On through the camp the column trod-King Louis turns his rein: "Not yet, my liege," Saxe interposed, "the Irish troops remain; " And Fontenoy, famed Fontenoy had been a Waterloo, 'Were not these exiles ready then, fresh, vehement, and true. "Lord Clare," he says, “you have your wish: there are your Saxon foes!" The Marshal almost smiles to see, so furiously he goes! How fierce the smiles these exiles wear, who're wont to look so gay; The treasured wrongs of fifty years are in their hearts to-day. The treaty broken ere the ink wherewith 'twas writ could dry, Their plundered homes, their ruined shrines, their women's parting cry, Each looks as if revenge for all were staked on him alone. On Fontenoy, on Fontenoy, nor ever yet elsewhere, Pushed on to fight a nobler band than those proud exiles were. O'Brien's voice is hoarse with joy, as halting he commands, "Fix bay'nets-charge."--Like mountain storm rush on these fiery bands! Like lions leaping at a fold when mad with hunger's pang, Bright was their steel, 'tis bloody now, their guns are filled with gore; While cavalier and fantassin dash in upon their track. On Fontenoy, on Fontenoy, like eagles in the sun, With bloody plumes the Irish stand-the field is fought and won! In the year of Fontenoy, 1745, Prince Charles Edward made his bold and romantic attempt to recover the lost crown of the Stuarts. His expedition, we are told, "was undertaken and conducted by Irish aid, quite as much as by French or Scottish." His chief of command was Colonel O'Sullivan ; the most of the funds were supplied by the two Waters-father and son-Irish bankers at Paris, "who advanced one hundred and eighty thousand livres between them ;" another Irishman, Walsh, a merchant at Nantes, putting "a privateer of eighteen guns into the venture." Indeed, one of Charles' English adherents, Lord Elcho, who kept a journal of the campaign, notes complainingly the Irish influence under which the prince acted. On the 19th July, he landed near Moidart, in the north of Scotland. "Clanronald, Cameron of Lochiel, the Laird of M'Leod, and a few others having arrived, the royal standard was unfurled on the 19th August at Glenfinan, where that evening, twelve thousand men—the entire army, so farwere formed into camp under the orders of O'Sullivan. From that day until the day of Culloden, O'Sullivan seems to have manoeuvred the prince's forces. At Perth, at Edinburgh, at Manchester, at Culloden, he took command in the field or in the garrison; and even after the sad result, he adhered to his sovereign's son with an honorable fidelity which defied despair." In Ireland no corresponding movement took place. Yet this is the period which has given to native Irish minstrelsy, as it now survives, its abiding characteristic of deep, fervent, unchangeable, abiding devotion to the Stuart cause. The Gaelic harp never gave forth richer melody, Gaelic poetry never found nobler inspiration, than in its service. In those matchless songs, which, under the general designation of "Jacobite Relics," are, and ever will be, so potential to touch the Irish heart with sadness or enthusiam, under a thousand forms of allegory the coming of Prince Charles, the restoration of the ancient faith, and the deliverance of Ireland by the "rightful prince," are prophesied and apostrophied. Now it is "Dark Rosaleen ; "now it is" Kathaleen-na-Houlahan; "now it is the "Blackbird," the "Drimin Don Deelish," the "Silk of the Kine," or "Ma Chrevin Evin Algan Og." From this rich store of Gaelic poetry of the eighteenth century I quote one specimen a poem written about the period of Charles Edward's landing at Moidart, by William Heffernan "Dall” ("the Blind") of Shronehill, county Tipperary, and addressed to the Prince of Ossory, Michael Mac Giolla Kerin, known * M'Gee. as Mehal Dhu, or Dark Michael. The translation into English is by Mangan :— But it was only in the passionate poesy of the native minstrels that any echo of the shouts from Moidart resounded midst the hills of Erin. During all this time the hapless Irish Catholics resigned themselves utterly to the fate that had be fallen them. For a moment victory gleamed on the Stuart banner, and the young prince marched southward to claim his own in London. Still Ireland made no sign. Hope had fled. The prostrate and exhausted nation slept heavily in its blood-clotted chain! LXXVI. HOW IRELAND BEGAN TO AWAKEN FROM THE SLEEP OF SLAVERY. THE DAWN OF LEGISLATIVE INDEPENDENCE. RELAND lay long in that heavy trance. The signal for her awakening came across the western ocean. "A voice from America," says Flood, "shouted 'Liberty;' and every hill and valley of this rejoicing island answered, 'Liberty!'"' For two centuries the claim of the English parliament to control, direct, and bind the Irish legislature, had been the subject of bitter dispute. The claim was first formally asserted and imposed in the reign of Henry the Seventh, when a servile "parliament," gathered at Drogheda, in November, 1495, by lord deputy Poynings, amongst other acts of selfdegradation, at the bidding of the English official, enacted that henceforth no law could be originated in the Irish legislature, or proceeded with, until the heads of it had first been sent to England, submitted to the king and council there, and returned with their approbation under seal. This was the celebrated "Poynings' Act," or "Poynings' Law," which readers of Grattan's Life and Times will find mentioned so frequently. It was imposed as a most secure chain-a ponderous curb— at a crisis when resistance was out of the question. It was, in moments of like weakness or distraction, submitted to; but ever and anon in flashes of spirit, the Irish parliaments repudiated the claim as illegal, unconstitutional, and unjust. On the 16th February, 1640, the Irish House of Commons submitted a set of queries to the judges, the nature of which may be inferred from the question-" Whether the subjects of this kingdom be a free people, and to be governed only by the common law of England and statutes passed in this kingdom?” When the answers received were deemed insufficient, the House turned the questions into the form of resolutions, and proceeded to vote on them, one by one, affirming in every point the rights, the liberties, and the privileges of their constituents. The Confederation of Kilkenny still more explicitly and boldly enunciated and asserted the doctrine that Ireland was a distinct, free, sovereign, and independent nation, subject only to the triple-crown of the three kingdoms. The Cromwellian rebellion tore down this, as it trampled upon so many other of the rights and liberties of all three kingdoms. The "restoration" came; but in the reign of the second Charles, the Dublin parliament was too busy in scrambling for retention of plunder and resistance of restitution, to utter an aspiration for liberty; it bowed the neck to "Poynings' law." To the so-called "Catholic Parliament " of Ireland in James the Second's reign belongs the proud honor of making the next notable declaration of independence; amongst the first acts of this legislature being one declaring the complete and perfect freedom of the Irish Parliament. "Though they were Papists,'" says Grattan, "these men were not slaves; they wrung a constitution from King James before they accompanied him to the field." Once more, however, came successful rebellion to overthrow the sovereign and the parliament, and again the doctrine of national independence disappeared. The Irish legislature in the first years of the new regime sunk into the abject condition of a mere committee of the English parliament. Soon, however, the spirit of resistance began to appear. For a quarter of a century the Protestant party had been so busy at the work of persecution--so deeply occupied in forging chains for their Catholic fellow-countrymen-that they never took thought of the political thraldom being imposed upon themselves by the English parliament. "The Irish Protestant," says Mr. Wyse, "had succeeded in excluding the Catholics from power, and for a moment held triumphant and exclusive possession of the conquest; but he was merely a |