Ireland in the last week of October, or during the first days of November, so much as allude to those tales of blood and horror afterwards so industriously circulated and so greedily swallowed."*

The one point at which miscarriage occurred was, unfortunately for the conspirators, the chief one in their scheme-Dublin; and here the escape of the government was narrow and close indeed. On the night fixed for the rising, 23d October, one of the Irish leaders, Colonel Hugh MacMahon, confided the design to one Owen Connolly, whom he thought to be worthy of trust, but who, however, happened to be a follower of Sir John Clotworthy, one of the most rabid of the Puritanical party. Connolly, who, by the way, was drunk at the time, instantly hurried to the private residence of one of the lords justices, and excitedly proclaimed to him that that night the castle was to be seized, as part of a vast simultaneous movement all over the country. Sir W. Parsons, the lord justice, judging the story to be merely the raving of a half-drunken man, was on the point of turning Connolly out of doors, when, fortunately for him, he thought it better to test the matter. He hurriedly consulted his colleague, Sir John Borlase; they decided to double the guards, shut the city gates, and search the houses wherein, according to Connolly's story, the leaders of the conspiracy were at that moment awaiting the hour of action. Colonel Mac Mahon was seized at his lodgings, near the King's Inns ; Lord Maguire was captured next morning in a house in Cooke Street; but O'Moore, Plunkett, and Byrne, succeeded in making good their escape out of the city. Mac Mahon, on being put to question before the lords justices in the Castle, boldly avowed his part in the national movement, nay, proudly gloried in it, telling his questioners, that let them do what they might, their best or their worst, with him, " the rising was now beyond all human power to arrest." While the lords justices looked astounded, haggard, and aghast, Mac Mahon, his face radiant with exultation, his form appearing to dilate with proud defiance of the bloody fate he knew to be inevitable for

* M'Gee,

himself, told them to bear him as soon as they pleased to the block, but that already Ireland had burst her chains! Next day, they found to their dismay that this was no empty vaunt. Before forty-eight hours the whole structure of British "colonization" in the North was a wreck. The " "plantation system vanished like "the baseless fabric of a vision;" and while the ship was bearing away to England the gallant Mac Mahon and his hapless colleague, Lord Maguire—that an impotent vengeance might glut itself with their blood upon the scaffold—from all the towers and steeples in the north joy bells were ringing merry peals, and bonfires blazed, proclaiming that the spoliators had been swept away, and that the rightful owners enjoyed their own again! The people, with the characteristic exuberance of their nature, gave themselves up to the most demonstrative joy and exultation. No words can better enable us to realize the popular feeling at this moment than Mr. Gavan Duffy's celebrated poem, "The Muster of the North:"

Joy! joy! the day is come at last, the day of hope and pride,

And, see! our crackling bonfires light old Bann's rejoicing tide!
And gladsome bell and bugle-horn, from Newry's captured tow'rs,
Hark! how they tell the Saxon swine, this land is ours--is OURS!

Glory to God! my eyes have seen the ransomed fields of Down,
My ears have drunk the joyful news, "Stout Phelim hath his own."
Oh! may they see and hear no more, oh! may they rot to clay,
When they forget to triumph in the conquest of to-day.

Now, now, we'll teach the shameless Scot to purge his thievish maw;
Now, now, the courts may fall to pray, for Justice is the Law;
Now shall the undertaker square for once his loose accounts,
We'll strike, brave boys, a fair result from all his false amounts.

Come, trample down their robber rule, and smite its venal spawn,
Their foreign laws, their foreign church, their ermine and their lawn,
With all the specious fry of fraud that robbed us of our own,
And plant our ancient laws again beneath our lineal throne.

Down from the sacred hills whereon a saint commun'd with God,
Up from the vale where Bagnal's blood manured the recking sod,
Out from the stately woods of Trangh, M'Kenna's plundered home,
Like Malin's waves, as fierce and fast, our faithful clansmen come.

Then, brethren, on!- O'Neill's dear shade would frown to see you pause-
Our banished Hugh, our martyred Hugh, is watching o'er your cause—
His generous error lost the land-he deemed the Norman true,

O! forward, friends! it must not lose the land again in you!

LIV. HOW THE LORDS JUSTICES GOT UP THE NEEDFUL BLOODY FURY IN ENGLAND BY A "DREADFUL MASSACRE" STORY. HOW THE CONFEDERATION OF KILKENNY CAME ABOUT.

HE Puritanical party, which ever since Wentworth's execution had the government of Ireland in their hands, began to consider that this desperate condition of their affairs rendered some extraordinary resort necessary, if the island was not to slip totally and for ever from their grasp. The situation was evidently one full of peculiar difficulty and embarrassment for them. The national confederacy, which by this time had most of the kingdom in its hands, declared utmost loyalty to the king, and in truth, as time subsequently showed, meant him more honest and loyal service than those who now surrounded him as ministers and officials.

Hence it was more than likely to be extremely difficult to arouse against the Irish movement that strong and general effusion of public feeling in England which would result in vigorous action against it. For obviously enough (so reasoned the Puritanical executive in Dublin Castle) that section of the English nation which supports the king will be inclined to side with this Irish movement; they will call it far more justifiable and far more loyal than that of the rebel Scotch covenanters; they will counsel negotiation with its leaders, perhaps the concession of their demands; in any event they will reprehend and prevent any extreme measures against them. In which case, of course, the result must be fatal to the pious project of robbing the native Irish, and "planting " the country with "colonies" of saintly plunderers.