to Cork, where they were to embark. The news had,
in the meanwhile, spread, and the roads were covered with women rushing
to see the last of husbands, brothers, sons. Wives, mothers, and
children followed the departing exiles to the water's edge, imploring
with cries of agony not to be left behind. In the extremity of his pity
Sarsfield proclaimed that his soldiers might take their wives and
families with them to France. It was found utterly impossible, however,
to do so, since no transport could be provided for such a multitude.
Room was found for a few families, but the beach was still crowded with
those who had perforce to be left behind. As the boats pushed off the
women clung desperately to them, and several, refusing to let go, were
dragged out of their depth and drowned. A wild cry went up as the ships
began to move. The crowd rushed frantically along the shore from
headland to headland, following them with their eyes as long as they
remained in sight. When the last ship had dropped below the horizon, and
the dull autumn dusk had settled down over sea and shore, they dispersed
slowly to their desolate homes. Night and desolation must indeed have
seemed to have settled down for good upon Ireland.

XLV.

THE PENAL CODE.

We are now upon the brink of a century as full of strange fortunes for
Ireland as any that had preceded it, but in which those fortunes were
destined to take a widely different turn. In the two preceding ones
revolts and risings had, as we have seen, been the rule rather than the
exception. In this one from the beginning down to within a couple of
years of its close when a rebellion--which, in most impartial
historians' opinion, might with a little care have been averted--broke
the peace of the century, hardly a symptom of any disposition to appeal
to arms is discoverable. Two great Jacobite risings convulsed England;
the American revolt, so fraught with momentous consequences, was fought
and carried, but Ireland never stirred. The fighting element was gone.
It was in France, in Spain, in the Low Countries--scattered over half
the battlefields of Europe. The country which gave birth to these
fighters was quiet; a graveyard quiet, it may be said, but still
significant, if only by contrast with what had gone before.

One advantage which the student of this century has over others is that
it has been made the subject of a work which enables us to thread our
way through its mazes with what, in