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at Ireland's liberator should ever see Rome. His illness continued to increase. No sooner had he reached the shores of Italy than the strength of his once powerful frame declined rapidly, and he was unable to proceed. Arrived at Genoa, O'Connell understood that his last hour on earth was near at hand. He now expressed the wish that his heart should rest in the Holy City. Thither, accordingly, it was borne by friendly hands to commingle with the consecrated dust of heroes, saints and martyrs. To Rome it was a relic of incomparable price. Although cold and inanimate, it was still eloquent in death, and grandly emblematic of all that he had been to whom it was the centre of life, and to whose generous impulses it had so long and so faithfully beat responsive. That son of O'Connell who bore his name, together with the Rev. Dr. Miley, of Dublin, who had accompanied him to Genoa and ministered to him in his last hours, now proceeded to Rome and sought the presence of the Holy Father. On their arrival at the Quirinal, the halls and ante-chambers were already filled with groups of personages in every style of costume, from the glittering uniform to the cowl. The travellers, therefore, must wait till all these have had an audience. But no. The name of O'Connell, as if possessed of talismanic power, caused them to be at once admitted to the presence of the Holy Father. The reception was most cordial. "Since the happiness I had so much longed for," said the Pontiff, "was not reserved for me, to behold and embrace the hero of Christianity, let me, at least, have the consolation to embrace his son." "As he spoke," writes Dr. Miley, "he drew the son of O'Connell to his bosom and embraced him, not unmoved, with the tenderness of a father and a friend. Then, with an emotion which stirred our hearts within us, this great Father of the faithful poured out his benign and loving soul in words of comfort, which proved that it was not new to him to pour the balm of heaven into broken and wounded hearts." "His death," said the Pontiff, "was blessed. I have read the letter in which his last moments were described with the greatest consolation." The Pope then proceeded to eulogize the liberator, as the great champion of religion and the Church, as the father of his people and the glory of the whole Christian world. "How else," observed Monsignore Cullen, late Cardinal Archbishop of Dublin, who was present, "could the Pope have spoken of him tha
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