eminences—Kilthomas, about ten miles to the westward of Gorey; and the Hill of Oulart, half way (i.e., about a dozen miles) between Gorey and Wexford. They were attacked at each point on Whitsunday. From the first point they were driven easily, and with considerable loss; but at Oulart the issue was very different. Father Murphy commanded here in person; and, finding that his men gave way in great confusion before a picked body of the North Cork militia, under the command of Colonel Foote, he contrived to persuade them that their flight was leading them right upon a body of royal cavalry posted to intercept their retreat. This fear effectually halted them. The insurgents, through a prejudice natural to inexperience, had an unreasonable dread of cavalry. A second time, therefore, facing about to retreat from this imaginary body of horse, they came of necessity, and without design, full upon their pursuers, whom unhappily the intoxication of victory had by this time brought into the most careless disarray. These, almost to a man, the rebels annihilated: universal consternation followed amongst the royalists; Father Murphy led them to Ferns, and thence to the attack of Enniscorthy.

Has the reader witnessed, or has he heard described, the sudden burst—the explosion, one might say—by which a Swedish winter passes into spring, and spring simultaneously into summer? The icy sceptre of winter does not there thaw and melt away by just gradations; it is broken, it is shattered, in a day, in an hour, and with a violence brought home to every sense. No second type of resurrection, so mighty or so affecting, is manifested by nature in southern climates. Such is the headlong tumult, such "the torrent rapture," by which life is let loose amongst the air, the earth, and the waters under the earth. Exactly what this vernal resurrection is in manifestations of power and life, by comparison with climates that have no winter, such, and marked with features as distinct, was this Irish insurrection, when suddenly surrendered to the whole contagion of politico-religious fanaticism, by comparison with vulgar martinet strategics and the pedantry of technical warfare. What a picture must Enniscorthy have presented on the 27th of May! Fugitives, crowding in from Ferns, announced the rapid advance of the rebels, now, at least, 7000 strong, drunk with victory, and maddened with vindictive fury. Not long after midday, their advanced guard, well armed with muskets, (pillaged, be H observed, from royal magazines hastily deserted,) commenced a tumultuous assault. Less than 300 militia and yeomanry formed the garrison of the place, which had no sort of defences except the natural one of the River Slaney. This, however, was fordable, and that the assailants knew. The slaughter amongst the rebels, meantime, from the little caution they exhibited, and their total defect of military skill, was murderous. Spite of their immense numerical advantages, it is probable they would have been defeated. But in Enniscorthy, (as where not?) treason from within was emboldened to raise its crest at the very crisis of suspense; incendiaries were at work; and flames began to issue from many houses at once. Retreat itself became suddenly doubtful, depending, as it did, altogether upon the state of the wind. At the right hand of every royalist stood a traitor; in his own house oftentimes lurked other traitors, waiting for the signal to begin; in the front was the enemy; in the rear was a line of blazing streets. Three hours the battle had raged; it was now four, P. M., and at this moment the garrison hastily gave way, and fled to Wexford.

Now came a scene, which swallowed up all distinct or separate features in its frantic confluence of horrors. All the loyalists of Enniscorthy, all the gentry for miles around, who had congregated in that town, as a centre of security, were summoned at that moment, not to an orderly retreat, but to instant flight. At one end of the street were seen the rebel pikes, and bayonets, and fierce faces, already gleaming through the smoke; at the other end, volumes of fire, surging and billowing from the thatched roofs and blazing rafters, beginning to block up the avenues of escape. Then began the agony and uttermost conflict of what is worst and what is best in human nature. Then was to be seen the very delirium of fear, and the very delirium of vindictive malice; private and ignoble hatred, of ancient origin, shrouding itself in the mask of patriotic wrath; the tiger glare of just vengeance, fresh from intolerable wrongs and the never-to-be-forgotten ignominy of stripes and personal degradation; panic, self-palsied by its own excess; flight, eager or stealthy, according to the temper and the means; volleying pursuit; the very frenzy of agitation, under every mode of excitement; and here and there, towering aloft, the desperation of maternal love, victorious and supreme above all lower passions. I recapitulate and gather under general abstractions many an individual anecdote, reported by those who were on that day present in Enniscorthy; for at Ferns, not far off, and deeply interested in all those transactions, I had private friends, intimate participators in the trials of that fierce hurricane, and joint sufferers with those who suffered most. Ladies were then seen in crowds, hurrying on foot to Wexford, the nearest asylum, though fourteen miles distant, many in slippers, bareheaded, and without any supporting arm; for the flight of their defenders, having been determined by a sudden angular movement of the assailants, coinciding with the failure of their own ammunition, had left no time for warning; and fortunate it was for the unhappy fugitives, that the confusion of burning streets, concurring with the seductions of pillage, drew aside so many of the victors as to break the unity of a pursuit else hellishly unrelenting.

Wexford, meantime, was in no condition to promise more than a momentary shelter. Orders had been already issued to extinguish all domestic fires throughout the town, and to unroof all the thatched houses; so great was the jealousy of internal treason. From without, also, the alarm was every hour increasing. On Tuesday, the 29th of May, the rebel army advanced from Enniscorthy to a post called Three Rocks, not much above two miles from Wexford. Their strength was now increased to at least 15,000 men. Never was there a case requiring more energy in the disposers of the royal forces; never one which met with less, even in the most responsible quarters. The nearest military station was the fort at Duncannon, twenty-three miles distant. Thither, on the 29th, an express had been despatched by the mayor of Wexford, reporting their situation, and calling immediate aid. General Fawcet replied, that he would himself march that same evening with the 13th regiment, part of the Meath militia, and sufficient artillery. Relying upon these assurances, the small parties of militia and yeomanry then in Wexford gallantly threw themselves upon the most trying services in advance. Some companies of the Donegal militia, not mustering above 200 men, marched immediately to a position between the rebel camp and Wexford; whilst others of the North Cork militia and the local yeomanry, with equal cheerfulness, undertook the defence of that town. Meantime, General Fawcet had consulted his personal comfort by halting for the night, though aware of the dreadful emergency, at a station sixteen miles short of Wexford. A small detachment, however, with part of his artillery, he sent forward; these were the next morning intercepted by the rebels at Three Rocks, and massacred almost to a man. Two officers, who escaped the slaughter, carried the intelligence to the advanced post of the Donegals; but they, so far from being disheartened, marched immediately against the rebel army, enormous as was the disproportion, with the purpose of recapturing the artillery. A singular contrast this to the conduct of General Fawcet, who retreated hastily to Duncannon upon the first intelligence of this disaster. Such a regressive movement was so little anticipated by the gallant Donegals, that they continued to advance against the enemy, until the precision with which the captured artillery was served against themselves, and the non-appearance of the promised aid, warned them to retire. At Wexford, they found all in confusion and the hurry of retreat. The flight, as it may be called, of General Fawcet was now confirmed; and, as the local position of Wexford made it indefensible against artillery, the whole body of loyalists, except those whom insufficient warning had thrown into the rear, now fled from the wrath of the rebels to Duncannon. It is a shocking illustration (if truly reported) of the thoughtless ferocity which characterized too many of the Orange troops, that, along the whole line of this retreat, they continued to burn the cabins of Roman Catholics, and often to massacre, in cold blood, the unoffending inhabitants; totally forgetful of the many hostages whom the insurgents now held in their power, and careless of the dreadful provocations which they were thus throwing out to the bloodiest reprisals.

Thus it was, and through mismanagement thus mischievously alert, or through torpor thus unaccountably base, that actually, on the 30th of May, not having raised their standard before the 26th, the rebels had already been permitted to possess themselves of the county of Wexford in its whole southern division—Ross and Duncannon only excepted; of which the latter was not liable to capture by coup de main, and the other was saved by the procrastination of the rebels. The northern division of the county was overrun pretty much in the same hasty style, and through the same desperate neglect in previous concert of plans. Upon first turning their views to the north, the rebels had taken up a position on the Hill of Corrigrua, as a station from which they could march with advantage upon the town of Gorey, lying seven miles to the northward. On the 1st of June, a truly brilliant affair had taken place between a mere handful of militia and yeomanry from this town of Gorey and a strong detachment from the rebel camp. Many persons at the time regarded this as the best fought action in the whole war. The two parties had met about two miles from Gorey; and it is pretty certain that, if the yeoman cavalry could have been prevailed on to charge at the critical moment, the defeat would have been a most murderous one to the rebels. As it was, they escaped, though with considerable loss of honor. Yet even this they were allowed to retrieve within a few days, in a remarkable way, and with circumstances of still greater scandal to the military discretion in high quarters than had attended the movements of General Fawcet in the south.

On the 4th of June, a little army of 1500 men, under the command of Major General Loftus, had assembled at Gorey. The plan was, to march by two different roads upon the rebel encampment at Corrigrua; and this plan was adopted. Meantime, on that same night, the rebel army had put themselves in motion for Gorey; and of this counter movement full and timely information had been given by a farmer at the royal headquarters; but such was the obstinate infatuation, that no officer of rank would condescent to give him a hearing. The consequences may be imagined. Colonel Walpole, an Englishman, full of courage, but presumptuously disdainful of the enemy, led a division upon one of the two roads, having no scouts, nor taking any sort of precaution. Suddenly he found his line of march crossed by the enemy in great strength: he refused to halt or to retire; was shot through the head; and a great part of the advanced detachment was slaughtered on the spot, and his artillery captured. General Loftus, advancing on the parallel road, heard the firing, and detached the grenadier company of the Antrim militia to the aid of Walpole. These, to the amount of seventy men, were cut off almost to a man; and when the general, who could not cross over to the other road, through the enclosures, from the encumbrance of his artillery, had at length reached the scene of action by a long circuit, he found himself in the following truly ludicrous position: The rebels had pursued Colonel Walpole's division to Gorey, and possessed themselves of that place; the general had thus lost his head quarters, without having seen the army whom he had suffered to slip past him in the dark. He marched back disconsolately to Gorey, took a look at the rebel posts which now occupied the town in strength, was saluted with a few rounds from his own cannon, and finally retreated out of the county.

This movement of General Loftus, and the previous one of General Fawcet, circumstantially illustrate the puerile imbecility with which the royal cause was then conducted. Both movements foundered in an hour, through surprises, against which each had been amply forewarned. Fortunately for the government, the affairs of the rebels were managed even worse. Two sole enterprises were undertaken by them after this, previously to the closing battle of Vinegar Hill; both being of the very utmost importance to their interests, and both sure of success if they had been pushed forward in time. The first was the attack upon Ross, undertaken on the 29th of May, the day after the capture of Enniscorthy. Had that attack been pressed forward without delay, there never were two opinions as to the certainty of its success; and, having succeeded, it would have laid open to the rebels the important counties of Waterford and Kilkenny. Being delayed until the 5th of June, the assault was repulsed with prodigious slaughter, The other was the attack upon Arklow, in the north. On the capture of Gorey, on the night of June 4, as the immediate consequence of Colonel Walpole's defeat, had the rebels advanced upon Arklow, they would have found it for some days totally undefended; the whole garrison having retreated in panic, early on June 5, to Wicklow. The capture of this important place would have laid open the whole road to the capital; would probably have caused a rising in that great city; and, in any event, would have indefinitely prolonged the war, and multiplied the distractions of government. Merely from sloth and the spirit of procrastination, however, the rebel army halted at Gorey until the 9th, and then advanced with what seemed the overpowering force of 27,000 men. It is a striking lesson upon the subject of procrastination, that, precisely on that morning of June 9, the attempt had first become hopeless. Until then, the place had been positively emptied of all inhabitants whatsoever. Exactly on the 9th, the old garrison had been ordered back from Wicklow, and renforced by a crack English regiment, (the Durham Fencibles,) on whom chiefly at this critical hour had devolved the defence, which was peculiarly trying, from the vast numbers of the assailants, but brilliant, masterly, and perfectly successful.

This obstinate and fiercely-contested battle of Arklow was indeed, by general consent, the hinge on which the rebellion turned. Nearly 30,000 men, armed every man of them with pikes, and 5000 with muskets, supported also by some artillery, sufficiently well served to do considerable execution at a most important point in the line of defence, could not be defeated without a very trying struggle. And here, again, it is worthy of record, that General Needham, who commanded on this day, would have followed the example of Generals Fawcet and Loftus, and have ordered a retreat, had he not been determinately opposed by Colonel Skerret, of the Durham regiment. Such was the imbecility, and the want of moral courage, on the part of the military leaders; for it would be unjust to impute any defect in animal courage to the feeblest of these leaders. General Needham, for example, exposed his person, without reserve, throughout the whole of this difficult day. Any amount of cannon shot he could face cheerfully, but not a trying responsibility.

From the defeat of Arklow, the rebels gradually retired, between the 9th and the 20th of June, to their main military position of Vinegar Hill, which lies immediately above the town of Enniscorthy, and had fallen into their hands, concurrently with that place, on the 28th of May. Here their whole forces, with the exception of perhaps 6000, who attacked General Moore (ten and a half years later, the Moore of Corunna) when marching on the 26th towards Wexford, had been concentrated; and to this point, therefore, as a focus, had the royal army, 13,000 strong, with a respectable artillery, under the supreme command of General Lake, converged in four separate divisions, about the 19th and 20th of June. The great blow was to be struck on the 21st; and the plan was, that the royal forces, moving to the assault of the rebel position upon four lines at right angles to each other, (as if, for instance, from the four cardinal points to the same centre,) should surround their encampment, and shut up every avenue to escape. On this plan, the field of battle would have been one vast slaughter house; for quarter was not granted on either side. [4] But the quadrille, if it were ever seriously concerted, was entirely defeated by the failure of General Needham, who did not present himself with his division until nine o'clock, a full half hour after the battle was over, and thus earned the, sobriquet of the late [5] General Needham. Whether the failure were really in this officer, or (as was alleged by his apologists) had been already preconcerted in the inconsistent orders issued to him by General Lake, with the covert intention, as many believe, of mercifully counteracting his own scheme of wholesale butchery, to this day remains obscure. The effect of that delay, in whatever way caused, was for once such as must win every body's applause. The action had commenced at seven o'clock in the morning; by half past eight, the whole rebel army was in flight; and, naturally making for the only point left unguarded, it escaped with no great slaughter (but leaving behind all its artillery, and a good deal of valuable plunder) through what was facetiously called ever afterwards Needham's Gap. After this capital rout of Vinegar Hill, the rebel army day by day mouldered away. A large body, however, of the fiercest and most desperate continued for some time to make flying marches in all directions, according to the positions of the king's forces and the momentary favor of accidents. Once or twice they were brought to action by Sir James Duff and Sir Charles Asgill; and, ludicrously enough, once more they were suffered to escape by the eternal delays of the "late Needham." At length, however, after many skirmishes, and all varieties of local success, they finally dispersed upon a bog in the county of Dublin. Many desperadoes, however, took up their quarters for a long time in the dwarf woods of Killaughrim, near Enniscorthy, assuming the trade of marauders, but ludicrously designating themselves the Babes in the Wood. It is an inexplicable fact, that many deserters from the militia regiments, who had behaved well throughout the campaign, and adhered faithfully to their colors, now resorted to this confederation of the woods; from which it cost some trouble to dislodge them. Another party, in the woods and mountains of Wicklow, were found still more formidable, and continued to infest the adjacent country through the ensuing winter. These were not finally ejected from their lairs until after one of their chiefs had been killed in a night skirmish by a young man defending his house, and the other chief, weary of his savage life, had surrendered himself to transportation.

It diffused general satisfaction throughout Ireland, that, on the very day before the final engagement of Vinegar Hill, Lord Cornwallis made his entry into Dublin as the new lord lieutenant. A proclamation, issued early in July, of general amnesty to all who had shed no blood except on the field of battle, notified to the country the new spirit of policy which now distinguished the government; and, doubtless, that one merciful change worked marvels in healing the agitations of the land. Still it was thought necessary that severe justice should take its course amongst the most conspicuous leaders or agents in the insurrection. Martial law still prevailed; and under that law we know, through a speech of the Duke of Wellington's, how entirely the very elements of justice are dependent upon individual folly or caprice. Many of those who had shown the greatest generosity, and with no slight risk to themselves, were now selected to suffer. Bagenal Harvey, a Protestant gentleman, who had held the supreme command of the rebel army for some time with infinite vexation to himself, and taxed with no one instance of cruelty or excess, was one of those doomed to execution. He had possessed an estate of nearly three thousand per annum; and at the same time with him was executed another gentleman, of more than three times that estate, Cornelius Grogan. Singular it was, that men of this condition and property, men of feeling and refinement, should have staked the happiness of their families upon a contest so forlorn. Some there were, however, and possibly these gentlemen, who could have explained their motives intelligibly enough: they had been forced by persecution, and actually baited into the ranks of the rebels. One picturesque difference in the deaths of these two gentlemen was remarkable, as contrasted with their previous habits. Grogan was constitutionally timid; and yet he faced the scaffold and the trying preparations of the executioner with fortitude. On the other hand, Bagenal Harvey, who had fought several duels with coolness, exhibited considerable trepidation in his last moments. Perhaps, in both, the difference might be due entirely to some physical accident of health or momentary nervous derangement. [6]

Among the crowd, however, of persons who suffered death at this disastrous era, there were two that merit a special commemoration for their virtuous resistance, in disregard of all personal risk, to a horrid fanaticism of cruelty. One was a butcher, the other a seafaring man—both rebels. But they must have been truly generous, brave, and noble-minded men. During the occupation of Wexford by the rebel army, they were repeatedly the sole opponents, at great personal risk, to the general massacre then meditated by some few Popish bigots. And, finally, when all resistance seemed likely to be unavailing, they both demanded resolutely from the chief patron of this atrocious policy that he should fight themselves, armed in whatever way he might prefer, and, as they expressed it, "prove himself a man," before he should be at liberty to sport in this wholesale way with innocent blood.

One painful fact I will state in taking leave of this subject; and that, I believe, will be quite sufficient to sustain any thing I have said in disparagement of the government; by which, however, I mean, in justice, the local administration of Ireland. For, as to the supreme government in England, that body must be supposed, at the utmost, to have passively acquiesced in the recommendations of the Irish cabinet, even when it interfered so far. In particular, the scourgings and flagellations resorted to in Wexford and Kildare, &c., must have been originally suggested by minds familiar with the habits of the Irish aristocracy in the treatment of dependants. Candid Irishmen will admit that the habit of kicking, or threatening to kick, waiters in coffee houses or other menial dependants,—a habit which, in England, would be met instantly by defiance and menaces of action for assault and battery, —is not yet altogether obsolete in Ireland. [7] Thirty years ago it was still more prevalent, and presupposed that spirit and temper in the treatment of menial dependants, out of which, doubtless, arose the practice of judicial (i.e., tentative) flagellations. Meantime, that fact with which I proposed to close my recollections of this great tumult, and which seems to be a sufficient guaranty for the very severest reflections on the spirit of the government, is expressed significantly in the terms, used habitually by Roman Catholic gentlemen, in prudential exculpation of themselves, when threatened with inquiry for their conduct during these times of agitation: "I thank my God that no man can charge me justly with having saved the life of any Protestant, or his house from pillage, by my intercession with the rebel chiefs." How! Did men boast of collusion with violence and the spirit of massacre! What did that mean? It meant this: Some Roman Catholics had pleaded, and pleaded truly, as a reason for special indulgence to themselves, that any influence which might belong to them, on the score of religion or of private friendship, with the rebel authorities, had been used by them on behalf of persecuted Protestants, either in delivering them altogether, or in softening their doom. But, to the surprise of every body, this plea was so far from being entertained favorably by the courts of inquiry, that, on the contrary, an argument was built upon it, dangerous in the last degree to the pleader. "You admit, then," it was retorted, "having had this very considerable influence upon the rebel councils; your influence extended to the saving of lives; in that case we must suppose you to have been known privately as their friend and supporter." Thus to have delivered an innocent man from murder, argued that the deliverer must have been an accomplice of the murderous party. Readily it may be supposed that few would be disposed to urge such a vindication, when it became known in what way it was likely to operate. The government itself had made it perilous to profess humanity; and every man henceforward gloried publicly in his callousness and insensibility, as the one best safeguard to himself on a path so closely beset with rocks.

FOOTNOTES

[1] "The only ducal house."—That is, the only one not royal. There are four provinces in Ireland—Ulster, Connaught, Munster, which three give old traditional titles to three personages of the blood royal. Remains only Leinster, which gives the title of duke to the Fitzgeralds.

[2] "Present French king."—Viz., in the year 1833.

[3] "To have pardoned," &c.—This was written under circumstances of great hurry; and, were it not for that palliation, would be inexcusably thoughtless. For, in a double sense, it is doubtful how far the government could have pardoned Lord Edward. First, in a prudential sense, was it possible (except in the spirit of a German sentimentalizing drama) to pardon a conspicuous, and within certain limits a very influential, officer for publicly avowing opinions tending to treason, and at war with the constitutional system of the land which fed him and which claimed his allegiance? Was it possible, in point of prudence or in point of dignity, to overlook such anti-national sentiments, whilst neither disavowed nor ever likely to be disavowed? Was this possible, regard being had to the inevitable effect of such unearned forgiveness upon the army at large? But secondly, in a merely logical sense of practical self-consistency, would it have been rational or even intelligible to pardon a man who probably would not be pardoned; that is, who must (consenting or not consenting) benefit by the concessions of the pardon, whilst disowning all reciprocal obligations?

[4] "For quarter was not granted on either side."—I repeat, as all along and necessarily I have repeated, that which orally I was told at the time, or which subsequently I have read in published accounts. But the reader is aware by this time of my steadfast conviction, that more easily might a camel go through the eye of a needle, than a reporter, fresh from a campaign blazing with partisanship, and that partisanship representing ancient and hereditary feuds, could by possibility cleanse himself from the virus of such a prejudice.

[5] The same jest was applied to Mr. Pitt's brother. When first lord of the Admiralty, people calling on him as late as even 10 or 11, P.M., were told that his lordship was riding in the park. On this account, partly, but more pointedly with a malicious reference to the contrast between his languor and the fiery activity of his father, the first earl, he was jocularly called, the late Lord Chatham.

[6] Perhaps also not. Possibly enough there may be no call for any such exceptional solution; for, after all, there may be nothing to solve—no dignus vindice nodus. As regards the sudden interchange of characters on the scaffold,—the constitutionally brave man all at once becoming timid, and the timid man becoming brave,—it must be remembered, that the particular sort of courage applicable to duelling, when the danger is much more of a fugitive and momentary order than that which invests a battle lasting for hours, depends almost entirely upon a man's confidence in his own luck—a peculiarity of mind which exists altogether apart from native resources of courage, whether moral or physical: usually this mode of courage is but a transformed expression for a sanguine temperament. A man who is habitually depressed by a constitutional taint of despondency may carry into a duel a sublime principle of calm, self-sacrificing courage, as being possibly utterly without hope—a courage, therefore, which has to fight with internal resistance, to which there may be nothing corresponding in a cheerful temperament.

But there is another and separate agency through which the fear of death may happen to act as a disturbing force, and most irregularly as viewed in relation to moral courage and strength of mind. This anomalous force is the imaginative and shadowy terror with which different minds recoil from death—not considered as an agony or torment, but considered as a mystery, and, next after God, as the most infinite of mysteries. In a brave man this terror may happen to be strong; in a pusillanimous man, simply through inertness and original feebleness of imagination, may happen to be scarcely developed. This oscillation of horror, alternating between death as an agony and death as a mystery, not only exists with a corresponding set of consequences accordingly as one or other prevails, but is sometimes consciously contemplated and put into the scales of comparison and counter valuation. For instance, one of the early Csesars reviewed the case thus: "Emori nolo; me esse mortuum nihil cestumo: From death as the act and process of dying, I revolt; but as to death, viewed as a permanent state or condition, I don't value it at a straw." What this particular Caesar detested, and viewed with burning malice, was death the agony—death the physical torment. As to death the mystery, want of sensibility to the infinite and the shadowy had disarmed that of its terrors for him. Yet, on the contrary, how many are there who face the mere physical anguish of dying with stern indifference! But death the mystery,—death that, not satisfied with changing our objective, may attack even the roots of our subjective,—there lies the mute, ineffable, voiceless horror before which all human courage is abashed, even as all human resistance becomes childish when measuring itself against gravitation.

[7] "Not yet altogether obsolete."—Written in 1833.



CHAPTER X.

FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND, AND SECOND REBELLION.

The decisive battle of Vinegar Hill took place at midsummer; and with that battle terminated the First Rebellion. Two months later, a French force, not making fully a thousand men, under the command of General Humbert, landed on the west coast of Ireland, and again roused the Irish peasantry to insurrection. This latter insurrection, and the invasion which aroused it, naturally had a peculiar interest for Lord Westport and myself, who, in our present abode of Westport House, were living in its local centre.

I, in particular, was led, by hearing on every side the conversation reverting to the dangers and tragic incidents of the era, separated from us by not quite two years, to make inquiries of every body who had personally participated in the commotions. Records there were on every side, and memorials even in our bed rooms, of this French visit; for, at one time, they had occupied Westport House in some strength. The largest town in our neighborhood was Castlebar, distant about eleven Irish miles. To this it was that the French addressed their very earliest efforts. Advancing rapidly, and with their usual style of theatrical confidence, they had obtained at first a degree of success which was almost surprising to their own insolent vanity, and which, long afterwards, became a subject of bitter mortification to our own army. Had there been at this point any energy at all corresponding to that of the enemy, or commensurate to the intrinsic superiority of our own troops in steadiness, the French would have been compelled to lay down their arms. The experience of those days, however, showed how deficient is the finest composition of an army, unless where its martial qualities have been developed by practice; and how liable is all courage, when utterly inexperienced to sudden panics. This gasconading advance, which would have foundered utterly against a single battalion of the troops which fought in 1812-13 amongst the Pyrenees, was here for the moment successful.

The bishop of this see, Dr. Stock, with his whole household, and, indeed, his whole pastoral charge, became, on this occasion, prisoners to the enemy. The republican head quarters were fixed for a time in the episcopal palace; and there it was that General Humbert and his staff lived in familiar intercourse with the bishop, who thus became well qualified to record (which he soon afterwards did in an anonymous pamphlet) the leading circumstances of the French incursion, and the consequent insurrection in Connaught, as well as the most striking features in the character and deportment of the republican officers. Riding over the scene of these transactions daily for some months, in company with Dr. Peter Browne, the Dean of Ferns, (an illegitimate son of the late Lord Altamont, and, therefore, half brother to the present,) whose sacred character had not prevented him from taking that military part which seemed, in those difficult moments, a duty of elementary patriotism laid upon all alike, I enjoyed many opportunities for checking the statements of the bishop. The small body of French troops which undertook this remote service had been detached in one half from the army of the Rhine; the other half had served under Napoleon in his first foreign campaign, viz., the Italian campaign of 1796, which accomplished the conquest of Northern Italy. Those from Germany showed, by their looks and their meagre condition, how much they had suffered; and some of them, in describing their hardships, told their Irish acquaintance that, during the seige of Metz, which had occurred in the previous winter of 1797, they had slept in holes made four feet below the surface of the snow. One officer declared solemnly that he had not once undressed, further than by taking off his coat, for a period of twelve months. The private soldiers had all the essential qualities fitting them for a difficult and trying service: "intelligence, activity, temperance, patience to a surprising degree, together with the exactest discipline." This is the statement of their candid and upright enemy. "Yet," says the bishop, "with all these martial qualities, if you except the grenadiers, they had nothing to catch the eye. Their stature, for the most part, was low, their complexion pale and yellow, their clothes much the worse for wear: to a superficial observer, they would have appeared incapable of enduring any hardship. These were the men, however, of whom it was presently observed, that they could be well content to live on bread or potatoes, to drink water, to make the stones of the street their bed, and to sleep in their clothes, with no covering but the canopy of heaven." "How vast," says Cicero, "is the revenue of Parsimony!" and, by a thousand degrees more striking, how celestial is the strength that descends upon the feeble through Temperance!