'Go, my boy, return either
with your shield or upon it.' This reconciles me--this gives me
heart. I submit to my doom; and I hope that God will forgive me my
past sins. I hope also, that inasmuch as He has for seven hundred
years preserved Ireland, notwithstanding all the tyranny to which she
has been subjected, as a separate and distinct nationality, He will
also assist her to retrieve her fallen fortunes--to rise in her
beauty and majesty, the Sister of Columbia, the peer of any nation in
the world."

General Burke, as our readers are well aware, was not executed. The
government shrank from carrying out the barbarous sentence of the law,
and his punishment was changed to the still more painful, if less
appalling fate, of penal servitude for life. Of General Burke's private
character we have said little; but our readers will be able to
understand it from the subjoined brief extracts from two of his letters.
On the very night previous to his trial he wrote to his mother from
Kilmainham Prison:--

... "On last Easter Sunday I partook of Holy Communion at a late
mass, I calculated the difference of time between this longitude and
yours, for I knew that you and my dear sisters were partaking of the
sacrament at early mass on that day, as was your wont, and I felt
that our souls were in communion together."

We conclude with the following letter from General Burke, which has
never before been published, and which we are sure will be of deep
interest to our readers. It is addressed to the reverend gentleman who
had been his father confessor in Clonmel:--

"KILMAINHAM GOAL,

"_4th, Month of Mary._

"DEAR REV. FATHER,

" ... I am perfectly calm and resigned, with my thoughts firmly
centered with hope in the goodness and mercy of that kind Redeemer,
whose precious blood was shed for my salvation; as also in the
mediation and intercession of His Blessed Mother, who is my Star of
Hope and Consolation. I know, dear father, I need not ask you to be
remembered in your prayers, for I feel that in your supplication to
the Throne of Mercy I have not been forgotten.... I have only one
thought which causes me much sorrow, and that is that my good and
loving mother will break down under the weight of her affliction,
and, oh, God, I who loved her more than the life which animates the
hand that writes to be the cause of it! This thought unmans and