writer, mentioning that he had purchased, at the sale of Mr. Conway's library, a volume of scarce pamphlets, containing the "Commentary" with Mr. Cassidy's autograph, and offering it to his acceptance.

"Monasterevan, July 3, 1855. "DEAR SIR,-I have received, and have also to thank you for, your very considerate, as usual, communication of 30th June.

"The Commentary on the Life of Wolfe Tone was published under very peculiar and rather strange circumstances. The papers forming it were detached, and not arranged. In a state just out of chaos, they were entrusted to me, to make such use of for the advance of this country as I might deem useful.

"The dedication, written in Paris, puzzled the few French printers able to print English.* Didot, under guarantees supplied by my banker (D. Daly), published the book almost malgre lui. I had to attend more than one summons at the Palais de (in-) Justice in 1828, to protect the printer.

"The Paper caused some sensation. Every ambassador in Paris paid for the sheets as printed-some for ten copies, before bound. One hundred copies were sold in sheets.

"I had to correct the press for French compositors, and brought over fifty copies. I have made a look through my books this day, and, to my surprise, find I have not a copy of the original exemplaire.

"To repossess the copy most probably lent Conway, is desirable. I shall receive it from you not as a restitution, but as a gift.

"Yours faithfully,

"To W. J. Fitzpatrick, Esq.".

"ROBERT CASSIDY.

*They could not, for the life of them, imagine why an English book, dedicated to all the Blockheads in the service of his Britannic Majesty, should be printed in an alien country.— Subsequent communication from Mr. Cassidy.

Judge Johnson was a fluent correspondent, and some of his letters on the capability of Ireland for effective warfare appear in the Personal Recollections of Lord Cloncurry. His grandson, Robert Alloway, Esq., now holds an interesting selection from the judge's papers. It may scandalize surviving politicians of the old Tory school to hear that among his chief correspondents were John Wilson Croker and the King's brother, the Duke of Sussex.

O'CONNELL "A UNITED IRISHMAN".

The uncompromising attitude of hostility maintained by O'Connell towards the advocates of physical force, specially evidenced in his censure of the men of '98 at the Repeal Association on May 21st, 1841, and which led to the resignation of some influential repealers in America, imparts additional interest to the fact, hitherto hardly known, that he himself had been a United Irishman. We are indebted to the late Mr. Peter Murray of the Registry of Deeds Office, Dublin, a man of scrupulous veracity, for the following curious reminiscence of O'Connell in 1798: "My father, a respectable cheesemonger and grocer, residing at 3 South Great George's Street, was exceedingly intimate with O'Connell, when a law student and during his earlier career at the bar. Mr. O'Connell, at the period of which I speak, lodged in Trinity Place adjacent, an almost unexplored nook, and to many of our citizens a terra incognita. I well remember O'Connell, one night at my father's house during the spring of 1798, so carried away by the political excitement of the day, and by the ardour of his innate patriotism, calling for a prayer-book to swear in some zealous young men as United Irishmen at a meeting of the body in a

Counsellor

neighbouring street. was there, and offered to accompany O'Connell on his perilous mission. My father, although an Irishman of advanced liberal views and strong patriotism, was not an United Irishman, and endeavoured, but without effect, to deter his young and gifted friend from the rash course in which he seemed embarked. Dublin was in an extremely disturbed state, and the outburst of a bloody insurrection seemed hourly imminent. My father resolved to exert to the uttermost the influence which it was well known he possessed over his young friend. He made him accompany him to the canal bridge at Leeson Street, and after an earnest conversation, succeeded in persuading the future Liberator to step into a turf boat which was then leaving Dublin. That night my father's house was searched by Major Sirr, accompanied by the Attorneys' Corps of Yeomanry, who pillaged it to their hearts' content. There can be no doubt that private information of O'Connell's tendencies and haunts had been communicated to the government".

Mr. O'Connell's intimacy with Mr. Murray is confirmed by Mr. John O'Connell's memoirs of his father, p. 14; and Sir Jonah Barrington, in the third volume of his Personal Sketches, p. 396, gives a very animated description of the sacking of Murray's house by the Attorneys' Corps, or "Devil's Own". The Personal Recollections of O'Connell, written by Mr. Daunt, and mainly devoted to a record of conversations with his great leader, describe O'Connell as in Dublin during the spring and summer of 1798, and lest some officious persons might endeavour to implicate him in their disaffection, "quitting the city in a potato boat, bound for Courtmasherry", (vol. i. p. 117). But the circumstances detailed by Mr. Murray are not given.

315

S.

THE REBELLION IN KILDARE.

We are indebted to the Rev. John O'Hanlon, the able Biographer of Archbishops O'Toole and O'Morghair, for the following traditional reminiscence of his grandfather's connection with the Rebellion in Kildare:

"In 1798, soon after the general rising, a comfortable grazier named Denis Downey, who held a considerable tract of land, on which stood the Gray Abbey ruins, near the town of Kildare, had been induced by a relative to take up arms and join the insurgent ranks. Having been engaged in some of the desultory affairs previous to the Curragh massacre, and his helpless wife, with two small children, having been daily exposed to insults, and the rapacity of the military force, during his absence from home, it was at length found necessary to abandon the farm-stead. His wife and her infant charge sought a temporary place of refuge in Derryoughter, near the river Barrow. Here her aged father and mother resided. The insurgent husband found means for communicating to her his intentions of surrendering, with others at the Gibbet Rath on the 3rd of June. It is a fact, well remembered and handed down by tradition amongst the townspeople of Kildare, that on the very day before, several of Lord Roden's Foxhunters, in a riotous and drunken brawl, appeared in the streets, carrying articles of apparel on the top of their fixed bayonets, and swearing most vehemently, 'We are the boys who will slaughter the Croppies to-morrow, at the Curragh!' This announcement deterred many rebels from proceeding to the spot, and proved instrumental, no doubt, in saving their lives. Amongst the unnotified, however, Downey, in hopes of obtaining pardon, and mounted on a fine horse,

went to the fatal trysting place. Having surrendered his arms, and an indiscriminate slaughter of the rebels having commenced, he at once got on horseback, and was endeavouring to escape, when he observed a near relative running away on foot. The horseman stopped for a moment, but when stooping for the purpose of mounting his friend behind, a bullet brought Downey to the ground, when his horse galloped wildly forward towards Derryoughter, where it had been previously stabled. Meantime, Mrs. Downey, whose mind had been filled with alarm and anxiety to learn the state of her husband, remained up nearly the whole of that night, immediately preceding the 3rd of June. Towards morning, wearied and careworn, she had been induced to take a brief rest. The most strange event of all then occurred, as afterwards frequently certified by herself and those with whom she at that time resided. About the very hour when the massacre took place on the Gibbet Rath, she started from a troubled sleep, during which she had a frightful dream or vision of her husband weltering in his blood. Her instant screams drew all the family to her bedside. In vain did the aged father represent to her, that such a dream was only the result of her disordered fancies, and that better news might soon be expected. She wept bitterly and in utter despair of ever seeing her husband alive. The old man, taking his walking stick, turned down a retired road branching from his house towards the more public thoroughfare, leading from the Curragh. Almost the first object he encountered on the way was Downey's horse covered with foam and galloping furiously, without any rider, yet bridled and saddled. This unwonted sight furnished a sad presentiment of his son-in-law's fate. Soon again he observed numbers of country people running along the high road in a state of wild excitement. The old man asked some of them what news from the Curragh. 'Bad news! bad news!' they