iscomfiture of heresy, the overthrow of their enemies, and the
exaltation of themselves and their religion.

Scarcely had the public mind subsided after the Rebellion of
Ninety-eight, when the success of Buonaparte directed the eyes and the
hopes of the Irish people towards him, as the person designed to be
their deliverer. Many a fine fiction has the author of this work heard
about that great man's escapes, concerning the bullets that conveniently
turned aside from his person, and the sabres that civilly declined to
cut him down. Many prophecies too were related, in which the glory of
this country under his reign was touched off in the happiest colors.
Pastorini also gave such notions an impulse. Eighteen twenty-five was
to be the year of their deliverance: George the Fourth was never to fill
the British throne; and the mill of Lowth was to be turned three times
with human blood. "The miller with the two thumbs was then living,"
said the mendicants, for they were the principal propagators of these
opinions, and the great expounders of their own prophecies; so that of
course there could be no further doubt upon the subject. Several of them
had seen him, a red-haired man with broad shoulders, stout legs, exactly
such as a miller ought to have, and two thumbs on his right hand; all
precisely as the prophecy had stated. Then there was _Beal-derg_, and
several others of the fierce old Milesian chiefs, who along with their
armies lay in an enchanted sleep, all ready to awake and take a part in
the delivery of the country. "Sure such a man," and they would name one
in the time of the mendicant's grandfather, "was once going to a fair to
sell a horse--well and good; the time was the dawn of morning, a little
before daylight: he met a man who undertook to purchase his horse; they
agreed upon the price, and the seller of him followed the buyer into
a Bath, where he found a range of horses, each with an armed soldier
asleep by his side, ready to spring upon him if awoke. The purchaser
cautioned the owner of the horse as they were about to enter the
subterraneous dwelling, against touching either horse or man; but the
countryman happening to stumble, inadvertently laid his hand, upon a
sleeping soldier, who immediately leaped up, drew his sword, and asked,
'Wuil anam inh?' 'Is the time in it? Is the time arrived?' To which the
horse-dealer of the Bath replied, '_Ha niel. Gho dhee collhow areesht_.'
'No: go to sleep again.' Upon thi