SKETCHES OF DUBLIN IN THE LAST CENTURY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 107, 15 May 1875, Page 6

SKETCHES OF DUBLIN IN THE LAST CENTURY.

MThe justice Emmet hoped for was long since given to his heroic memory. The light of history, broadly cast upon his life, has shown all honest men that he was no mad visionary. He was an enthusiast, it is true, and, enthusiast-like, he did not pause to count his chances with scrupulous care and with a wavering heart. He had faith in the potency of a sacred cause. He had faith in the fidelity of men. Ah ! bow vilely it "was repaid. His spirit, that came from the hand of G-od endowed with a love of freedom, was nurtured in that love by the teaching of Mb home, fired by the high hopes held out to him in Paris, and fanned to burning flame by the promises that met him here when, at the age of twenty-uve, he came back to dare the worst. The short half-year that passed between his return and his death is brightened "by such gleams as the fidelity of the Devlins and the Kearneys, but it gives, upon the whole, the most dismal record in history of a daring project marred by the waverer, the bungler, and the traitor. Emmet's energy is attested by the quantity and variety of munitions of war which he managed to get hold of in a few months ; his courage is proved by the fact that he went openly from depot to depot till the hour of the abortive rising j but the energy or courage of one man, or of twenty, availed not against spies and renegades and weal-hearted friends. Government were kept well abreast of the movement. Guards were doubled on the day of the rising. Horse, foot, and artillery were concentrated in Dublin. On Emmet's side, men in charge of the depots bungled most of the work ; his messengers to the country played truant and never went ; his allies from the country, save the Wexford men, did not appear ; and at last, on a false alarm from Quigley, a trusted friend, that "the army" were upon them, he rushed out desparately, sword in hand, from the depot we have mentioned, exclaiming that it was better to die in'the street than to remain indoors to be taken. The persons told off to lead the sally staid carousing in a house close by, but Emmet took the way to the Castle, and was followed by some eighty men, many of them inflamed with liquor, and not a few of the rest engaged upon the work of spies. They presently took to riot and pillage, and meeting^in Corn Market with the carriage of the Chief Justice, Lord Kilwarden, who was coming with his daughter and nephew from the country-house of the Viceroy to attend a Privy Council in the Castle, they stopped it. lord Kilwarden announced his name, and the moment he did so, a man, whose identity was never found out for certain, rushed forward, crying out, '• You are the man I want," and stabbed him^to,, death with a pike. The judge'a nephew shared his fate. , Emmet's eyes were opened at last. Now ho saw that all was over. Ifc did not lie in his power to wield any control over ruffians who were glad of a chance of plunder. All he could do was to convey to a place of safety the daughter of the murdered judge, and this work of mercy done, he fled distracted from the lamentable scene. A few weeks after he was seized by Sirr, in a lodging at Harold's Cross. His trial qtiickly followed ; Ms execution was carried out a few hours after sentence ; and so vigilantly did treachery beset the brave young life, that Leonard MacNally, the man he embraced in his cell the day of his death, made out a report of the interview for the Castle, and Trevor, the man to whom, before mounting the fatal scaflold, he confided two sacred letters, one addressed to his brother, and the other addressed to the brother of his betrothed, went and forthwith handed both to the XTnder-Secretary. The knowledge of then* baseness did not reach to agonize that brave, that tender soul. Yes, bravely he faced his death, for the very day before it he drew in his prison cell a likeness of himeelf, with the head separated from the body. And still with a beautifully tender heart he went to bear his doom, for one of his latest acts iras to plait'a tress of Sarah Curran's hair and place it above his heart. Ere yet we retrace our steps, let us go on a few paces further. Here is the house we want. It is No. 151. The sign of a wool-crane next to it shows the business carried on there to be just what it was in 1798. The lower windows of the house are barred like those of a barrack, and standing here in the dusk of a January eve we see that

the parlor is an office for the merchant's clerks. But we cannot shako off the fancy that it has a lonely, sad appearance, that this homely old-fashioned dwelling is brooding over a tragic past. Ah! yes. One summer evening in 1798, the outlawed Lord Edward Titzgerald was lying on a bed in a room of that same house — the room was the twopair back — when Major Swan and a yeoman captain rushed in upon him. The gallant patriot sprang up, a dagger his only weapon. Swan I levelled his pistol. It failed to go off. The yeoman made a plunge of his sword. It glanced aside without doing harm. Lord Edward wounded and overpowered the two, and was rushing from the room, when the brutal coward Sirr, who took care to be in the rear as usual, . disabled him by a pistol-shot from the landing. Still he made a J desperate charge for freedom, but the soldiers who now came crowding up the stairs threw him down and fiendishly kicked him into a state of insensibility. One base drummer stabbed him fatally in tie neck. They bore him away in a sheet taken off the bed, and a few days after he died in Kewgate, crying out " Come on," in bia last intense delirium, to the foes he thought he saw around him. Or.c scene more. We return the way we came — past the old Church of Saint Catherine, past the new Church of Saint Augustine, past the Corn Market — on, till we reach a narrow passage a few doors from Dublin Castle. We must not go by unheeding. This passage leads to the brave Lord Edward's tomb, and we mean to visit that to-day. Let A. M. Sullivan be our guide :—: — " Between Nos. 8 and 9 (Castle Street) is a narrow 'passage. Enter. It leads to the sexton's house, in the rere of St. Werburgb/8 Church. Admission to the churchyard is not denied. Slabs and tombs are thick around, and the grass and weeds rank and matted, thrive luxuriantly jui the human soil. Many are the lines here that tell of worth departed, of blighted hopes and affections severed ; many a stone to mark the spot where the mourner's tear may fall. And where is ours, Irishmen ? Whose grave seek you among the tomba ? Is it a father or a brother dear that sleeps, with rest unbroken by the ceaseless, din of busy life in the street outside ? Why darken your brow before that curious old slab, built into the southern wall of the church, with its strangely-chiselled effigieß of a mail-clad knight and his good ladye ? Why grow you sadder as the sexton opens the grating that leads to the vaults beneath ? That slab is part of the tomb of 'Silken Thomas,' and down in- the dark charnel vaults below sleeps the brave Lord Edward. Descending by some ten or a dozen steps, by lantern light, you wend yonr way to the chamber of the dead, and are led to the ' Kildare Vault,' as it is called. " You enter it. On the left hand are two coffins, so old that oven the lead has corroded away in part, and reveals the^-shes of the brave Gteraldine knights. But our eye dwells not on these — it seeks another object. Many a valiant knight is here, but he 'the chieftain of them all,' where is he laid ? A lone coffin lies upon the floor, apart from all the others — plain and unornamented, damp and mildew cover it all over. View it — bend over it — weep over it — it holds all that now remains of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. There, mouldering into dust, lies the pride of a noble house, the leader of a noble cause, struck down in the flower of his youth, hunted. like a beast of prey, tracked to his lair, surprised, set upon and slain. Drop by drop trickles down the water upon that coffin from the roof above — dark and silent is the chamber where his narrow bed is made. As silently flowed a nation's tears above his bier, and darker was the night that settled on its hopes the hour that saw him. laid within this gloomy cell. No funeral array, no ordered lines of mourners followed to the grave this scion of the Geraldines. In silence, if not in stealth, he was laid in the vault of Ms ancestors. In that dark hour to speak of him was^dangerous, to weep for him a crime. " On the coffin is a brass plate, with the following inscription : "'LORD EDWARD FITZGEfiAM), Filth son of the First Duke of Leinster. Born, October 16th, 1703. Died, June 4th, 1798. .Buried, June 7th, 1798. To preserve the leaden coffin containing his rolttaiiiß, It was enclosed in this additional protection, By his children, Feh. Bth, 1844.' "It was his daughter, Lady (Colin) Campbell, who had the remains thus cared for." Enough. Come forth with us, friend, from the narrow home of the dead who died for Ireland. Come forth 5 no traitor can mar his quiet now ; no arrest can break Ms sleep ; no coward's shot can dash him at the feet of fiends. Close down the iron door, and come. Yet, look once more at the timeworn slab that commemorates Silken Thomas, and lay up, even as a treasure, the lesson of fidelity, of constancy, and of daring, taught in the lives of these two Greraldines who, in different ages, were betrothed to fair freedom at the altar of a militant nation. — Nation.

The G-eoves of Moeocco. — The groves of yose trees and th© flower farms of Morocco are Baid by a recent traveller to exceed in exteit and value those of Damascus, or even those of the Valley of Mexico. The genial climate of the country is very favorable to thia kind of culture. Swept alternately by the breezes of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and tempered by the snows of the Atlas ranges, the degree of heat in Morocco is much lower than in Algeria, while the soil is exceedingly fertile. To the date, pahn, and to orange and lemon trees, the climate appears to be especially suited, the dates of Tafilat having been famous even from Koinan times. The orange plantations are of great extent in various parts; of the country, while olives and almonds are also staples exported in large quantities. Seeing that this fertile land, lying within five days' steam of London, produces so much vegetable wealth under the most barbarous cultivation, it appears extraordinary that European enterprise does not, in such a climate, seek profitable employment for its over-abundant capital in its application to the development of such yast resources, so close afc hand, instead of going so far afield as Australia or America. John Bright says he never knew the House of Commons to be unanimous and enthusiastic on any subject save when it did JX9% know what it was doing and where it was going.