essay of the profession in the Légion de Mallebois, which was ineffectually employed to oppose the Prussians and Orange party of Holland, countenanced by England, in 1785, he entered Dillon's Regiment; and we well recollect that the late Colonel Fitz-Simon (James,) in a conversation on the relative fates of the officers who had abandoned or adhered to France, after the dissolution of the Brigade there, showed us the "Etat Militaire," or Army List of that kingdom for 1788, where his name appeared considerably above Mac Donald's, and naturally dwelt on his own then comparatively inferior condition. This feeling was warranted by their respective positions, and derived a confirmed assurance of truth from the answer given to Charles X., by Mac Donald, when questioned why he had not accompanied his fellow officers in emigration. "Sire, c'est parceque j'étais amoureux; et je m'en applaudis beaucoup, car c'est à cela que je dois l'honneur d'être à table à côté de Votre Majesté; car si j'avais émigré, j'aurais probablement vécu dans la misère, et j'y serais encore."* This circumstance of Mac Donald's seat at the royal board, after having attained the rank of Duke (of Tarentum) and Marshal, reminds us of something similar in regard to our own illustrious Duke. Dining, we are told, at the old Queen Charlotte's table, on his return from the Peninsular Campaigns, he happened to be placed next to the Duke of Clarence, the future William the Fourth, * The lady who inspired this early passion and became his first wife, was the daughter of a rich Parisian named Jacob, by whom he had two daughters, nobly married. The second wife was the widow of General Joubert, killed at the battle of Novi against Suwarrow, in July 1799-the mother also of a daughter; but by his third consort, a Mademoiselle Bourgoing, he had a son, to whom Charles X., and the Duchess of Angoulême stood sponsors in 1820. who observed to his mother, "that, on entering the port of Cork, while in the naval profession in 1787, an escort of honour awaited to conduct him to the city, commanded by a young lieutenant whom he had not since seen till that moment, when he was seated beside himself, a royal guest, invested with all the honours which merit could earn or power bestow." Mac Donald, it is well known, on Sir Walter Scott's arrival at Paris, in search of authentic information for his Life of Bonaparte, had invited a special company to meet the great novelist, then aspiring to a higher sphere of composition, in order to elucidate every fact or doubt which Scott might require to have explained; but not a question was asked, or inquiry hinted; and the resulting imperfection of the work was not ill expressed by the French judgment of it: "That it was the worst novel Scott had ever written." They would not dignify it with the character of history. Mac Donald died the 24th of September, 1840, leaving children by three successive wives. He was a very handsome man, and of a most prepossessing countenance. Long estranged from him, as the adherent of Moreau, Napoleon finally made him reparation, and did him justice, and after abdicating the imperial throne in 1814, at Fontainebleau, presented him as a token of regard with a sabre, formerly wielded by Murad Bey, and worn by himself at Marengo. Previously, too, though in no great personal or court favour, Mac Donald had been invested with various offices of trust and command-a forced avowal of his abilities. Numerous, indeed, are the other claimants to commemoration in every stage of the Brigade's existence; and truly did Marshal Thomond reply to Louis XV., who complained of the trouble given him by the Marshal's countrymen: "Sire, that also is a complaint generally made of us by your Majesty's enemies;" for never was a sovereign more nobly served. But, unless we were to undertake a continuation of Mr. O'Conor's work, or, at least, prepare a new edition of it, we could hardly comprise the full number, or avoid the exclusion of many a fair candidate for fame. The writer's personal knowledge of some of the most distinguishedsuch as O'Moran, O'Meara, Sir Nicholas Trant, Count Walsh, General Conway, &c., whom he well recollects when in the corps, and above all, General O'Connell, the liberator's uncle-whose high order of mind, of principle, and of conduct, commanded the esteem, as the amiableness of his manners won the love of all who approached him-would probably render the task easier to him than to most others. Emboldened by these peculiar advantages, anxious that the immortal body should not lose the weight of his testimony, such as it might be estimated, and impressed with the necessity of concentrating the lustre, the diffusion of which must impair its effect, he did, in early life, contemplate something similar to Mr. O'Conor's enterprise; but various obstacles arrested his project and prevented its realisation. Reverting to the foreign services of the Irish, well are we authorised to assert, that many and gallant have been the individual exploits for which the Brigade may claim additional credit, independently of its collective glory; but outside of that nursery of martial spirit, to which he owed not his tuition, we cannot, in the crowd of those who have reflected honor on their country, refuse a special homage to a native soldier of Ireland, Charles Jennings, better known as General Kilmaine. Conducted to France when not more than fifteen, in 1765, by his father, a resident of Dublin, the youth's birth-place, he entered Lauzun's, (or, as Lauzun became, Biron's) regiment, as a private hussard, followed his Colonel, to America, during the war of independence, and there embraced the principles so soon afterwards proclaimed in France-where we recollect him, before the Revolution, in the royal uniform of the day, which was white. Advanced to a captain's commission in 1791, he prevented the emigration of Biron's hussards, when the officers of other regiments collectively abandoned the revolutionary standard, and, being rapidly promoted, distinguished himself at Jemmapes, and on numerous other occasions. On the death of Dampierre, at the siege of Condé, and the imprisonment of Custine, he commanded their deserted army, which he saved from destruction by a masterly retreat before the Duke of York and the Prince of Cobourg, (great uncle of our Queen and her consort,) then at the head of 80,000 men, while those under his charge did not exceed 30,000. For this eminent service, however, he was requited by nearly a year's confinement, which only ended on Robespierre's overthrow; while so many other early generals of the Republic had fallen victims to that tyrant's thirst of blood-as Custine, Houchard, and Kilmaine's first patron, the Duke of Biron, who, at his execution the 31st of December, 1793, emphatically exclaimed, "Je meurs puni d'avoir été infidèle à mon Dieu, à mon roi, et à mon nom." Madame du Barri, the unnoble favourite of Louis XV., as Nell Gwyn was of our voluptuous Charles, underwent the same fate on that day, and was almost the only woman who betrayed any weakness, or recoiled from the stroke of death at that dread era; for we can assert, from our own observation, that the female victims almost uniformly submitted to their doom with courage not surpassed by the bravest of men. Kilmaine, who, we understood, thought he had some pretensions to that noble title, on his liberation served under Pichegru, at the invasion and conquest of Holland; and, shortly after, under Bonaparte, in the renowned Italian campaigns of 1796 and 1797. Few of the great soldier's lieutenants are oftener mentioned with praise in the reports from the victorious general, who, during his exile at St. Helena, is stated by Montholon and Gourgaud, in their "Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de France sous Napoléon," (1823-25,) to have described Kilmaine as "un excellent officier de cavalerie: il avait du sang froid, du coup d'œil, et une tête saine: il rendit des services importants à l'armée, dont il eût été un des principaux généraux sans la faiblesse de sa santé." Other demonstrative proofs of his talents could be easily produced; but after being appointed to the army of Helvetia, in 1799, he was obliged from impaired health, to transfer the command to Massena, who then saved France by his defeat of Suwarrow and Kraskow, in September and October of that year, just as Bonaparte, escaping from Egypt,* * Bonaparte's fortunate evasion of our fleets and cruisers, on that occasion, and still more providential escape subsequently from the assassin's dagger, and the Infernal Machine, will be found expressed, with singular condensation, such as the Latin tongue is alone susceptible of, in the following contemporaneous distich : "Te petit ense scelus, mare fluctu, Tartara flammis; |