or apprehension of popular tumult, it would be found
that more had been done by a great deal, in the way of preparations, than
the public was aware of. Barracks have every where been made technically
defensible; in certain places they have been provisioned against sieges;
forts have been strengthened; in critical situations redoubts, or other
resorts of hurried retreat, or of known rendezvous in cases of surprise,
have been provided; and in the most merciful spirit every advantage on the
other side has been removed or diminished which could have held out
encouragement to mutiny, or temptation to rebellion. Finally, on the
destined moment arriving, on the _casus foederis_ (whatever _that_ were)
emerging, in which the executive had predetermined to act, not the
perfection of clockwork, not the very masterpieces of scenical art, can
ever have exhibited a combined movement upon one central point--so swift,
punctual, beautiful, harmonious, more soundless than an exhalation, more
overwhelming than a deluge--as the display of military force in Dublin on
Sunday the 8th of October. Without alarm, without warning--as if at the
throwing up of a rocket in the dead of night, or at the summons of a
signal gun--the great capital, almost as populous as Naples or Vienna, and
far more dangerous in its excitement, found itself under military
possession by a little army--so perfect in its appointments as to make
resistance hopeless, and by that very hopelessness (as reconciling the
most insubordinate to a necessity) making irritation impossible. Last
month we warned Mr O'Connell of "the uplifted thunderbolt" suspended in
the Jovian hands of the Wellesley, but ready to descend when the "dignus
vindice nodus" should announce itself. And this, by the way, must have
been the "thunderbolt," this military demonstration, which, in our blind
spirit of prophecy doubtless, we saw dimly in the month of September last;
so that we are disposed to recant our confession even of partial error as
to the coming fortunes of Repeal, and to request that the reader will
think of us as of very decent prophets. But, whether we were so or not,
the Government (it is clear) acted in the prophetic spirit of military
wisdom. "The prophetic eye of taste"--as a brilliant expression for that
felicitous _prolepsis_ by which the painter or the sculptor sees already
in its rudiments what will be the final result of his labours--is a
phrase which we are all acquainted with, an