into which British good sense ever wanders. As if to pass Greek and Roman greatness, its Pericles, its Scipios, and its Cæsars, the instances of Sully, Temple, the Swede Oxenstein, and twenty others furnished by every century, had not long since belied the blasphemous paradox, that the greater the capacity the less true to its purposes. I distrust as much as you, and God knows we have plenty cause here, the idle pomp of erudition, and the one-sided brilliancy of the mere poet and mere rhetorician. Theirs is an isolated strength purchased by some equipollent weakness, just as blindness secures sharper hearing. The very excess of their peculiar brilliancy, instead of arguing a general power of luminousness, rather implies its absence; and the vessel appears so laden on the side that looks to us, only because it carries nothing on the other. But the genius of common sense, the tutelary deity of Britain, has this ennobling characteristic, that like the

spirit of the universe it pervades_all, always, and is all in every part. It is in the centre as in all the surfaces of character, of being, thought, and action, and Shakspere, Sully, Bacon, Moliere, and Scott, could no more as individuals have not succeeded in life, than in books or closets they could have written or discoursed unwisely. There was more than a practical statesman, even a Richelieu, lost to England in Bacon. I know the rich compensation he made it, or rather the universe, in his "Philosophy," for it is the attribute of this peculiar genius, that, opposed on one side, it turns like an obstructed river with redoubled force to fertilise some other valley; but if the pedantic fool, canonised as the second Soloman, had known how to seek or to appreciate Bacon as Henry IV. did Sully, Charles I. would never have had to expiate parental folly on the scaffold, and England, spared a civil war, would have anticipated in peace almost centuries of constitutional freedom!

I AM at a loss to know whether or not I owe an apology to my reader for turning away from the more immediate object of this memoir of a life, to speak of events which have assumed an historical reputation. It may be thought ill-becoming in one who occupied the subordinate station that I did, to express himself on subjects so very far above both his experience and ac*quaintance; but I would premise, that in the opinions I may have formed, and the words of praise or censure dropped, I have been but retailing the sentiments of those older and wiser than myself, and by whose guidance I was mainly led to entertain not only the convictions, but the prejudices, of my early years.

Let the reader bear in mind, too, that I was very early in life thrown into the society of men-left self-dependent, in a great measure, and obliged to decide for myself on sub

jects which usually are determined by older and more mature heads. So much of excuse, then, if I seem presumptuous in saying that I began to conceive a very low opinion generally of popular attempts at independence, and a very high one of the powers of military skill and discipline. A mob, in my estimation, was the very lowest, and an army about the very highest, object I could well conceive. short residence at Castlebar did not tend to controvert these impressions. The safety of the town and its inhabitants was entirely owing to the handful of French who held it, and who, wearied with guards, picquets, and outpost duty, were a mere fraction of the small force that had landed a few days before.

My

Our allies" were now our most difficult charge. Abandoning the hopeless task of drilling and disciplining them, we confined ourselves to the

earth before the first breath of roval distrust. With a want of faith in virtue that Mephistopholes reproduces, he asks, "What would you have? Do you expect those you employ will not have their own ends, and not be truer to themselves than to you?" If compelled to admit that "there be that are in nature faithful and sincere, and plain and direct, not crafty nor involved," he brandishes the matter as the discovery of some rare secret, and with no higher purpose than that princes may use such worthy persons, not for their fidelity as friends, but for their integrity as tools, a pestilent advice too literally followed by your Louis Philippes, when they use out the Lafites, the Lafayettes, and the Dupont de L'Eures of their time.

THE AUTHOR. In your zeal for what should, and what should not be, you are asking a priesthood from Ulysses, and forgetting the purpose, the limited purpose, of the "Essays," which was not to recommend virtue, but to teach the conditions of life. If he name doubtful courses without censure, so does he without praise; and it is the peculiar quality of the great philosopher, that the elevation from which he surveys humanity enables him to appreciate its aspects as unconcernedly, as plenarily it frees him from its influences.

THE WRITER.-It is of that I complain; surveying, nay, I will admit, penetrating, the involutions of character, from a height like that of Milton's Satan, or of his Archangel Michael, he is without the malignant pride of the one, or the dutiful benevolence of the other, and has actually less of man in him than either. From the throne of his icy stoicism, he discourses as if he had no more affinity with earth than with heaven-cold, impassive, and unimpassioned, he disposes of love as contemptuously as physicians of a vinous headache; discourses of nature and habit in men, as in rabbits; anatomises avarice and ambition, as if they were qualities of the lunar inhabitants; and descants on honour and reputation with as unconcerned a visage as the signpost points to a quarter it never reaches. In one word, sitting in the awful solitude of himself, there is no humanity in him but of the intelligence the intelligence of an un. generous philosophy and pitiless heathenism!

THE AUTHOR.-Let us, at all events, pay homage to that impartiality of the heart you condemn, if, whatever its faults, it has enabled him to write with the marvellous precision which you must admit to distinguish him. And surely in that immense agglomeration made up by human activity, that infinite melley of intelligent existence which we call life, never did man more happily reach to the qualities, and even remotest relations, of the entities he adjudges. At his word order starts out of confusion, facts fling themselves into the symmetry of original nature, and the distinctions of all that men have, and all that men do, the good, the useful, the wise, the merely showy, stand registered down to their minutest forms, and in their most inappreciable hues. Just as he breaks down thoughts into their most concentrated dimensions, just so does our English language, even in the days of its Saxon littleness, accommodate itself with a ready subordination to each of his behests. no more writes than he thinks, in verba magistri. He can make old saws tell new truths, and homely words explain rare thoughts. The monarch of language, he has but to use to aggrandise. If he pays the tribute to early teaching and the spirit of his day-of being attached to the sayings and authorities of antiquity-it is an attachment neither slavish nor sterile. the charming attachment of the memory; the generous attachment of the affection; the intellect rests in all its freedom. His judgment independent of all influences, in the same proportion as it is enriched by them, he makes the past support the present, fits not argu ment to practice, but practice to argument, and sees truths not through the prism of authority, but authority through the acromatic medium of truth.

He

It is

THE WRITER. And yet with all this array of capacity and wisdom the old doubt remains, whether this masterpiece of talk and policy would not have been-you will pardon me

THE AUTHOR." Most ineffective in action," is it not? It is an old acquaintance of mine that fallacy! You meet it everywhere in Englandfrom the hustings, on the Exchange, at the dinner-table-the "abomination of desolation" hardly keeps out of your churches. It is one of the few extremes in political judgment

into which British good sense ever wanders. As if to pass Greek and Roman greatness, its Pericles, its Scipios, and its Cæsars, the instances of Sully, Temple, the Swede Oxenstein, and twenty others furnished by every century, had not long since belied the blasphemous paradox, that the greater the capacity the less true to its purposes. Î distrust as much as you, and God knows we have plenty cause here, the idle pomp of erudition, and the one-sided brilliancy of the mere poet and mere rhetorician. Theirs is an isolated strength purchased by some equipollent weakness, just as blindness secures sharper hearing. The very excess of their peculiar brilliancy, instead of arguing a general power of luminousness, rather implies its absence; and the vessel appears so laden on the side that looks to us, only because it carries nothing on the other. But the genius of common sense, the tutelary deity of Britain, has this ennobling characteristic, that like the

spirit of the universe it pervades all, always, and is all in every part. It is in the centre as in all the surfaces of character, of being, thought, and action, and Shakspere, Sully, Bacon, Moliere, and Scott, could no more as individuals have not succeeded in life, than in books or closets they could have written or discoursed unwisely. There was more than a practical statesman, even a Richelieu, lost to England in Bacon. I know the rich compensation he made it, or rather the universe, in his "Philosophy," for it is the attribute of this peculiar genius, that, opposed on one side, it turns like an obstructed river with redoubled force to fertilise some other valley; but if the pedantic fool, canonised as the second Soloman, had known how to seek or to appreciate Bacon as Henry IV. did Sully, Charles I. would never have had to expiate parental folly on the scaffold, and England, spared a civil war, would have anticipated in peace almost centuries of constitutional freedom!

I AM at a loss to know whether or not I owe an apology to my reader for turning away from the more immediate object of this memoir of a life, to speak of events which have assumed an historical reputation. It may be thought ill-becoming in one who occupied the subordinate station that I did, to express himself on subjects so very far above both his experience and acquaintance; but I would premise, that in the opinions I may have formed, and the words of praise or censure dropped, I have been but retailing the sentiments of those older and wiser than myself, and by whose guidance I was mainly led to entertain not only the convictions, but the prejudices, of my early years.

Let the reader bear in mind, too, that I was very early in life thrown into the society of men-left self-dependent, in a great measure, and obliged to decide for myself on sub

jects which usually are determined by older and more mature heads. So much of excuse, then, if I seem presumptuous in saying that I began to conceive a very low opinion generally of popular attempts at independence, and a very high one of the powers of military skill and discipline. A mob, in my estimation, was the very lowest, and an army about the very highest, object I could well conceive. short residence at Castlebar did not tend to controvert these impressions. The safety of the town and its inhabitants was entirely owing to the handful of French who held it, and who, wearied with guards, picquets, and outpost duty, were a mere fraction of the small force that had landed a few days before.

My

Our allies" were now our most difficult charge. Abandoning the hopeless task of drilling and disciplining them, we confined ourselves to the

more practical office of restraining pillage and repressing violence-a measure, be it said, that was not without peril, and of a very serious kind. Iremember one incident, which, if not followed by grave consequences, yet appeared at the time of a very serious character.

By the accidental misspelling of a name, a man named Dowall, a notorious ruffian and demagogue, was appointed "Commandant-de-Place," or Town-Major, instead of a most respectable shopkeeper named Downes, and who, although soon made aware of the mistake, from natural timidity, took no steps to undeceive the General. Dowall was haranguing a mob of halfdrunken vagabonds, when his commission was put into his hands; and accepting the post as an evidence of the fears the French entertained of his personal influence, became more overbearing and insolent than ever. had a very gallant officer, the second major of the 12th Regiment of the Line, killed in the attack on Castlebar, and this Dowall at once tookpossession of poor Delactre's horse, arms, and equipment. His coat and chako, his very boots and gloves, the scoundrel appropriated; and, as if in mockery of us and our poor friend, assumed a habit that he had, when riding fast, to place his sabre between his leg and the saddle, to prevent its striking the horse on the flanks.

We

I need scarcely say that thoroughly disgusted by the unsightly exhibition, our incessant cares, and the endless round of duty we were engaged in, as well as the critical position we occupied, left us no time to notice the fellow's conduct by any other than a passing sign of anger or contemptprovocations that he certainly gave us back as insolently as we offered them. I do not believe that the General ever saw him, but I know that incessant complaints were daily made to him about the man's rapacity and tyranny, and scarcely a morning passed without a dozen remonstrances being preferred against his overbearing

conduct.

Determined to have his own countrymen on his side, he issued the most absurd orders for the billeting of the rabble, the rations and allowances of all kinds. He seized upon one of the best houses for his own quarters, and three fine saddle-horses for his per

sonal use, besides a number of inferior ones for the ruffian following he called his staff!

It was, indeed, enough to excite laughter, had not indignation been the more powerful emotion, to see this fellow ride forth of a morning-a tawdry scarf of green, with deep gold fringe, thrown over his shoulder, and a saddle-cloth of the same colour, profusely studded with gold shamrocks, on his horse; a drawn sword in his hand, and his head erect, followed by an indiscriminate rabble on foot or horseback some with muskets, some pikes, some with sword-blades, bayonets, or even knives fastened on sticks, but all alike ferocious-looking and

savage.

They affected to march in order, and, with a rude imitation of soldiery, carried something like a knapsack on their shoulders, surmounted by a kettle, or tin cup, or sometimes an iron pot-a grotesque parody on the trim cooking equipment of the French soldier. It was evident, from their step and bearing, that they thought themselves in the very height of discipline; and this very assumption was far more insulting to the real soldier than all the licentious irregularity of the marauder. If to us they were objects of ridicule and derision, to the townspeople they were images of terror and dismay. The miserable shopkeeper who housed one of them lived in continual fear; he knew nothing to be his own, and felt that his property and family were every moment at the dictate of a ruffian gang, who acknowledged no law, nor any rule save their own will and convenience. Dowall's squad were indeed as great a terror in that little town as I had seen the great name of Robespierre in the proud city of Paris.

In my temporary position on General Serazin's staff, I came to hear much of this fellow's conduct. The most grievous stories were told me every day of his rapacity and cruelty; but harassed and overworked, as the General was, with duties that would have been over-much for three or four men, I forebore to trouble him with recitals which could only fret and distress him without affording the slightest chance of relief to others. Perhaps this impunity had rendered him more daring, or, perhaps, the immense number of armed Irish, in comparison with the

small force of disciplined soldiers, emboldened the fellow; but certainly he grew day by day more presumptuous and insolent, and at last so far forgot himself as to countermand one of General Serazin's orders, by which a guard was stationed at the Protestant church to prevent its being molested or injured by the populace.

General Humbert had already refused the Roman Catholic priest his permission to celebrate mass in that building; but Dowall had determined otherwise, and that, too, by a written order, under his own hand. The French sergeant who commanded the guard of course paid little attention to this warrant; and when Father Hennisy wanted to carry the matter with a high hand, he coolly tore up the paper, and threw the fragments at him. Dowall was soon informed of the slight offered to his mandate. He was at supper at the time, entertaining a party of his friends, who all heard the priest's story, and, of course, loudly sympathised with his sorrows, and invoked the powerful leader's aid and protection. Affecting to believe that the sergeant had merely acted in ignorance, and from not being able to read English, Dowall despatched a fellow, whom he called his aid-de-camp, a schoolmaster named Lowrie, and who spoke a little bad French, to interpret his command, and to desire the sergeant to withdraw his men, and give up the guard to a party of "the squad."

Great was the surprise of the supper party, when, after the lapse of half an hour, a country fellow came in to say that he had seen Lowrie led off to prison between two French soldiers. By this time Dowall had drank himself into a state of utter recklessness; while encouraged by his friend's praises, and the arguments of his own passions, he fancied that he might dispute ascendancy with General Humbert himself. He at once ordered out his horse, and gave a command to assemble the "squad." As they were all billeted in his immediate vicinity, this was speedily effected, and their numbers swelled by a vast mass of idle and curious, who were eager to see how the matter would end; the whole street was crowded, and when Dowal mounted, his followers amounted to above a thousand people.

If our sergeant, an old soldier of the

"Sambre et Meuse," had not already enjoyed some experience of our allies, it is more than likely that, seeing their hostile advance, he would have fallen back upon the main guard, then stationed in the market-square. As it was, he simply retired his party within the church, the door of which had already been pierced for the use of musketry. This done, and one of his men being despatched to head-quarters for advice and orders, he waited patiently for the attack.

I happened that night to make one of General Serazin's dinner party, and we were sitting over our wine, when the officer of the guard entered hastily with the tidings of what was going on in the town.

"Is it the Commandant de Place himself is at the head?" exclaimed Serazin, in amazement, such a thought being a direct shock to all his ideas of military discipline.

"Yes, sir," said the officer; "the soldier knows his appearance well, and can vouch for its being him."

"As I know something of him, General," said I, "I may as well mention that nothing is more likely."

"Who is he-what is he ?" asked Serazin hastily.

A very brief account-I need not say not a flattering one-told all that I knew or had ever heard of our worthy "Town Major." Many of the officers around corroborating, as I went on, all that I said, and interpolating little details of their own about his robberies and exactions.

"And yet I have heard nothing of all this before," said the General, looking sternly around him on every side.

None ventured on a reply, and what might have followed there is no guessing, when the sharp rattle of musketry cut short all discussion.

"That fire was not given by soldiers," said Serazin. "Go, Tierney, and bring this fellow before me at

once.

I bowed, and was leaving the room, when an officer, having whispered a few words in Serazin's ear, the General called me back, saying

"You are not to incur any risk, Tiernay; I want no struggle, still less a rescue. You understand me."

"Perfectly, General; the matter will, I trust, be easy enough!"

And so I left the room, my heart, shall I avow it, bumping and throbbing