MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN.

It is only necessary to recall to mind the instances which naturalists record of the minuteness of the seeds of life, and the manner in which they may lie for a long time concealed, in order to induce us to presume, in the majority of examples that are alleged of spontaneous generation, the previous existence of the seed or the germ. Take the following from Dr Carpenter's work onComparative Physiology:—"Another very curious example of fungous vegetation, in a situation where its existence was not until recently suspected, is presented in the process of fermentation. It appears from microscopic examination of a mass of yeast, that it consists of a number of minute disconnected vesicles, which closely resemble those of the Red Snow, and appear to constitute one of the simplest forms of vegetation. These, like seeds, nay remain for almost any length of time in an inactive condition without losing their vitality; but when placed in a fluid in which any kind of sugary matter is contained, they commence vegetating actively, provided the temperature is sufficiently high; and they assist in producing that change in the composition of the fluid which is known under the name of fermentation."—P. 74. With such instances before us, the experiments of Messieurs Crosse and Weekes must be conducted with singular care and judgment, in order to lead to any satisfactory result.

Let us be allowed to say, that the experiments of those gentlemen excite in us no horror or alarm. A Frankenstein who produces nothing worse than a harmless worm, may surely be suffered to go blameless. Let these electricians pursue their experiments, and make all the worms they can. They will incur no very grave responsibility for such additions as they can make to that stream of life which is pouring from every crack and crevice of the earth. Some persons have a vague idea, that there is something derogatory to the lowest form of animal life to have its origin in merely inorganic elements; an idea which results perhaps not so much from any subtle and elevated conceptions of life, as from an imagination unawakened to the dignity and the marvel of the inorganic world. What is motion but a sort of life? a life of activity if not of feeling. Suppose—what indeed nowhere exists—an inert matter, and let it be suddenly endowed with motion, so that two particles should fly towards each other from the utmost bounds of the universe; were not this almost as strange a property as that which endows an irritable tissue or an organ of secretion? Is not the worldone—the creature of one God—dividing itself, with constant interchange of parts, into the sentient and the non-sentient, in order, so to speak, to become conscious of itself? Are we to place a great chasm between the sentient and the non-sentient, so that it shall be derogation to a poorworm to have no higher genealogy than the element which is the lightning of heaven, and too much honour to the subtle chemistry of the earth to be the father of a crawling subject, of some bag, or sack, or imperceptible globule of animal life? No; we have no recoil against this generation of an animalcule by the wonderful chemistry of God; our objection to this doctrine is, that it is not proved.

But, proved or not, our author has still the most difficult part of his task to accomplish. From his animated globule he has to develop the whole creation of vegetable and animal life. We shall be contented with watching its development through one branch, that of the animal kingdom.

The idea of the development of the animal creation from certain primary rudiments or simple forms of life, is due, we believe, to Lamarck; and although his peculiar theory has met, and deservedly, with ridicule, we do not hesitate to say that it is far more plausible, and substantially far more rational, than that which our author has substituted. Geology reveals to us a gradual extinction of species, accompanied by a successive appearance of new species;[4]it reveals to us also that the surface of the earth has undergone great mutations; that land and sea have frequently changed places; and that the climate of the several regions of the world, owing to many causes, has greatly varied. Natural history is replete with striking accounts of the modifications produced in a race of animals by the change of climate, diet, and the enforcement of new habits; and linking all these facts together, it does not appear a very violent supposition, nor one that departs from the frequent analogies of nature, to say, that the causes which have brought about the extinction of certain species may have also operated to the development of new species. The manifest error of Lamarck was an egregious exaggeration of certain well-known truths. Because external circumstances may do much in directing the inherent power of developmentpossessed by a given organization, he resolved that it should do every thing. The camelopard was to get his long neck by stretching for his food; and the duck her web-foot by paddling in the water. But the author before us breaks loose entirely from the region of facts; or rather he announces to us, on his own responsibility, an entirely new fact—that it is the law of animal life that each species should, from time to time, produce a brood of the species next in order of perfection or complexity of organization. With him, this development is the result merely of a law of generation which he himself has devised to meet the emergency.

Amongst the laws of life, the most conspicuous and undoubted is this—that each species reproduces itself, that like begets like. This law our author cannot of course gainsay; but he appends to it another overruling law, that from time to time, at long intervals, the like does not beget the like, but the different and superior form of organization. In other words, the old law changes from time to time. Of this novel description of law he borrows the following illustration of Mr Babbage:—

Unquestionably, what we ordinarily see of nature is calculated to impress a conviction that each species invariably produces its like. But I would here call attention to a remarkable illustration of natural law, which has been brought forward by Mr Babbage in hisNinth Bridgewater Treatise. The reader is requested to suppose himself seated before the calculating machine and observing it. It is moved by a weight, and there is a wheel which revolves through a small angle round its axis, at short intervals, presenting to the eye successively a series of numbers engraved on its divided circumference."Let the figures thus seen, be the series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, &c. &c., of natural numbers, each of which exceeds its immediate antecedent by unity."Now, reader," says Mr Babbage, "let me ask you how long you will have counted before you are firmly convinced that the engine has been so adjusted that it will continue, whilst its motion is maintained, to produce the same series of natural numbers. Some minds are so constituted, that after passing the first hundred terms they will be satisfied that they are acquainted with the law. After seeing five hundred terms, few will doubt; and after the fifty thousandth term, the propensity to believe that the succeeding term will be fifty thousand and one, will be almost irresistible. That termwillbe fifty thousand and one, and the same regular succession will continue; the five millionth, and the fifty millionth term will still appear in their expected order, and one unbroken chain of natural numbers will pass before your eyes fromoneup toone hundred million."True to the vast induction which has been made the next succeeding term will be one hundred million and one; but the next number presented by the rim of the wheel, instead of being, one hundred million and two, is one hundred millionten thousandand two. The law changes."

"Let the figures thus seen, be the series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, &c. &c., of natural numbers, each of which exceeds its immediate antecedent by unity.

"Now, reader," says Mr Babbage, "let me ask you how long you will have counted before you are firmly convinced that the engine has been so adjusted that it will continue, whilst its motion is maintained, to produce the same series of natural numbers. Some minds are so constituted, that after passing the first hundred terms they will be satisfied that they are acquainted with the law. After seeing five hundred terms, few will doubt; and after the fifty thousandth term, the propensity to believe that the succeeding term will be fifty thousand and one, will be almost irresistible. That termwillbe fifty thousand and one, and the same regular succession will continue; the five millionth, and the fifty millionth term will still appear in their expected order, and one unbroken chain of natural numbers will pass before your eyes fromoneup toone hundred million.

"True to the vast induction which has been made the next succeeding term will be one hundred million and one; but the next number presented by the rim of the wheel, instead of being, one hundred million and two, is one hundred millionten thousandand two. The law changes."

The illustration is carried through a page or two more, but we have quoted all that is essential.

Mr Babbage makes a very useless parade here of his calculating machine. A common household clock that strikes the hours, would illustrate all that his machine can possibly illustrate. If the reader seat himself before that homely piece of mechanism, he will hear ittickfor sixty minutes, when thelaw of the machinewill change, and it willstrike.

In a scientific point of view it is absurd to talk about thelaw of his machine. His machine partakes only of the laws of mechanics, which, we presume, are as constant there as elsewhere. Our only definition of law is, a sequence that is constant; deny its constancy, and you deny it to be law; it is a mere contradiction in terms to speak of a law that changes.

If, therefore, our author, guided by this illustration of Mr Babbage's, proclaims a law of animal life whichchanges of itselffrom time to time, he is departing from the fundamental principle of all science—he who is so zealous to reduce all phenomenon to the formula of science! Anxious to escape from an abrupt interposition of creative power, he introduces a sudden mutability in the laws themselves of nature! If it be said that he does not (although his words imply it) insist upon a single law of nature that varies at intervals, butcontends for a variable result, produced by the law of reproduction acting under varied circumstances, and in co-operation with different laws—then was Mr Babbage's machine of no use whatever to him, nor did he stand in need of any peculiar illustration. There is not a class of phenomena which does not exhibit this variety of result by the diversified co-operation of laws constant in themselves. The frozen river becomes motionless; it ceases to flow; yet no one attributes any inconstancy to the laws of heat, or the laws of hydrostatics.

Quitting these abstractions, in which the writer before has shown himself no very great adept, let us enquire by what arguments he attempts to support his peculiarprinciples of development. That on which he appears chiefly to rely is the fact, that the embryo of one of the higher animals passes through the fœtal stages of the lower animals—the fish, the reptile, the bird—before it assumes its last definite shape. From this he would infer, that the germ of life is alike in all, and that it depends only on peculiarities of gestation whether it shall become a fish, a fowl, or a mammal. He lays particular stress on the circumstance, that the brain of the human embryo passes through these several stages.

But, 1. In order to derive any thing like an argument here, surely the whole human embryo, and not the brain only, ought to undergo these changes. But not only in man, in the other mammalia to which allusion is made, it is never theentire animalwhich passes through these transformations.

2. If the embryo of one of the mammalia pass through the fœtal stages of the fish and the bird, the embryo fish bears the same transitory resemblance to the fœtal condition of the bird or the mammal. So that the order here is reversed, and nothing appears proved but that some deviations of form are in all cases assumed before the final shape is adopted. And,

3. The physiologists who have made this branch of their science an especial study, tell us, as the result of their microscopic observations, that the embryo of the higher animals pursues a different course of development,from the very earliest stages, to that of the lower animals. It cannot be, therefore, according to the diagram that the author presents to us, that the same germ which is nourished up to a certain point to be fish, would, if transferred to other care and a better system of nutrition, be nourished into a bird or a mammal. If it is to be a mammal, it must be fashioned accordingly from the very beginning.

We will content ourselves with quoting, as our authority for these assertions, a passage from Dr Carpenter's work onComparative Physiology; and we cite this author the more willingly, because he is certainly not one who is himself disposed to damp the ardour of speculation, and because the very similarity of some of his views, or expressions, renders him, at all events, an unexceptionable witness on this occasion.

"Allusion has been made to the correspondence which is discernible between the transitory forms exhibited by the embryos of the higher beings, and the permanent conditions of the lower. When this was first observed, it was stated as a general law, that all the higher animals, in the progress of their development, pass through a series of forms analogous to those encountered in ascending the animal scale. But this is not correct, for theentire animalnever does exhibit such resemblance, except in a few particular cases to which allusion has already been made, (the case of the frog, and others, who undergo what is commonly called a metamorphosis.) And the resemblance, or analogy, which exists between individual organs, has no reference to theirforms, but to theirconditionorgrade of development. Thus we find the heart of the mammalia, which finally possesses four distinct cavities, at first in the condition of a prolonged tube, being a dilatation of the principal arterial trunk, and resembling the dorsal vessel of the articulated classes; subsequently it becomes shortened in relation to the rest of the structure, and presents a greater diameter, whilst a division of its cavity into two parts—a ventricle and an auricle—is evident, as in fishes; a third cavity, like that possessed by reptiles, is next formed by the subdivision of theauricle previously existing; and lastly, a fourth chamber is produced by the growth of a partition across the ventricle; and in perfect harmony with these changes are the metamorphoses presented by the system of vessels immediately proceeding from the heart. In like manner, the evolution of the brain in man is found to present conditions which may be successively compared with those of the fish, reptile bird, lower mammalia, and higher mammalia; but in no instance is there an exact identity between any of these. It is to be remembered, that every animal must pass throughsomechange in the progress of its development, from its embryonic to its adult condition; and the correspondence is much closer between the embryonic fish and the fœtal bird, or mammal, than between these and the adult fish."—(P. 196.)

And take, also, the following short passage from the preface of the same work, where the author has been speaking of the latest discoveries of physiologists on the development of the embryo.

"Thus, when we ascend the scale of being, in either of the two organized kingdoms, we observe the principle of specialisation remarkably illustrated in the development of the germ into the perfect structure. In the lowest of each kind, the first-formed membranous expansion has the same character throughout, andthe whole enters into the fully-developed structure. In higher grades the whole remains, but the organs evolved from the centre have evidently the most elevated character.In the highest none but the most central portion is persistent; the remainder forming organs of a temporary and subservient nature."

The fact that the animal kingdom exhibits a gradual progression from forms the most simple to forms the most complex, is, of course, appropriated by our author as a proof of his theory of successive development. It is well known, that whilst this scale of being is an idea which occurs to every observer, the naturalist finds insuperable difficulties in arranging the several species of animals according to such a scale. To relieve himself from these, the author has taken under his patronage what, in honour of its founder, he calls theMacleay System, in which the animal kingdom is "arranged along a series of close affinities,in a circular form;" into which circles we will excuse ourselves from entering. It is a system as confused as it is fantastic; and our author, who writes in general in a clear and lucid manner, in vain attempts to present us with an intelligible exposition of it. Arrange the animal creation how you will, in a line or in circles, there is one fact open to every observer, that however fine may be the gradations amongst the lower animals, the difference between the higher animals is very distinctly marked. It is a difference which does not at all accord with the hypothesis of our author, "that the simplest and most primitive type gave birth to the type next above it, and this again produced the next higher, and so on to the very highest, the stages of advance being in all cases very small—namely, from one species only to another; so that the phenomenon has always been of simple and modest character." Whilst he confines himself tomollusks, and suchlike obscure creatures, the phenomenon he supposes may not be very startling; but when he ascends to the higher and larger animals, whose forms and habits are well known to us—when he has to find a father for the horse, the lion, the rhinoceros, the elephant—his phenomenon, we are sure, will no longer retain its "simple and modest character."

Naturalists have observed, that there is a strikinguniformity of planeven amongst animals of very different habits, and which, perhaps, inhabit different elements; they have remarked, that this uniformity is adhered to even when it appears to answer no specific purpose, as when in the fin of a whale the unbending bone bears the semblance of the jointed hand. This, too, is pressed into the service of our author's hypothesis. It is a curious fact. But if we say of it, that it appears to hint the existence ofsome law, and to tempt the investigation of the physiologist, we assign to it all the scientific importance that it can possibly deserve.

Some physiologists, we must be permitted to observe, have rather amused themselves by a display of ingenuity, than profited science bytheir discoveries of aunity of structurein animals of the most opposite description. It is easy to surprise the imagination by pointing out unexpected resemblances, if all cases of diversity are at the same time kept out of view. These writers will mention, for instance, that all quadrupeds have uniformlysevenbones in the neck. The giraffe has no more than the pig. But they refuse to mention at the same time, that inbirdsthe number varies from nine to twenty-three, and inreptilesfrom three to eight. Sometimes the merest fancy is indulged. We are told that in the pulpy substance of a certain mollusk there are lines drawn presenting a sketch of a vertebrated animal, and it is gravely intimated that nature seems to have made a rough design of the next work of art she was about to produce.

When Dr Carpenter tells us, in exemplifying this law of unity of composition, that "the skull is but an expansion of the three highest vertebræ, modified to afford space for the development of the contained brain and of the organs of sense," p. 191—is he much wiser than those entomologists whom he had been previously criticising for "maintaining that the wing of an insect is a modification of its leg?" Verily we suspect that if Martinus Scriblerus had had his attention drawn to this manner of viewing things, it would have greatly excited his learned ingenuity; he would probably have begun to apply this scientific method to a variety of things, and found a unity of composition never before dreamt of. What should have prevented him from casting a philosophic glance upon the furniture of his room? With less ingenuity than certain physiologists, he would easily detect a marvellous unity of plan. He would have probably taken the table with its four legs, and the disk they support, as his great type of joinery, and would have traced a modification of this type in all the articles around him. The chair is manifestly nothing else than the table, with a development of the hinder legs commonly called the back. From the chair to the sofa the transition would be ridiculously easy; indeed the sofa can only be considered as a variety of the chair, produced by a high state of cultivation. In the footstool, or ottoman, the disk of the table has become thick and pulpy, while its legs have dwindled into small globular supports. This exaggeration of the upper portion at the expense of the lower, is carried a step further in the chest of drawers, where the small globular supports bear a singular disproportion to the corpulent figure they sustain. In some varieties even these knob-like legs are wanting; but precisely in these cases, he would observe, the knobs invariably re-appear in the shape of handles, which are still a sort of paw. What is the fire-screen, he would say, but a table with the disk in a vertical position? What the four-post bedstead but a reduplication of the original type, a table placed on a table, the upper one being laid open? If he had had the advantage of reading Mr Dickens, he would have mentioned, in confirmation of this view, that young Mr Weller, when sleeping under a table, congratulates himself upon enjoying the luxury of a four-post bedstead. The coal-scuttle might perhaps present some difficulties; but if he might be allowed to approach it through the loo-table, he would doubtless succeed in tracing here also the unity of composition. In the loo-table the four legs have collapsed into a central column! The coal-scuttle is only aloo-tablewith the edges of the disk curled up—assuming a bonnet-like shape, the result, perhaps, of its long domesticity. In short, we believe the only insuperable difficulty Martin would encounter, would be, when, after having completed his survey, he would run off to the joiner to convince him of the unity of plan on which he had been so unconsciously working.

It was a bold step of our author's to adduce the geographical distribution of the several species of animals as a proof of his law of development. To most minds it would have immediately occurred as an objection. Each region of the earth has its own peculiarfauna, and this difference is not accountable on any known influence of soil or climate. What can explain the peculiar fauna of New Holland? If all the varieties of animal life spring from one and the same germ under the uniform laws of nature, how is it that in someregions, fitted in every respect for the support of animal life, no animals whatever of the higher order are found? "New Zealand, which may be compared in dimensions to Ireland united with Scotland, which extends over more than 700 miles in latitude, and is in its many parts 90 miles broad, with varied stations, a fine climate, and land of all heights, from 14,000 feet downwards, does not possess one indigenous quadruped, with the exception of a small rat."—Lyell's Principles of Geology, Vol. i. p. 102. Other instances equally striking might be mentioned. How are we to explain them upon our author's hypothesis? Are we to make supposition upon supposition, and presume that the land of New Zealand had not been long enough emerged from the sea to allow of the ample development of the original germ of life; and that, if the rat had been left to himself, he would in process of time have peopled the whole region with dogs, and horses, and oxen, or some other analogous quadrupeds?

But our readers have perhaps heard sufficient of an hypothesis which is built only on a series of conjectures, and we ourselves are wearied with a too easy victory. There are many other topics in the book which would far better reward discussion than the one we have chosen—as, for instance, the geological views here put forward, the claims of phrenology, and the difference between instinct and intelligence; but if disposed to treat these subjects, we could have found other and more suitable opportunities; we thought it fit to select that which forms the peculiarity of the present work.

But absurd as the matter is, we must complete the account which the author gives of the development of that race in which we are chiefly interested—man. We have seen, that according to his law of progressive generation, and as an instance of what he denominates "a modest and simple phenomenon," man was one day born of the monkey or the ape. But this discovered law has not only thus happily introduced the human being upon the earth, it also throws light upon the diversities which exist in the family of man.

"The causes of the various external peculiarities of mankind, now require some attention. Why, it is asked, are the Africans black, and generally marked by ungainly forms? Why the flat features of the Chinese, and the comparatively well-formed figures of the Caucasians? Why the Mongolians generally yellow, the Americans red, and the Canadians white? These questions were complete puzzles to all early writers; but physiology has lately thrown a great light upon them. It is now shown that the brain, after completing the series of animal transformations, passes through the characters in which it appears in the Negro, Malay American, and Mongolian nations, and finally becomes Caucasian. The face partakes of these alterations. The leading characters, in short, of the various races of mankind, are simply representations of particular states in the development of the highest or Caucasian type. The Negro exhibits permanently the imperfect brain, projecting lower jaw,[5]and slender bent limbs of a Caucasian child some considerable time before the period of its birth. The aboriginal American represents the same child nearer birth. The Mongolian is an arrested infant newly born. And so forth."

So that we Caucasians are, at least, the only full grown children: all others are more or less abortions. Indeed we might be described, in the language of this theory, as the only animals on the face of the earth who pass through the full period of gestation. And yet even this honour may be disputed; perhaps we ourselves are but imperfect developments of that germ of life which is the progenitor of us all. The author darkly intimates that we may be supplanted from our high place in this world, that another and more powerful and sagacious race may be born of us, who may treat us no better than we have treated the monkeys and other species of the brute creation. This is the severest blow of all. After having humbled ourpride according to this philosopher's bidding, and taught ourselves to look upon the ape with due feelings of filial respect—after having acknowledged some sturdy baboon for our only Adam, and some malicious monkey for our sweet mother Eve—after having brought ourselves to see in the lower animals the same mental and moral faculties which we boast of, and to confess that the same psychology applies to both, with a slight modification in our theory of the origin of ideas—after having practised all this condescension, to be threatened with complete dethronement from our high place in the world!—to be told that we, too, shall have to obey a master who may govern us as man governs the horse! What a millennium to look forward to!

"Is our race but the initial of the grand crowning type? Are there yet to be species superior to us in organization, purer in feeling, more powerful in device and art, andwho shall take a rule over us? There is in this nothing improbable on other grounds. The present race, rude and impulsive as it is, is perhaps the best adapted to the present state of things in the world; but the external world goes through slow and gradual changes, which may leave it in time a much serener field of existence. There may then be occasion for a nobler type of humanity, which shall complete the zoological circle on this planet, and realize some of the dreams of the purest spirits of the present race."—P. 276.

Melancholy prospect for man! When the earth becomes a serener field of existence, then will a race appear to take rule over him. Might not he become serener too? Is it thus that are to be solved all our social problems, all our discussions upon the perfectibility of man, all our vague but obstinate prophecies of some more rational and happier scheme of existence? Thishomois to survive, it seems, only to make railroads for the futureangelus.

On the authorship of this production we have no communication or conjecture to make. The writer has been successful, as far as we know, in preserving his incognito; and as the rumours that have reached our ear have all been again contradicted, we think it wisest to abstain from circulating any of then. We heard it pleasantly said that the author had been followed down as far as Lancashire, and that then all further trace of him had been lost. We think he might be traced further north than Lancashire. The style in one or two places bears symptoms of a Scottish origin. Occupied with the wild theory it promulgates, we have not said much of the literary merits of the work. Nor is there much to say. It is written in a clear, unpretending style, but somewhat careless and inexact. The exposition in the first portions of the work, the astronomical and geological, appeared to us particularly good. The author's knowledge of science is such as is gleaned by that sort of student who is denominated, in prefaces, the general reader; he is not, we should apprehend, a labourer in any one of its departments, but thankfully receives whatever is brought to his door of the results of science. With this chance-gathered stock he has ventured to frame, or rather to defend, his speculations. The sudden success of the work is not, we think, what any one could have prognosticated. It is a success which its singularity has gained for it, and which its superficiality will soon again forfeit.

We may mention that this notice was written after a perusal of the first edition. In the third edition, we observe that some passages have been slightly modified or omitted; but the hypothesis put forward is substantially the same.

The insurrection had broken out; there could now be no scepticism on the subject. Some hundreds of armed men were already crowding the grounds in front of the mansion; and from the shouts which rose in every quarter, and still more from the fires which blazed on every hill round the horizon, the numbers of the insurgents must have amounted to thousands. It was evident that we were in a pitfall, and that resistance was only the protraction of a fate which was now inevitable. The shrieks of the females and the despondency of the men, who naturally thought that their last hour was come, were enough to dishearten all resolution. For a few minutes, the only orders which I could give were to bar the doors and close the windows. The multitude, new to hostile enterprises, had till now kept at some distance, warned by their losses in the skirmish with the yeomanry, and probably expecting the arrival of troops. But the sight of our precautions, few and feeble as they were, gave them new courage; and discharges of musketry began to drop their bullets into the midst of our startled assemblage. It is only justice to the national intrepidity to say, that every measure which I proposed for defence was unhesitatingly adopted; and that one of my chief difficulties was to prevent rash sallies, which must have only terminated in loss of life. The short interval now allowed to us was employed in barricading the mansion, which was built almost with the strength of a fortress, and posting every man who could handle a musket or pistol, at the windows. Still I knew that this species of defence could not last long; and my only hope for our lives was, that the firing might bring some of the troops who patrolled the country to our assistance. But the discharges became closer and heavier, and still no sound of succour was to be heard. My situation became more anxious every moment; all looked up to me for their guidance; and though my garrison were brave and obedient, as became the high-spirited sons of Ireland, there seemed the strongest probability that the night would end in a general massacre. Yet there was no faint-heartedness under the roof; our fire was stoutly kept up whenever the assailants came within range; and as I hurried from chamber to chamber to ascertain the condition of our defence and give directions, I found all firm. Still the terrors of the females—the sight of the first women of the province flying for refuge to every corner where they might escape the balls, which now poured into every window; the actual wounds of some, visible by the blood streaming down their splendid dresses; the horror-stricken looks of the groups clinging to each other for hopeless protection; and the actual semblance of death in others fainting on the sofas and floors, and all this under an incessant roar of musketry—made me often wish that I could give way to the gallant impatience of my friends within the mansion, and take the desperate hazard of plunging into the midst of the multitude.

But a new danger awaited us; a succession of shrieks from one of the upper apartments caught my ear, and on rushing to the spot, and forcing my way through a crowd of women half frantic with alarm, I saw some of the outbuildings, immediately connectedwith the mansion, wrapped in a sheet of fire. The insurgents had at last found out the true way to subdue our resistance; and we obviously had no alternative but to throw ourselves on their mercy, or die with arms in our hands. Yet, to surrender was perhaps only to suffer a more protracted death, degraded by shame; and when I looked round me on the helplessness of the noble and beautiful women around me, and thought of the agony which must be felt by us on seeing them thrown into the power of the assassins who were now roaring with triumph and vengeance, I dismissed all thoughts of submission at once, and determined to take the chances of resistance while any man among us had the power to draw a trigger. In rushing through the mansion, to make its defenders in the front aware of the new misfortune which threatened us, I happened to pass through the ball-room, where the corpse of its noble and brave master was. One figure was standing there, with his back to me, and evidently gazing on the body. All else was solitary. Of all the friends, guests, and domestics, not one had remained. Loud as were the shouts outside, and constant as was the crashing of the musketry, I could hear a groan, which seemed to come from the very heart of that lonely bystander. I sprang towards him; he turned at the sound of my step, and, to my surprise, I saw the face of the man whose share in the insurrection I had so singularly ascertained. I had a loaded musket in my hand, and my first impulse, in the indignation of the moment, was to discharge its contents through his heart. But he looked at me with a countenance of such utter dejection, that I dropped its muzzle to the ground, and demanded "What had brought him there at such a time?" "This!" he exclaimed, pointing to the pallid form on the sofa. "To that man I owed every thing. To his protection, to his generosity, to his nobleness of heart, I owed my education, my hopes, all my prospects in life. I should have died a thousand deaths rather than see a hair of his head touched—and now, there he lies." He sank upon his knees, took the hand of the dead, and wept over it in agony.

But I had no leisure to wait upon his remorse; the volleys were pouring in, and the glare of the burning buildings showed me that the flames were making fearful progress. "This," said I, "is your work. This murder is but the first-fruits of your treason; probably every life in this house is destined to butchery within the hour." He sprang on his feet. "No, no," he cried, "we are not murderers. This is the frenzy of the populace. Regeneration must not begin by massacre."

The thought suddenly struck me that I might make his fears, or his compunctions, at the moment available.

"You are at my mercy," said I. "I might justly put you to death at the instant, as a rebel, in the fact; or I might deliver you up to the law, when your fate would be inevitable. I can make no compromise. But, if you would make such atonement to your own conscience as may be found in undoing a part of the desperate wrong which you have done, go out to those robbers and murderers who are now thirsting for our blood, and put a stop to their atrocities if you can; save the lives of those in the house; or, if you cannot, die in the only attempt which can retrieve your memory."

He looked at me with a lacklustre eye for a moment, and uttered a few wild words, as if his mind was wandering. I sternly repeated my demand, and at length he agreed to try his influence with the multitude. I threw open the door, and sent him out, adding the words—"I shall have my eye upon you. If I find you swerve, I shall fire at you, in preference to any other man in the mob. We shall die together." He went forth, and I heard his recognition by the rebels, in their loud shouts, and their heavier fire against our feeble defences. But, after a few moments, the shouting and the fire ceased together. There was a pause; from its strangeness after the tumult of the last hour, scarcely less startling than the uproar. They appeared to be deliberating on his proposition. But while we remained in this suspense, another change came; loud altercations wereheard; and the pause was interrupted by a renewed rush to the assault. We now looked upon all as hopeless, and expected only to perish in the flames, which were rolling in broad sheets over the roof of the mansion. There was no symptom of faint-heartedness among us; but our ammunition was almost exhausted, and every countenance was pale with despair; another half hour, and our fate must be decided. In this extremity, with every sense wound up to its utmost pitch, I thought that I heard the distant trampling of cavalry. It came nearer still. There was evident confusion among the rebels. At length a trumpet sounded the charge, and a squadron of horse rushed into the lawn, sabring and firing among the multitude. The struggle was fierce, but brief; and before we could unbar the doors, and burst out to take a part in themêlée, all was done; the rebels had fled, the grounds were cleared, and the dragoons were gathering their prisoners.

All was now congratulation; and I received thanks from gallant lips, and from bright eyes, which might have flattered one fonder of flattery. All imputed their safety to the address with which I had employed the feelings of the rebel leader. But for the pause produced by his presence, all must have perished. It had given time for the cavalry to come up; they having been bewildered in crossing the country, and floundering through the wretched by-roads which then formed the disgrace of Ireland. Life is a chapter of accidents; and even their arrival had been a matter of accident. An aide-de-camp of the viceroy had been sent in search of me with despatches: the officer in command at the next town had persuaded him, much against his will, to take as his escort one of the night patroles of horse; and thus were saved a hundred and fifty lives of the first personages of the province. By morning the mansion, and all within it, would probably have been embers.

The aide-de-camp's despatches were sufficiently alarming. The lord-lieutenant had received from England details of the intended insurrection. The privy council had been summoned, and the usual commands issued to keep the troops throughout the country on the alert; but the information was still so imperfect, the skill of the conspirators was so adroitly exerted in keeping their secret, and the outcry of the powerful parliamentary Opposition was so indignant and contemptuous at the remotest hint of popular disaffection, that the Government was virtually paralysed.

But the question was now decided; the scene which I had just witnessed unhappily left no room for doubt, and I determined to set off for the metropolis without delay. I had no sooner expressed my intention, than I was assailed on all hands with advice, and even with entreaties, to postpone my journey until the flight of the rebels was fully ascertained, or at least till daylight gave me a better chance of personal safety. But every moment now seemed to me more precious than the last; and, breaking through a circle of the noble and the fair, I threw myself on my horse, and with the aide-de-camp and a couple of dragoons for my escort, soon left the whole scene of entreaty and terror, sorrow and triumph, behind.

We rode hard through the night, observing frequent signs of the extended insurrection, in fires on the mountains, and the gatherings of peasantry on the roads—sometimes compelled to turn out of our way, by the evidence of their being armed and in military organization; and at others dashing through the groups, and taking them by surprise. A few shots fired at random, or the rage and roar of the crowd as we scattered them right and left in our gallop, were all that belonged to personal adventure; and when the dawn showed us from one of the hills round the capital the quiet city glittering in the first sunshine, all looked so lovely and so tranquil, that it required the desperate recollections of the night to believe in the existence of a vast and powerful combination, prepared to cover the land with burning and blood.

Within a few hours after my arrival, the privy council assembled; my intelligence was received as it deserved; it decided the wavering, and gave increased determination to the bold. Still, our sitting was long and anxious. The peril was nowundeniable, but the extent, the object, and the remedy, were alike obscure. It is not, of course, within my purpose to reveal the secrets of councils, in which all is transacted under the deepest bond of confidence; but it may be fairly told, that our deliberations often completely reversed the proverb, that "In the multitude of councillors there is safety," if by safety is meant either promptitude or penetration.

But there was one man among them, who would have distinguished himself in any council upon earth. He was a lawyer, and holding the highest office of his profession. But his ambition was still higher than his office, and his ability was equal to his ambition. Bold by nature, and rendered bolder by the constant success of his career, he would have been a matchless minister in a despotic government. Living under the old régime of France, the laurels of a Richelieu or a Mazarin might have found a formidable competitor in this man of daring and decision. He wanted but their scale of action, to have exhibited all their virtues, and perhaps all their vices.

At the bar, his career had been one of unexampled rapidity. He had scarcely appeared, when he burst through the crowd, and took the stand to which all the dignities of the profession seem the natural inheritance. He had scarcely set his foot on the floor, before he overtopped the bench. But the courts of justice were too narrow for him. It was in Parliament that he found the true atmosphere for his loftiness of flight, and keenness of vision. At that time the study of public speaking had become a fashion, and the genius of the country, singularly excitable, always ardent, and always making its noblest efforts under the spell of public display, exhibited the most brilliant proofs of its title to popularity. But in the very blaze of those triumphs, the Attorney-general showed that there were other weapons of public warfare, not less original and not less triumphant. No orator, and even no rhetorician, he seemed to despise alike the lustre of imagination and the graces of language. But he substituted a force, that often obtained the victory over both. Abrupt, bold, and scornful, his words struck home. He had all the power of plain things. He brought down no lightning from the heaven of invention, he summoned no flame from below; but the torch in his hand burned with withering power, and he wielded it without fear of man. By constitution haughty, his pride actually gave him power in debate. Men, and those able men too, often shrank from the conflict with one whose very look seemed to warn them of their temerity. But to this natural faculty of overthrow he added remarkable knowledge of public life, high legal repute, and the incomparable advantage of his early training in a profession which opens out the recesses of the soul, habitually forces imposture into light, and cross-examines the villain into reluctant veracity. There never was in Parliament a more remorseless or more effectual hand, in stripping off the tinsel of political pretension. His logic was contemptuous, and his contempt was logical. His blows were all straightforward. He wasted no time in the flourish of the sword; he struck with the point. Even to the most powerful of his opponents this assault was formidable. But with the inferior ranks of Opposition, he threw aside the sword and assumed the axe. Obviously regarding them as criminals against common sense and national polity, he treated them as the executioner might treat culprits already bound to the wheel, measuring the place for his blows with the professional eye, and crushing limb after limb at his leisure. The imperfect reports of debating in his day, have deprived parliamentary recollection of the most memorable of those great displays. But their evidence is given in the fact, that with the most numerous, powerful, and able Opposition of Ireland in his front, and the feeblest Ministerial strength behind him, the Attorney-general governed the parliament until the hour when its gates were closed for ever—when its substance was dissipated into thin air, and all but its memories sank into the returnless grave.

In the House of Lords, as chancellor, he instantly became the virtual viceroy. It is true, that a successionof opulent and accomplished noblemen, every two or three years, were transmitted from Whitehall to the Castle, to pillow themselves upon a splendid sinecure, rehearse an annual King's speech, exhibit the acknowledged elegance of noble English life, and, having given the destined number of balls and suppers, await the warrant of a secretary's letter to terminate their political existence. But the chancellor was made of "sterner stuff." His material was not soluble by a blast of ministerial breath. Not even the giant grasp of Pitt would have dared to pluck the sceptre from his hand. If struck, he might have answered the blow as the flint answers, by fire. But the premier had higher reasons for leaving him in the possession of power; he was pure. In all the uproar of public calumny, no voice was ever heard impeaching his integrity; with the ten thousand arrows of party flying round him from every quarter, none ever found a chink in his ministerial mail. He loved power, as all men do who are worthy of it. He disdained wealth, as all men do who are fitted to use it. He scorned the popularity of the day, as all men do who know the essential baseness of its purchase; and aspiring after a name in the annals of his country, like all men to whom it is due—like them, he proudly left the debt to be discharged by posterity.

The chancellor was not without his faults. His scorn was too palpable. He despised too many, and the many too much. His haughtiness converted the perishable and purchasable malice of party, into the "study of revenge, immortal hate." When he struck down an opponent in the fair strife of Parliament, his scorn was like poison in the wound, and the blow was never forgotten but in the grave. But as a statesman, his chief and unconquerable misfortune was the narrowness of his scene of action. He was but the ruler of a province, while his faculties were fitted for the administration of an empire. His errors were the offspring of his position. He was the strong man within four walls; by the very length of his stride striking against them at every step, and bruised by the very energy of his impulse against his hopeless boundaries.

At length a time of desperate trial arose. The Rebellion of 1798 burst out. He had foreseen it. But the men of the Castle, lolling on their couches, would not believe in its possibility. The men of the populace, stirring up the rabble with the point of the dagger, derided him as a libeller of the people; and even the Government of England—too anxiously engaged in watching the movements of the French legions from the heights of Dover, to have time for a glance at disturbers behind the Irish Channel—for a time left him to his fate. But he was equal to the emergency. He had been scoffingly called "the Cassandra of the aristocracy;" but he had neither the fortunes nor the failures of a Cassandra; he had not forfeited his virtues for his gift, and his prophecy was too soon and too terribly realized to be disbelieved. Of such times it is painful to speak, but of the men by whom such times are met, it is dishonourable not to speak with homage. Almost abandoned by authority, assailed almost by a nation, with the ground shaking under his feet, and the whole frame of Government quivering at every roar of the multitude in arms, he stood the shock, and finally restored the country. Language like this has not been the first tribute to the memory of this ardent, vigorous, and unshrinking statesman. But its chief use, and the noblest use of all tributes to the tomb of civil heroism, is, to tell others by what strength of principle, and by what perseverance of purpose, the rescue of nations is alone to be achieved. In the midst of alarm excited by the extent of the revolt, of ignorance from the novelty of the crisis, and of indecision from the dread of responsibility, he stood firm. The original intrepidity of his nature was even strengthened by the perils of the time; and with the whole storm of unpopularity roaring round him, he sternly pursued his course, and combated the surge, until it sank, and the state vessel neared, if it did not yet enter, the harbour.

It is the natural fate of such men, in such times, to be misunderstood, and to be maligned. The libel which cast every stone within its reach at his living name, long continued to heap them on his grave. But all this haspassed away, and the manlier portion of his countrymen now appeal to the administration of the "Great Chancellor," in proof of the national capacity for the highest trusts of empire.

Why has not the history of this man, and of his day, been written? Why has not some generous spirit, impelled alike by a sense of justice and a sense of patriotism, adopted this argument for the intellectual opulence and moral energy which may still exist in the Irish mind? Is there no descendant to claim the performance of a duty, which would reflect a lustre on himself from the light which his filial piety planted on the sepulchre? Or why are the recollections of rebels to be taken down from the gibbet, and embalmed in history, while the name of him who smote the rebellion is suffered to moulder away?

I am not writing a panegyric. He had his infirmities; his temper was too excitable, and his measures were too prompt for prudence. But his heart was sound, and his spirit was made for the guidance of a state in the hour of its danger. If a feebler mind had then presided in the public councils, Ireland, within a twelvemonth, would have been a republic; and in every hour since, would have been agonizing under the daggers of rival factions, or paying the fearful price of her frenzy in indissoluble chains.

If this were the single act of his life, it was sufficient for fame. It is enough to inscribe on the mausoleum of any man, that "he rescued his country from aDemocracy!"

The first news of the revolt which reached England, produced a formidable effect on the legislature. Even the sagacity of the premier had been deceived, and his cabinet evidently staggered on the effect of the surprise. Opposition had been equally startled, and were still more perplexed in their decision. Dealing for years in all the high-sounding topics of national wrong and national difficulty, they were astonished at the first actual realization of popular revenge. The Englishman had heard of wars as the child hears of spectres—none had seen them, and the narratives served only to excite the imagination. But the tremendous novelty of revolt was now at their doors. Whether the Irish revolters acted in concert with the undying hostility of France, or with the factions reform of England; the danger in either case assumed a shape of the most appalling magnitude. Opposition, in the very prospect of power, shrank from possession; as the stormers of a fortress might start back when they saw the walls rolling down before them in some sudden convulsion of nature. They had predicted every casualty which could befall a country, ruled by a cabinetinexorablyclosed against themselves. But when their predictions had changed their character from the fantastic and remote into the substantial and immediate—when the clouds which they so often predicted to be advancing over the prosperity of the land, seemed to have suddenly rushed forward, and condensed and darkened with the full freight of national havoc; they as suddenly flew to shelter in utter inaction, and left the minister to meet the storm. Pitt was soon equal to the crisis. The orders which he dispatched to Ireland were stamped with all the considerate vigour of his matchless ability. I had sent him all the information which could be obtained of the progress and purposes of the revolt, with the suggestions arising from the contingency. His remarks on my communication were brief, but incomparably clear, direct, and decided. Their tenor was, that I should distinguish accurately between the deluded and the deluders—that I should assure the loyal of the unhesitating support of England—and that, in all instances, I should cultivate the national loyalty, reward the generous obedience, and sympathize with all the gallant and generous qualities of a people with whom every thing was to be done, by taking an interest in their feelings. These principles were so entirely my own, that I acted upon them with double zeal, and with complete success. The loyalty of Ireland rapidly exhibited itself in the most willing sacrifices; all ranks of opinion coincided in the necessity of bold and instant action; and from day to day, party, absorbed in the sense of the national exigency, disappeared, and patriotism rose. The leading men of both sides of the House rangedthemselves in the ranks of the voluntary corps which came forward to assist in the public defence, and the fine metaphor which had once made the senate thunder with applause—"The serpent's teeth, sown in the ground, sprang up armed men,"—was now amply, but more fortunately, realized. The bitternesses and schisms of public opinion were hidden in the earth, and the harvest was a brave and spontaneous armament of men prepared to undergo all hazards for the sake of their country.

"Happy," says the French wit, "the land which has nothing for history." This happiness has never belonged to Ireland. Her annals are a romance. But the period of which I speak exhibited her senatorial strength with an energy, almost compensating for her popular misfortunes. While Parliament in England languished, parliament in Ireland started into sudden power. It was aroused by the visible presence of the public peril. Ireland was the outpost, while England was the camp; there the skirmish was at its height, while the great English brigade moved up slowly from the rear. The ardour and activity of the national temperament were exercised in perpetual conflict, and every conflict produced some new champion.

The actual construction of the senate house stimulated the national propensity for display. The House of Commons was an immense circular hall, surmounted with a lofty dome. A gallery supported by columns was formed round the base of the dome, with seats for seven hundred persons, but on crowded occasions capable of containing more; the whole highly ornamented, and constituting a rotunda, uniting grandeur with remarkable architectural elegance. Thus every member acted in the sight of a large audience, however thin might be the assemblage below; for the curiosity attached to the debates was so powerful, that the spacious gallery was generally full. But the nature of that audience excited the still stronger temptation to the bold extravagances of the Irish temperament. The chief portion of this auditory were females, and those the most distinguished of Ireland; women of wit, beauty, and title, the leaders of fashion, and often the most vivid and zealous partizans in politics—of all audiences, the most hazardous to the soberness of public deliberation. As if with the express purpose of including every element adverse to the calmness of council, the students of the neighbouring university possessed the privilege ofentréeto the gallery; and there, with the heated imaginations of youth, and every feeling trained by the theories of Greek and Roman Republicanism, they sat, night after night, watching the ministerial movements of a harassed monarchy.

What must be the condition of a minister, rising before such an audience, to pronounce the grave doctrines of public prudence; to oppose argument to brilliant declamation; to proclaim regulated obedience, in the midst of spirits fantastic as the winds; and to lay restraints, essential to the public peace, on a population proud of their past defiances, and ready to welcome even civil war? I was not conscious of any natural timidity; nor have I ever found occasion to distrust my nerve on any great demand; but I must acknowledge, that when in some of the leading debates of that most absorbing and most perilous period, I rose to take the initiative, the sight of the vast audience to whom I raised my eyes, was one of the severest trials of my philosophy. The members round me excited no alarm; with them I was prepared to grapple; it was a contest of argument; I had facts for their facts, answers for their captiousness, and a fearless tongue for their declamation. But the gallery thus filled was beyond my reach; its passions and prejudices were inaccessible by any logic of mine; and I stood before them, less as in the presence of a casual auditory than of a tribunal, and at that tribunal, less as an advocate than as a culprit on the point of being arraigned.

Another peculiar evil resulted from the admission of this crowd, and of its composition. Every casual collision of debate became personal. The most trivial play of pleasantry was embittered into an insult; the simplest sting of passing controversy was often to be healed only by a rencounter in the field. For the whole was acted on a public stage, with theéliteof thenation looking down on the performance. The hundreds of bright eyes glancing down from the gallery, were critics whose contempt was not to be resisted; and no public assembly, since the days of the Polish pospolite, ever settled so many points of debate in the shape of points of honour.

At length Opposition rallied, and resolved to make a general assault upon the Administration. Like their English friends, they had been stunned for a while by the suddenness of the outbreak. But as the Turkish populace, in a conflagration or the plague, no sooner recover from their first fright than they discover the cause in the government, and march to demand the head of the vizier; the popular orators had no sooner found leisure to look round them, than they marshalled their bands, and demanded the dismissal of all antagonist authority.Iwas first to be torn down.Istood in the gate, and while I held the keys, there was no entrance for expectant ambition.Iwaved the flag in the breach, and until the banner was swept away, the storm was ineffectual. Yet this turning the whole weight of party vindictiveness on my head, gave me a new courage, the courage of passion, the determination which arises from a sense of injury, and which magnifies with the magnitude of the trial. In other times, I might have abandoned the struggle; but, with the eyes of a nation thus brought upon me, and all the ablest men of the opposite benches making my overthrow the very prize of their victory, I determined "to stand the hazard of the die."

The eventful night came at last; for days before, every organ of public opinion was in the most feverish activity; lampoons, pamphlets, and letters to the leading journals, the whole machinery of the paragraph-world was in full work round me; and even the Administration despaired of my being able to resist the uproar—all but one, and that one the noblest and the most gifted of them all, my friend the chancellor. I had sat long past midnight with him on the eve of the coming struggle; and I received his plaudits for my determination. He talked with all his usual loftiness, but with more than his usual feeling.

"Within the next twenty-four hours," said he, "your fate will be decided. But, in public life, the event is not the dishonour; it is the countenance with which we meet it, that makes all the difference between success and shame. If you fall, you will fall like a man of character. If you triumph, your success will be unalloyed by any baseness of purchase." I told him sincerely, that I saw in the vigour and resolution of his conduct a model for public men. "However the matter may turn out in the debate," said he, rising and taking his leave, "there shall be no humiliation in the conduct of government, even if we should be defeated. Persevere to the last. The world is all chances, and ten to one of them are in favour of the man who is resolved not to be frightened out of any thing. Farewell."

Still, the crisis was a trying one, and my occupation during the day was but little calculated to smooth its anxieties. The intelligence from the county announced the increased extent of the revolt; and the intercepted correspondence gave startling proof of an organization altogether superior to the rude tumults of an angry peasantry. Several sharp encounters had taken place with the soldiery, and in some of them, the troops, scattered in small detachments and unprepared, had suffered losses. Insurrectionary proclamations had been issued, and the revolt was already assuming a military form; camps were collected on the mountains, and the arming of the population was become general. My day was occupied in writing hurried despatches to the magistrates and officers in command of the disturbed districts; until the moment when the debate was expected to begin. On my way to the House, every thing round me conspired to give a gloomy impression to my mind, weary and dark as it was already. Public alarm was at its height and the city, with the usual exaggerations of undefined danger, presented the appearance of a place about to be taken by storm. The streets were crowded with people hurrying in search of news, or gathered in groups retailing what they had obtained, and evidently filled with the most formidable conceptions of the public danger. The armedyeomanry were hurrying to their stations for the night, patrols of cavalry were moving out to scour the environs, and the carriages of the gentry from the adjoining counties were driving to the hotels, crowded with children and domestics; while waggons loaded with the furniture of families resident in the metropolis, were making their way for security into the country. All was confusion, hurry, and consternation. The scene of a great city in alarm is absolutely inconceivable but by those who have been on the spot. It singularly harassed and exhausted me; and at length, for the purpose of escaping the whole sight and sensation together, I turned from the spacious range of streets which led to the House; and made my way along one of the narrow and obscure lanes which, by a libel on the national taste, were still suffered to remain in the vicinity of an edifice worthy of the days of Imperial Rome.

My choice was an unlucky one, for I had scarcely gone a hundred yards, when I found my passage obstructed by a crowd evidently waiting with some sinister purpose. A signal was given, and I was called on to answer. I had no answer to make, but required that I should be suffered to pass on. "A spy, a spy! down with him!" was the exclamation of a dozen voices. A rush was made upon me, and notwithstanding my struggle to break through, I was overwhelmed, grasped by the arms, and hurried into the entrance of a house in utter darkness. I expected only a dagger in my heart, and from the muttered tones and words which escaped my captors, not one of whom could I discern, I seemed evidently about to encounter the fate of the spy which they deemed me. But, convinced that nothing was to be gained by submission, I loudly demanded by what right I was seized, declared myself a member of Parliament, and threatened them with the especial vengeance of the law, for obstructing me in the performance of my duty.

This announcement evidently had its effect, at least in changing the subject of their consultation; and, after another whisper, one of their number stepped up to me, and said that I must follow him. My refusal brought the group again round me, and I was forced down the stairs, and through a succession of airless and ruined vaults, until we reached a massive door. There a signal was given, and was answered from within; but the door continued closed.

My emotions during all this period were agonizing. I might not have felt more than others that fear of death which belongs to human nature; but death, in darkness, without the power of a struggle, or the chance of my fate being ever accounted for; death by the hands of assassins, and in a spot of obscure butchery, was doubly appalling. But an hour before, I had been the first man in the country, and now what was I? an unhappy object of ruffian thirst of blood, destined to die in a charnel, and be tossed among the rubbish of ruffian hands, to moulder unknown. Without condescending to implore, I now strongly attempted to reason with my captors on the atrocity of offering violence to a stranger, and on the certainty that they would gain more by giving me my liberty, than they could possibly do by burying their knives in my bosom. But all was in vain. They made no reply. One conception alone was wanting to the torture of the time; and it came. I heard through the depth of the vaults the sound of a church clock striking "eight." It was the very hour which had been agreed on for commencing the debate of the night. What must be thought of my absence? What answer could be made to any enquiry for my presence? What conceivable escape could my character as a minister have, from the charge of scandalous neglect, or more scandalous pusillanimity; from treachery to my friends, or from an utter insensibility to personal name and official honour in myself? The thought had nearly deprived me of my senses. The perspiration of mental torment ran down my face. I stamped the ground, and would have dashed my forehead against the wall, had not the whole group instantly clung round me. A few moments more of this wretchedness, and I must have died; but the door at length was cautiously opened, and I bounded in.

At a long narrow table, on whichwere a few lights, and several books and rolls of paper, sat about twenty men, evidently of the lower order, though one or two exhibited a marked superiority to the rest. A case of pistols lay on the table, which had probably been brought out on the signal of my arrival; and in the corners of the room, or rather vault, were several muskets and other weapons piled against the wall. From the obvious disturbance of the meeting, I was clearly an unwelcome guest; and, after a general sweep of the papers off the table, and a whisper which communicated to the chairman the circumstances of my capture, I was asked my name, and "why I had intruded on their meeting?" To the latter question my reply was an indignant demand, "why my liberty had been infringed on?" To the former, I gave my name and office at full length, and in a tone of authority. No announcement could have been more startling. The president actually bounded from his chair; others plucked out knives and pistols; all looked pallid and thunderstruck. With the first minister of the realm in this cavern of conspirators, every life of whom was in peril of the axe; my presence among them was like the dropping of a shell into a powder magazine.

But the dismay soon passed; their native daring returned, and I saw that my fate hung once more on the balance. After a brief consultation, and many a gloomy glance at their prisoner, the president summed up the opinion of the board. "You must be sensible, sir," said he, addressing me; "that in times like the present, every man must be prepared to make sacrifices for his cause. The call of Ireland has summoned us here—that call is irresistible; and whatever may be our feelings, for you, sir, who have been brought into this place wholly without our desire, the interests of a great country, determined to be free, must not be put in competition with the life of any individual, be his rank what it may." He paused, but a general murmur of applause showed the full approval of his grim auditory. "You, sir," he continued, with the solemnity of a judge passing sentence, "are one great obstacle to the possession of our public rights. You are a man of talents and courage, and so much the more dangerous to the patriot cause. You would disdain our folly, if we threw away the chance which fortune has put into our hands;—you must die. If we were in your power, the scaffold would be our portion. You are now in ours, and the question between us is decided." I felt, from his tone, that all remonstrance was useless; and I scorned to supplicate. "Do as you will," I indignantly exclaimed. "I make but one request. It is, that no imputation shall be suffered to rest on my memory; that the manner of my death shall be made known; and that no man shall ever be suffered to believe that I died a coward or a traitor." "It shall be done," slowly pronounced the president. I heard the click of a trigger, and looking up at the sound, saw one of the sitters at this board of terror, without moving from his place, deliberately levelling it at my head. I closed my eyes. In the next instant, I heard a scuffle; the pistol was knocked out of his hand, and a voice hurriedly exclaimed, "Are you all mad? For what purpose is this butchery? Whom are you about to murder? Do you want to bring a curse upon our cause?" All rose in confusion; but the stranger made but one spring to the spot where I stood, and fixing his eyes on me with astonishment, loudly repeated my name. As the light fell on him, I recollected at once, though his hat was deeply drawn over his eyes, and a huge cloak was wrapped round him, palpably for the purpose of concealment, the rebel leader whom I had so strangely met before. He turned to the table. "And is it in this infamous way," he fiercely exclaimed, "that you show your love of liberty? Is it in blood that you are to dip your charter; is it in making every man of common sense despise, and every man of humanity abhor you, that you are to seek for popular good-will? Down with your weapons! The first man who dares to use them, I declare a traitor to his country!" His energy made an impression; and giving me his hand, which, even in that anxious moment, I could perceive to be as cold as stone, he pronounced the words, "Sir, you are free!" But forthis they were not prepared; and some exclamations rose, in which they seemed to regard him as false to the cause, and the words—"sold," and "traitor"—were more than once audible. He flamed out at the charge, and passionately demanded proofs. He then touched another string. "Now listen to what I have to tell you, and then call me traitor, if you will. You are in the jaws of ruin. I have but just discovered that Government has obtained knowledge of your meeting; and that within five minutes every man of you will be arrested. I flew to save you; now judge of my honour to the cause. You have only to make your escape, and thank the chance which has rescued your lives." Still my safety was not complete. There were furious spirits among them, who talked of revenge for the blood already shed, and graver spirits who insisted on my being kept as a hostage. But my protector declaimed so powerfully on the folly of exacting terms from me under duress; on the wisdom of appealing to my generosity in case of reverses; and, above all, on the certainty of their falling into the hands of authority, if they wasted their time in quarrelling as to my disposal; that he again brought them to a pause. A loud knocking at the door of one of the distant vaults, and a sound like the breaking down of the wall, gave a sudden success to his argument, and the meeting, snatching up their papers and weapons, glided away as silently as so many shadows.

I naturally attempted to thank my protector, but he put his finger to his lip and pointed to the quarter from which the police were apparently forcing their way into the subterranean. This was clearly a time of peril for himself as well as his associates, and I followed him silently through the windings of this hideous locale. We shortly reached the open air, and I cannot describe the solemn and grateful sense with which I saw the sky above my head, the lights glimmering in the windows, and felt that I was once more in the land of the living. My conductor led me within sight of the door of the House of Commons, and, with a slight pressure of the hand, turned from me, and was lost among the crowd. I rushed in, exhausted, overpowered, sinking with apprehension of the evil which might have been done in my absence, and blushing at the shame which probably awaited me.

But I was fortunately disappointed. By some means, which I could never subsequently ascertain, a rumour of my seizure had reached the House; and the strongest alarm was excited by the dread of my assassination. The commencement of the debate was suspended. Opposition, with the dignified courtesy which distinguished their leaders, even proposed the adjournment of their motion; the messengers of the House were dispatched in all directions to bring some tidings of me; and I had afterwards the satisfaction to find that none imputed my absence to any motive unbecoming my personal and official honour. Thus, when I entered the House, nervous with apprehension, I was received with a general cheer; my colleagues crowded round me with enquiries and congratulations; members crossed from the opposite benches to express their welcome. The galaxy of the living and the lovely in the gallery, which the expectation of the great debate had filled with all the fashionable portion of the capital, chiefly, too, in full dress, as was the custom of the time, glanced down approvingly on me; and, when at last I took my seat, I felt myself flattered by being the centre of one of the most splendid and interesting assemblies in the world.

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