me,
and I followed the messenger. The prisoner was led into the council-room
just as I entered; and at the first glance I recognised him as the
unhappy being whom I had so strangely met in the North, and whose
romance of rebellion had so deeply excited my interest. His features,
which, in the night, disfigured with dust and blood, I had been unable
to distinguish, now exhibited their original aspect, that cast of
mingled melancholy and daring which marked him at once as conscious of
the perils of his career, and resolved to encounter them to the
uttermost. His tribunal was formed of the first men of the country, and
they treated him with the dignity of justice. His conduct was suitable
to this treatment--calm, decided, and with more the manner of a
philosopher delivering deliberate opinions on the theory of government,
than of a desperate contemner of authority, and the head of a stern and
fierce conspiracy against the settled state of things. He cast his deep
and powerful glance round the council-board; as if to measure the
capacities of the men with whom he had once prepared himself to contend
for national supremacy; but I could not discover that he had any
recollection of me. I knew him well; and if ever painter or sculptor had
desired to fix in canvass or marble the ideal grandeur of magnificent
conspiracy, there stood its model. He spoke without the slightest
appearance of alarm, and spoke long and ably, in explanation of his
views; for he disdained all justification of them. He acknowledged their
total failure, but still contended for their original probability of
success, and for their natural necessity as the restoratives of Ireland.
He was listened to with the forbearance alike arising from compassion
for the fate he had thus chosen, and respect for the singular talent
which he displayed in this crisis of his fate. Man honours fortitude in
all its shapes. The criminal was almost forgotten in the eloquent
enthusiast; and while, with his deep and touching voice, and eager but
most expressive gesture, he poured out his glowing dreams, revelled in
brilliant impossibilities, and created scenes of national regeneration,
as high-coloured as the glories of a tropical sunset; they suffered him
to take his full range, and develop the whole force of that vivid
imagination, whose flame alike lured him into the most dangerous paths
of political casualty, and blinded him to their palpable dangers. He
concluded by declaring a