In the presence of the terrible facts he is called upon to chronicle, the generous nature of the Protestant historian whom I am quoting, warms into indignation. Unable to endure the reflection, that they who thus labored to deform and brutify the Irish people are for ever reproaching them before the world for bearing traces of the infamous effort, he bursts forth into the following noble vindication of the calumniated victims of oppression :

"Having no rights or franchises-no legal protection of life or property-disqualified to handle a gun, even as a common soldier or a gamekeeper-forbidden to acquire the elements of knowledge at home or abroad-forbidden even to render to God what conscience dictated as His due-what could the Irish be but abject serfs? What nation in their circumstances could have been otherwise? Is it not amazing that any social virtue could have survived such an ordeal?-that any seeds of good, any roots of national greatness, could have outlived such a long tempestuous winter ?"

"These laws," he continues, "were aimed not only at the religion of the Catholic, but still more at his liberty and his property. He could enjoy no freehold property, nor was he allowed to have a lease for a longer term than thirty-one years; but as even as this term was long enough to encourage an industrious man to reclaim waste lands and improve his worldly circumstances, it was enacted that if a Papist should have a farm producing a profit greater than one-third of the rent, his right to such should immediately cease, and pass over to the first Protestant who should discover the rate of profit!"

This was the age that gave to Irish topography the "Corrig-an-Affrion," found so thickly marked on every barony map in Ireland. "The Mass Rock!" What memories cling around each hallowed moss-clad stone or rocky ledge on the mountain side, or in the deep recess of some desolate glen, whereon, for years and years, the Holy Sacrifice was offered up in stealth and secrecy, the death-penalty hanging over

* Cassell's (Godkin's) History of Ireland, vol. ii. p. 11.

priest and worshipper! Not unfrequently Mass was interrupted by the approach of the bandogs of the law; for, quickened by the rewards to be earned, there sprang up in those days the infamous trade of priest-hunting, "five pounds' being equally the government price for the head of a priest as for the head of a wolf. The utmost care was necessary in divulging intelligence of the night on which Mass would next be celebrated; and when the congregation had furtively stolen to the spot, sentries were posted all around before the Mass began. Yet in instances not a few, the worshippers were taken by surprise, and the blood of the murdered priest. wetted the altar stone.

Well might our Protestant national poet, Davis, exclaim, contemplating this deep night-time of suffering and sorrow:

Oh! weep those days-the penal days,
When Ireland hopelessly complained:
Oh! weep those days—the penal days
When godless persecution reigned.

They bribed the flock, they bribed the son,
To sell the priests and rob the sire;
Their dogs were taught alike to run
Upon the scent of wolf and friar.

Among the poor,

Or on the moor,

Were hid the pious and the true-
While traitor, knave

And recreant slave

Had riches, rank, and retinue,
And, exiled in those penal days,

Our banners over Europe blaze.

A hundred years of such a code in active operation, ought, according to all human calculations, to have succeeded in accomplishing its malefic purpose. But again, all human calculations, all natural consequences and probabilities, were set aside, and God, as if by a miracle, preserved the faith, the virtue, the vitality, and power of the Irish race. He decreed that they should win a victory more glorious than a hundred gained on the battle-field-more momentous in its future

!ཀུབ!

།།,

results in their triumph over the penal code. After three half centuries of seeming death, Irish Catholicity has rolled away the stone from its guarded sepulchre, and walked forth full of life! It could be no human faith that, after such a crucifixion and burial, could thus raise glorious and immortal! This triumph, the greatest, has been Ireland's; and God, in His own good time, will assuredly give her the fulness of victory.

LXXV. THE IRISH ARMY IN EXILE. HOW SARSFIELD FELL ON LANDEN PLAIN. HOW THE REGIMENTS OF BURKE AND O'MAHONY SAVED CREMONA, FIGHTING IN "MUSKETS AND SHIRTS." THE GLORIOUS VICTORY OF FONTENOY! HOW THE IRISH EXILES, FAITHFUL TO THE END, SHARED THE LAST GALLANT EFFORT OF PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD

HE glory of Ireland was all abroad in those years. Spurned from the portals of the constitution established by the conqueror, the Irish slave followed with eager gaze the meteor track of "the Brigade." Namur, Steenkirk, Staffardo, Cremona, Ramillies, Fontenoy—each, in its turn, sent a thrill through the heart of Ireland. The trampled captive furtively lifted his head from the earth, and looked eastward, and his face was lighted up as by the beam of the morning sun.

For a hundred years, that magnificent body, the Irish Brigade (continuously recruited from home, though death was the penalty by English law)—made the Irish name synonymous with heroism and fidelity throughout Europe. Sarsfield was amongst the first to meet a soldier's death. But he fell in the arms of victory, and died, as the old annalists would say, with his mind and his heart turned to Ireland. In the bloody battle of Landen, fought 29th July, 1693, he fell mortally wounded, while leading a victorious charge of the Brigade. The ball had entered near his heart, and while