the plain which lay to the north of his position. At length he was gratified by observing in the distance a dark moving mass which, as it came nearer, resolved itself into six troops of cavalry riding at full speed towards the field of battle. All eyes were fixed on the approaching horsemen, it was felt that their arrival would bring on the crisis of the day. The skirmishing ceased, the advanced parties on both sides were drawn in, and there was a lull in the sounds of conflict. On thundered the eager troopers, heedless of the hopes and fears they excited. Monroe, though he began to have grave misgivings, still hoped they might be the reinforcements he expected. But his doubts were speedily ended. At the entrance to the valley which separated the hostile armies, the body of cavalry changed the direction of its course, and amid the wild cheers of. the Irish, troop after troop, covered with foam, and dust, and blood, galloped up the hill on which floated the "Red Hand," and took its place on the wing of the Irish army, facing the cavalry of the Lord of Ardes. The wearied horsemen were destined to enjoy but a short breathing time. Their arrival had evidently disconcerted Monroe, and already some clumsily-executed movements on the part of his soldiers began to show his confusion and their alarm.

The moment for which the Irish commander had waited was come. O'Neill spurred his horse in advance of his own line, and turned towards his men. His usually immovable features betrayed for once the passions alive within him. His eye was lit up with a fire which contrasted forcibly with its usual steady light. His breast heaved and throbbed, and his ordinarily unimpassioned voice was broken and husky. He waved his sword, and the stillness of death fell upon his lines.

"Gentlemen! Soldiers of Ireland!" he shouted, in accents which made the faces of the listeners pale with emotion, "before you are the despoilers of your country, the ravagers of your homes, the butchers of your kindred. We have met them at last on even terms. We have arms in our hands as good as theirs, and we have wrongs to avenge such as blood never washed out before. Soldiers! for friends, for home, for Ireland, for God, advance! Your word is Sancta Maria. Fire not a shot till within pike-length of your foes."

Silence deep and ominous succeeded this appeal. The colonels of foot sprang from their horses and pointing with their naked swords to the enemy's position led on their regiments. In a moment the entire line, horse and foot, was in motion. Showers of musket balls and an occasional round shot greeted them as they advanced, but they held on their way without replying. On they came, fearlessly, steadily, now so near that they could distinguish the features of their foes set in savage determination, but pale with intensest excitement.

"Breffni Aboo! Charge!" thundered the voice of Miles

O'Reilly, loud above the din of musketry and the rattling of armour, and the Irish cavalry broke into a gallop and swept fiercely towards the ranks of the Scottish horse. At the same instant along the regiments of foot ran the command "Halt! Present-give fire!" A prolonged roll of musketry followed, and then with a cry in which the pent-up spirit of vengeance found terrible utterance, the Irish pikemen closed with their foes.

The encounter was rude, but the onset was irresistible. Scot and Briton, horseman and foot soldier, went down before the fierce assailants. Monroe's lines made a desperate attempt to withstand the furious onslaught; his officers gallantly precipitated themselves on the weapons of their enemies, and called on their men to follow. But their bravery was unavailing. Their followers were panicstricken; they wavered, broke, and fled; and the battle of Benburb was decided.'

W

THE BIRD AT MASS.*

BY ELLEN FITZSIMON (born O'Connell).

WAITING with patience for the appointed hour
Of holy Mass, employed in peaceful prayer,
I see a bird (perchance escaped the power

Of a fell hawk) enter the portals there,

And, scared and trembling, flutter high and low,
Unknowing in her terror where to go.

Now, now she darts away athwart the aisle,
Now dashes swift against a window-pane,
Seeking for egress from the holy pile,

Intent the woods and fields once more to gain,
Where joyfully she in the ambient air
With blithest songs her freedom may declare.

Alas, that freedom she may not obtain !

Around the church she still pursues her flight,
Till, wildered and worn out with fear and pain,
She on Our Lady's altar doth alight,
There rests beside the Blessed Virgin's feet,
Finding a moment's calm and safe retreat.

Anon, as openeth the vestry door,

While priests and acolytes come forth to pray,
Startled, she swiftly flutters off once more,

And on Saint Joseph's altar next doth stay
Her course, as though that form and face revered
To promise shelter and repose appeared.

* An incident at Abbeyside Church, Co. Waterford, January 21, 1872.

At length, the while proceeds the holy rite,

The feathered wanderer departs anew,
And circling through the air with wild affright,
Her devious course doth ceaselessly pursue,
Till 'neath the Cross that tops the altar high,
All weak and trembling she at last doth lie.

Seems not the scene symbolic of a soul

Who from the truth hath long been led astray,
Who, worn with wandering far from virtue's goal,
Seeks anxiously Heaven's bright but narrow way,
Placing herself 'neath Mary's guidance sweet,
And laying all her griefs and sins at Jesus' feet?

THE LATER LIFE OF PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD.

IF

BY JOHN O'HAGAN, Q.C.

F Charles Edward had been taken prisoner after the battle of Culloden, or, say, in the midst of his perilous wanderings in the western isles, and put to death, as he assuredly would have been, he would have left a brilliant and even heroic memory. He himself was of opinion that if he were taken the Government would not venture to put him to public execution; but that is an idle fancy. They could not, and even in a sense they ought not, to have spared his life. He was the author and originator, the animating soul as well as the final cause, of the insurrection, for taking part in which peasants were slaughtered in cold blood and gentlemen put to death in batches with all the details of the barNo: he would barous sentence then in force for High Treason.*

have died on Tower Hill, died resolutely, we make no doubt, asserting to the last the sacredness of his cause. He would have been accompanied by the pity and admiration of friends and enemies, and made his parting scene, like young Conradin of Suabia, like the great Montrose, a something memorable to all time. A gleam of heroic splendour would thus have shone upon the setting of the last hope of the Stuarts. For himself, too, so far as we may judge, it would have been far better. His life, even in Scotland, had not been exemplary, but he was young, and frailty had not hardened into inveteracy. Harsh as the times

* Colonel Towneley and those who suffered with him on Kennington Common, were cut down almost immediately after being turned off, stripped, mutilated, and butchered alive. The nobles obtained the privilege of the axe, not by law, but by customary favour of the king.

and the laws were, a confessor would have been hardly denied to the legitimate heir of the English throne.* If he had thus died, what a lament would have arisen from the multitudes in England, Scotland, and Ireland, who, in feeling at least, still adhered to the Jacobite cause! And in aftertime how speculation would have been rife as to his destiny if he had escaped and lived! It would have been assumed that so fiery a spirit would somehow have wrought out its way; that he who with means so slender almost carved his path to the British throne would never have rested until, in the maturity of his powers, with ampler resources, and in a more favourable season, he had struck a second and victorious blow. He did escape and live, but it was only to give new point and illustration to the satire of Juvenal and Johnson. It is a melancholy story, but it is one which should be known, if it were only to dissipate a kind of traditional regret felt by Irish Catholics at the failure of the House of Stuart to regain the throne.

Charles Edward's famous campaign is a portion of history that has been too often narrated, and is too familiarly known, to make it otherwise than an impertinence to repeat it here in any detail. Yet as an introduction to a much more distasteful theme, we must give a glance at its leading incidents.

The one real hope of triumph for the Jacobites, the one formidable danger which since 1688 threatened the revolutionary dynasty, was dispersed by the equinoctial winds of March, 1744. The French Government had, with an energy, solicitude, and secrecy rare in their annals, organised an expedition against England of fifteen thousand men of their picked troops, under the command of Marshal Saxe, undoubtedly one of the first captains of Europe. The leaders of the English Jacobites and nearly all the Highland chiefs (including some of the most powerful among them, who afterwards took part against the rising of 1745), were under an engagement to second the invasion with all their forces. To meet this formidable confederacy the Government had hardly six thousand trained soldiers in England, and no general in the least worthy of the name. Charles Edward had come privily from Rome into France. It was intended that he should embark with the expedition, and that his younger brother, Henry, afterwards the Cardinal of York, should sail for Scotland to put himself into communication with the Highland chiefs. So far as we can judge of chances, the Hanoverian dynasty must have gone down almost without a blow. But then, as before in 1588, at the time of the Armada, and afterwards in 1796, when Hoche sailed for Bantry Bay, the winds became the "unsubsidised allies" of England. Á tem

Sir Walter Scott represents a Catholic priest coming to Fergus M'Ivor as a matter of mere course. I cannot find that any one of the Catholics put to death at that time was allowed the consolations of religion. It was a crime by law to perform any Catholic rite.

pest broke on the expedition when the soldiers were half embarked; the French fleet was scattered and crippled, and the enterprise had for the time to be abandoned. In truth it was never resumed. The French found employment for their soldiers in Flanders, where they helped next year to win the battle of Fontenoy. The bitterness of Charles Edward's disappointment was extreme. After a year's fruitless solicitation, finding that he was amused with mere promises, he made up his mind to the desperate step of going to Scotland unsupported, and flinging himself upon the loyalty of the Highland chiefs. This resolution was the emanation of his own breast alone. Not one of his adherents, not even his tutor, Sir Thomas Sheridan, approved of it. Murray of Broughton, afterwards. the notorious informer, then the hottest of the Jacobites, endeavoured with might and main to dissuade him from so insane a proceeding. In vain. Charles had the self-will of his family to a degree of intensity to which neither his grandfather nor great grandfather approached. Personal daring he had in plenty-he was a Sobieski as well as a Stuart-and for the consequences that might ensue to others he had a royal disregard. He was so determined on the adventure, and so much afraid of any impediment being interposed, that he did not even acquaint his father with his design.

His father, King James III. of England and VIII. of Scotland by birth, the Old Pretender, as the Hanoverians termed him, the Chevalier de St. George by a neutral title, was then living in Rome in the enjoyment of a pension from the Pope. Mr. Thackeray, in his novel of "Henry Esmond," has drawn his character in repulsive colours, but the portraiture is extremely unjust. His correspondence, given in the Stuart papers, places him in a very amiable light-affectionate to his children, thoughtful and considerate to his followers, and in point of intelligence far indeed from contemptible. He had, on the contrary, a clear discernment and just appreciation of the political world, and weighed the chances of his family in a scale but too well balanced. But these qualities had, as ever, their corresponding defects. His temper was languid and inert. Even in youth, his want of energy was painfully impressed upon his followers in the unhappy rising of 1715, and now whatever sparks of character there may have originally been were damped by a life of misfortune. He had in the year 1743 executed an instrument of regency by which he conferred full powers of sovereignty upon Charles Edward. It is well known that even in the case of the triumph of his cause he never meant personally to ascend the throne. As between him and his son, the latter always had his way.

"Che chi discerne è vinto da chi vuole."

Charles, keeping his father in the dark, but impressing his vehement will on all around him, succeeded through our Irish Lord Clare in hiring a couple of privateers with one hundred marines,