unarmed, he answered scornfully that an "O'Brien had never turned his back on an enemy," and that there he would remain.

McManus being joined by Stevens both urged, exhorted, and almost forced O'Brien to withdraw out of range of the guns. Fifty yards away they met a mounted policeman riding to the scene, and seizing the bridle of his horse forced him to dismount. At the suggestion of his friends that he should rally the peasants who had hurried towards the village, O'Brien bounded into the saddle and galloped forward. He found them surrounding a young priest who was soundly rating them for their madness and was commanding them to go back to their cabins. When O'Brien spoke to them of the glory of dying for their liberty, and being glorious patriots for evermore, they stared at him stupidly and slouched away without a word. Later on McManus spiritedly demanding if they would not avenge their comrade's blood, he got three volunteers, none of whom had arms. Then in despair he seized hold of the bridle of O'Brien's horse and turned the animal's head in the direction of the open country.

In this way ended an encounter which cannot be dignified by the name of rebellion. Ridiculous as were its circumstances, deluded as its leader was, he was not the less heroic in sacrificing all he possessed, in risking his life in an attempt to gain a measure

which he believed necessary to the welfare and happiness of his country. Though scorning to avoid the consequences of his action by escaping from the country as he might readily have done by sailing from the neighbouring city of Waterford to France, he was unwilling to own the authority of the Government he defied by voluntarily delivering himself into its hands. Aided by the faithful people among whom he took refuge in the mountains he escaped the pursuit of the police for a week. By the end of that time he determined to hide no longer. Boldly walking into the town of Thurles with the intention of taking the train to Limerick, where he lived and where his arrest would be immediate, he was recognised by a guard named Hulme employed by the Great Southern and Western Railway Company. Company. Having at O'Brien's request directed him to the station, Hulme sent for a detachment of police.

While walking up and down the platform waiting for the Limerick train O'Brien was arrested without protest or resistance and taken to Thurles gaol, but lest an attempt might be made to rescue him he was sent that night to Dublin. An instance of how history may be falsified may be worth mentioning in regard to this affair. Writing in his Memoirs of an Ex-Minister Lord Malmesbury says: "The long talked of rebellion in Ireland has at last broken out and been suppressed by fifty policemen. W. S. O'Brien headed the attack

upon the police-or rather sent three thousand men to attack them whilst he concealed himself in a garden close by."

O'Brien's trial for high treason which, begun September 28, 1848, ended ten days later when he was found guilty with a recommendation to mercy. On the usual question being put to him whether he could state any reason why sentence of death should not be pronounced upon him, he answered in a weary passive voice and with the air of a dreamer: "My Lords it is not my intention to enter into any vindication of my conduct however much I might have desired to avail myself of this opportunity of doing so. I am perfectly satisfied with the consciousness that I have performed my duty to my country, that I have done only that which it was in my opinion the duty of every Irishman to have done. And I am now prepared to abide the consequences of native land.

my having performed my duty to my Proceed with your sentence." Lord Chief Justice Blackburne then sentenced him to be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution and be there hanged by the neck until he be dead, and that afterwards his head should be severed from his body, and his body severed into four quarters, to be disposed of as Her Majesty thought fit. And might the Lord

have mercy on his soul.

The passing of this brutal sentence was a mere matter of form, or seemed so to the Government until

O'Brien absolutely declined to avail himself of the commutation of his sentence to transportation for life and demanded that the death sentence be carried out. At that time the law was powerless to change such sentence without the consent of those it concerned. The Government shrank from taking the lives not only of O'Brien but of McManus and Stevens upon whom a similar sentence had been pronounced and who were equally determined in preferring death to transportation. A special Act of Parliament was hurriedly passed to enable it to mitigate the extreme penalty being enforced. In July 1849, O'Brien was sent to Van Diemens Land, there presumably to spend the remainder of his life. But five years of it were passed in that dreary spot, for in February 1854 he was liberated on the condition that he did not return to the United Kingdom. In the following July he settled at Brussels and remained there until May 1856, when on receiving an unconditional pardon he returned to Ireland. Here he lived quietly until 1864 when he visited Wales in the hope of benefiting his failing health. He never returned to his own country for he died at the Penrhyn Arms hotel Bangor, June 18, 1864, aged sixty.

In this way the curtain fell upon the second act of the political drama of Home Rule.

While deeply concerned by such stirring incidents as the Chartist demonstration and the Irish disturbance, events of a more intimate character were taking place

in Her Majesty's life. One of these was the birth (March 18, 1848), at Buckingham Palace of her fourth daughter, afterwards named Louisa Caroline Alberta, by her sponsors the Duke Augustus of MecklenburgSchwerin, the Duchess of Saxe-Meiningen, and the Grand-Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Two months later, May 27, 1848, Her Majesty's aunt, the Princess Sophia, twelfth child of George III. died in her armchair at her residence in Kensington Palace, in her seventy-first year. Another death which caused the Sovereign deep regret was that of her first Prime Minister Lord Melbourne. It will be remembered that on being called from a narrow and somewhat lonely life to the greatest position in Europe, Her Majesty had found in him a judicious adviser and a paternal friend whose richly stored mind, sagacious and witty conversation, and spacious views were new and delightful to one fresh from seclusion. The trust she placed in him, the social intimacy to which she admitted him, were never abused by him for party purposes or personal aggrandisement; while the Queen, "partly from regard for him, and partly from being amused at his ways," as Greville tells us, "permitted him to say and do whatever he pleased in her presence. He was often paradoxical, and often terse, epigrammatic, acute, droll, with fits of silence and abstraction from which he would suddenly break out with a vehemence and vigour which amused those