left hand is an Irish harp, over it a dagger, and at its foot lie two hogs."

Now, the Seal which the Committee of Secrecy looked upon with so much horror, was a cast from an original cut for Lord Cloncurry, by Strongitharm, during one of his Lordship's earliest visits to London. The device is a harp, from which Britannia (not Hibernia,) has removed with the right hand, not an imperial but an Irish crown, and planted a dagger in its stead. Her left hand is represented breaking the strings of the harp; at the foot of which lie, not two hogs, but two Irish wolf-dogs sleeping at their post. All this is very plain to be seen. Britannia is arrayed in her ordinary helmet; and her child, bearing the cross of St. George, lies beside her; the crown in her hand is as unlike the imperial crown as can well be imagined: it is manifestly the old Irish pointed-diadem. The seal itself was not designed for the broad seal of the Irish, or any other republic; but was simply a fancy emblem which Lord Cloncurry chose to illustrate his patriotic enthusiasm. There were subsequently a few casts from the original made in glass by Tassie, of Leicestersquare one of these casts given to Lord Edward Fitzgerald, became renowned in story under the imprimatur of the Committee of Secrecy. In Lord Cloncurry's Personal Recollections are engraved the two seals.

REBELLION WINDFALLS.

When Lord Edward Fitzgerald became obnoxious to the law, Leinster House, the residence of his brother, the Duke of Leinster, was ransacked in the most insulting manner, in a search for criminatory documents; and when the Rebellion broke out, a number of the houses in the Duke's town of Kildare were wantonly burned, and several of his tenants hung upon the elm trees in the avenueleading to his house at Carton. It is a curious fact, that both these brutal outrages involved incidents productive of very considerable advantages to the subject of them. By the burning of the houses in Kildare, a wholesale clearance of an idle and mischievous tenantry was effected, much to the benefit of the property, but which his Grace's kindness of heart prevented him from accomplishing. Among the tenants hanged, to annoy the landlord rather than to punish the immediate sufferers, was a man, upon the fall of whose life a number of leases expired, and a considerable addition to the Duke's income immediately accrued; so shortsighted do men often show themselves in doing the bidding of their evil passions, no less than in their attempts to accomplish good.

LORD CLONMEL AND JOHN MAGEE.

Lord Clonmel one day said to Lord Cloncurry: "My dear Val, I have been a fortunate man in life. I am a chief justice and an earl; but, believe me, I would rather be beginning the world as a young sweep." A fortunate man, [observes Lord C.] he certainly was, and in nothing more than in the period of his death, which took place the day before the outbreak of the Rebellion of 1798.

Lord Clonmel had a villa named Temple Hill, close to Seapoint, which was made the scene of an ingenious stroke of vengeance by John Magee, then printer of the Dublin Evening Post newspaper. Mr. Magee had been tried before his lordship for a seditious libel, and, as he thought, had been treated with undue severity by the Bench. He was subjected to very rigorous imprisonment, on the expiry of which he announced his intention of clearing off old scores. Accordingly, he had advertisements posted about the town, stating that he found himself the owner of a certain sum [14,000l.] 10,0007. of which he had settled upon his family, and the balance, it was his intention, "with the blessing of God, to spend upon Lord Clonmel." Accordingly, he invited all his fellow-citizens to a "bra pleasura," to be held upon a certain day in the fields adjoining Temple Hill demense. The fête was a strange one. Several thousand persons, including the entire disposable mob of Dublin, of both sexes, assembled early in the morning, and proceeded to enjoy themselves in tents and booths erected for the occasion. There were also various sportssuch as climbing poles for prizes, running races in sacks, grinning through horse-collars, and so forth; and when the crowd had attained its maximum density, a number of active pigs, with their tails shaved and soaped, were let loose, and it was announced that each pig would become the property of any one who could catch and hold it by the tail. The pigs frightened and hemmed in by the crowd in all other directions, rushed through the hedges which then separated the grounds of Temple Hill from the open fields; forthwith all their pursuers followed in a body, and chasing over the shrubberies and parterres, soon revenged John Magee upon the noble

owner.

FATE OF COLONEL DESPARD.

This gallant but unfortunate officer appears to have fallen into a sea of troubles through his devoted loyalty. In the course of his service he was the companion and friend of Lord Nelson, during his co-operation with whom, at the siege of Honduras, in his zeal for the public cause, he advanced large sums of money from his own

resources, for the promotion of the operations of the war. For this, as well as for his gallantry and ability, he was thanked by Parliament, but not repaid. On his arrival in England, he pressed his claims for repayment upon the ministry; and irritated by the delays and difficulties thrown in his way by officials, he became passionate beyond control. He appealed to the House of Commons, but in vain. He then fell into pecuniary difficulties, became excited to desperation, wrote violent letters to Ministers, and having joined the London Corresponding Society, was taken up under the Act for suspending the writ of Habeas Corpus, and confined in Coldbath Fields prison. Here Lord Cloncurry found Despard, who had served many years in tropical climates, imprisoned in a stone cell, 6 feet by 8, furnished with a truckle-bed, and a small table; there was no chair, fireplace, or window, light being only admitted through a barred but unglazed aperture over the door, opening into a paved yard, at the time covered with snow. Despard was confined, we believe, from the winter of 1797 until the spring of 1804, by which time he had grown worn and wan, and of unsound mind. In talking over the condition of Ireland with Lord Cloncurry, the Colonel said, that though "he had not seen his country for thirty years, he had never ceased thinking of it and of its misfortunes, and the main object of his visit [to Lord C.] was to disclose his discovery of an infallible remedy for the latter-viz., a voluntary separation of the sexes, so as to leave no future generation obnoxious to oppression.' This plan of cure would, he said, defy the machinations of the enemies of Ireland to interrupt its complete success.

A year after this conversation, this poor madman, at the Oakley Arms public-house, in Lambeth, was apprehended, with thirty-two other persons, on a charge of treasonable conspiracy, tending to destroy the King and subvert the Government-one feature of the plot being to take the Tower. In February following (1802) the Colonel, with nine associates, were tried by a Special Commission, and being all found guilty, seven of them, including Despard, were executed February 21, on the top of Horsemonger-lane gaol.

BONAPARTE FIRST CONSUL.

Lord Cloncurry relates some interesting Recollections of the First Consul in 1802. His lordship was, through Marshal Berthier, presented at the Tuileries, attended a grand review, and dined with the Emperor on the day of presentation. "The occasion," says Lord Cloncurry, "at which Lord Holland was also present, was a remarkable one. We were received in the magnificent rooms of the Tuileries, in great state; the stairs and ante-rooms being lined by men of the corps

d'élite, in their splendid uniforms, and baldricks of buff leather, edged with silver. Upon our introduction, refreshments were offered, and a circle was formed, as at a private entrée. Napoleon entered freely into conversation with Lord Holland and myself, inquiring, among other matters, respecting the meaning of an Irish peerage, the peculiar characters of which, and its difference from an English peerage, I had some difficulty in making him comprehend. While we were conversing, three knocks were heard at the door, and a deputation from the Conservative Senate presented itself, as if unexpectedly, and was admitted. The leader of the deputation addressed the First Consul in a set oration, tendering him the Consulate for life, to which he responded in an extempore speech, which, nevertheless, he read from a paper concealed in the crown of his hat.

"Bonaparte was at that time very slight and thin in person, and, as far as I could judge, not possessed of much more information upon general subjects than of confidence in his own oratorical powers. Upon my expressing some surprise afterwards at the character of his remarks, I recollect General Lawless telling me that he and some other Irishmen (I believe Wolfe Tone was among them), had a short time before been engaged in a discussion with him respecting a project for the invasion of Ireland, when, after making many inquiries, and hearing their answers, he remarked that it was a pity so fine a country should be so horribly infested with wolves! Lawless and his companions assured him that such was not the case, to which he deigned no reply, but a contemptuous bah !"

One of the Abbé Sièyes's constitutions proposed to have a grand functionary, with no power except to give away offices; upon which Napoleon, then First Consul, to whom the proposition was tendered, asked if it well became him to be made a Cochon à l'engrais à la somme de trois milles par an ?" (a hog to be fatted at the rate of 120,000l. a-year).

THE LAST OF THE STUARTS.

When Lord Cloncurry was at Rome, in 1803, he became somewhat of a favourite with the last of the Stuarts, Cardinal York, whom Lord C. always addressed as "Majesty," thus going a step further than the Duke of Sussex, who was on familiar terms with him, and always applied to him the style of Royal Highness.

The Cardinal was in the receipt of an income of eight or nine thousand pounds a-year, of which he received 40007. from his royal rival, George III., and the remainder from his ecclesiastical benefices. This revenue was then in Italy equivalent to at least 20,0007.; and it enabled his Eminence to assume somewhat of royal state. He received visitors very hospitably at Frescati, where Lord Cloncurry

was a frequent visitor, and was often amused by a reproduction of the scenes between Sancho Panza and his physician, during the reign of the squire, in the island of Barataria. His Eminence was an invalid, and under a strict regimen; but as he still retained his taste for savoury meats, a contest usually took place between him and his servants for the possession of each rich dish which they formally set before him, and then endeavoured to snatch away, while he, with greater eagerness, strove to seize it in its transit. Among the Cardinal's most favourite attendants was a miserable cur dog, which one day attached itself to his Eminence at the gate of St. Peter's, an occurrence to which he constantly referred, as a proof of his true royal blood-the cur being, as he supposed, a King Charles spaniel, and therefore endowed with an instinctive hereditary acquaintance with the House of Stuart.

Lord Cloncurry presented the Cardinal with a telescope, which he seemed to fancy, and received from him in return, the large medal struck in honour of his accession to his unsubstantial throne. Upon one side of this medal was the royal bust, with the Cardinal's hat, and the words, Henricus nonus Dei gratia Rex, and upon the other, the arms of England, with the motto:— -Haud desideriis Nominum, sed voluntate Dei. The Cardinal was greatly delighted with the present, especially from its being of English manufacture.

INVASION PANIC OF 1803.

When the country was alarmed by the expected invasion of England by Bonaparte, George III. wrote, November 30, 1803, to Bishop Hurd, who was highly esteemed by the King:

"We are here in daily expectation that Bonaparte will attempt his threatened invasion. The chances against his success seem so many, that it is wonderful he persists in it. I own I place that thorough dependence on the protection of Divine Providence that I cannot help thinking the usurper is encouraged to make the trial that the ill-success may put an end to his wicked purposes. Should his troops effect a landing, I shall certainly put myself at the head of mine, and mine other armed subjects, to repel them. But as it is impossible to foresee the events of such a conflict, should the enemy approach too near to Windsor, I shall think it right the Queen and my daughters should cross the Severn, and shall send them to your episcopal palace at Worcester. By this hint I do not in the least mean that they shall be any inconvenience to you, and shall send a proper servant and furniture for their accommodation. Should this event arise, I certainly would rather have what I value most in life remain, during the conflict, in your diocese, and under your roof, than in any other place in the island."