new Lord-Lieutenant; and soon after Lord Camden departed. 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 animated the Government, and doubtless 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, severe justice is often no justice at all. 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, who could not expect to be gainers by such revolutionary movements, should have staked their peace and the happiness of their families upon a contest so forlorn from the very first. 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 characteristic 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, ex

hibited 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.

Among the crowd, however, of persons superior in rank who suffered death at this disastrous era, there were two whom chiefly I regretted, and would have gone any distance to have shaken hands with. One was a butcher, the

other a seafaring man, both rebels. But they must have been truly generous, brave, and noble-minded men. For, 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 the Popish fanatics. And, finally, when all resistance seemed likely to be unavailing, they both insisted resolutely with the chief patron of this bloody proposal, that he should fight them with sword or pistol as he might prefer, and 'prove himself a man,' (as they expressed it,) before he should be at liberty to sport in this wholesale way with innocent blood.

One dreadful fact I shall state in taking leave of this subject; and that, I believe, will be quite sufficient to sustain anything 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 sanctioned 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 must admit that the habit of kicking, or threatening to kick, waiters in coffee-houses or other dependants, - a habit which, in

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England, would be met instantly by defiance and menaces of action for assault and battery, is not yet altogether obsolete in Ireland. Thirty years ago it was still more prevalent, and marked that spirit and temper in the treatment of menial dependants, with which doubtless originated the measure of judicial flagellations. To return, however; that fact with which I proposed to close my recollections of this great tumult, and which I hold to be a sufficient guarantee for the very severest reflections on the spirit of the Government, is expressed significantly in the terms, memorable enough, but commonly used 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.' What did this mean? Some Roman Catholics had pleaded, and pleaded truly, as a reason for special indulgence to themselves, that they had used any influence, which might belong to them on the score of religion, or of private friendship with the rebel authorities, on behalf of persecuted Protestants; either in delivering them altogether, or in softening their doom. But, to the surprise of everybody, this plea was so far from being entertained or allowed any weight by the courts of inquiry, that, on the contrary, an argument was uniformly 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; in that case we must suppose you to have been known privately as their friend and supporter.' Readily it may be supposed, that few would be likely to urge such a vindication, when it became known in what way it was fated to operate. The Government itself had made it perilous to

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profess humanity; and every man henceforward gloried publicly in his callousness and insensibility, as the best safeguard to himself in a path so closely beset with rocks.

In the latter end of October, I quitted Connaught with Lord W., and we returned slowly to Dublin. Thence, after some little stay, we crossed the Irish Channel; and by the same route through North Wales, we travelled together to Birmingham.

CHAPTER V.

PREMATURE MANHOOD.

It was at Birmingham, the great centre of travelling in England, where so many of the great roads converge, and which I, like myriads besides, have visited, therefore, many hundreds of times, without ever yet having gone thither as a terminus ad quem : - at Birmingham it was, that I parted with my friend Lord W. His route lay through Oxford; and stopping, therefore, no longer than was necessary to harness fresh horses, an operation, however, which was seldom accomplished in less than half an hour at that era, he went on directly to Stratford. My own destination was yet doubtful. I had been directed, in Dublin, to inquire at the Birmingham Post-Office, for a letter which would guide my motions. There, accordingly, upon sending for it, lay the expected letter from my mother, from which I learned that my sister was visiting at L-xt-n, in Northamptonshire, a seat of Lord C-rb-ry's, to which place I also had an invitation; and that during my stay at that place some final resolution would be taken, and announced to me, as to the disposal of my time, for the two or three years before I could be supposed old enough, on the English system, for going to Oxford or Cambridge. This was the part of the letter which I read with the deepest interest. It is true, that I was yet the merest boy; having, in fact, completed my fifteenth birth