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duodenique inter se communes, et maxime fratres cum fratribus, et parentes cum liberis." (De Bèllo Gallico, lib. v. 14.) Nor is Solinus more favourable towards ancient Ireland; but coming to our own times, a Professor of Natural History at Manheim, Doctor Scultens, in a letter to Count Sternberg, forming the narrative of Botanical Excursions through England, thus expresses what he was told of Ireland. The translation from the original German will be found literal, and the date is so recent as 1830. "I have frequently inquired of the English, how it happened that the botany of so large an island was not more known to them than that of Greenland or Iceland. To which the only reply I could obtain was, that Ireland was a country of barbarians, and that a traveller was less secure on her western coast than amidst the most untutored savages." Still later, Professor Leo, of the University of Bonn, in his "Manual of Universal History," (1839, 2 vol. 8vo,) asserts, as he heard, that the Irish were" only impelled by mere brutal instinct; thierischen triebes."-(See Gentleman's Magazine for March, 1844.)

Our author has left untouched altogether the important period of Charles the First's reign, including the resistance of Ireland to the tyranny of the English Parliament and Cromwell, or as it is called in the perverse application of the word, the Irish Rebellion, when, in fact, the Irish fought for their king and country. Why this period should have been overleaped, in order to reach prematurely a later one, we have now no means of ascertaining, nor shall we refer to it, (though comprising the long contested commission given to the Earl of Glamorgan, and, yet denied, by

Charles, to treat with the Irish Catholics for their assistance,) except to state a little circumstance unnoticed, we believe, by any of its historians. St. Vincent de Paul, the institutor of the Sisters of Charity, and promoter of various other beneficent associations, struck with the sufferings of Catholic Ireland, urged Richelieu to come to its relief. "Non content," says his biographer, "de recueillir et de sustenter les émigrés des royaumes Britanniques, il demanda au Cardinal Richelieu qu'il secourût les Catholiques d'Irlande, et offrit cent mille écus, (above £20,000 of present currency,) pour soudoyer les troupes destinées à les aider." But the Cardinal declined the recom mendation and offer. (Vie de St. Vincent de Paul, par Pierre Collet, tom. ii.) It was at this pregnant conjuncture, too, that when the papal commissioner Rinuccini, Ormond, Preston, Owen Roe O'Neal, &c., respectively opposed with various views, the parliamentary troops, the Jesuit Cornelius O'Mahony, (the son of one of the writer's maternal ancestors,) published in 1645 his "Disquisitio Apologetica de Jure Regni Hiberniæ, pro Catholicis Hibernis, adversus Hæreticos Anglos. Accessit ejusdem auctoris ad eosdem Catholicos exhortatio." In this volume, which bears the impress of Frankfort, in 4to, though printed at Kilkenny, the author boldly recommends the election of a native king, "Eligite Regem Vernaculum;" but the Irish combatants were too divided in object, feeling, and interest, to act in concert for that, or indeed any purpose, and consequently, were sacrificed to the fell vengeance of the parliament and Cromwell. Not more than one copy, we believe, exists of the original edition of the volume, which is

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in the Dublin University Library; but in 1819, it was republished, limited, however, to 100 copies. (See also Cox's History of Ireland, vol. ii., p. 195.) It is really surprising how seldom, comparatively to its obvious policy, the most vulnerable quarter of the British Empire, vulnerable from constant misrule, has attracted hostile aggression or seduction.

"La mala signoria che sempre accora,

Li popoli suggetti."-Dante-Paradiso, viii. 73.

Minor attempts, such as Thurot's;* (François, originally a surgeon,) and Humbert's (who afterwards fell a victim to the climate of St. Domingo,) failed from the inadequacy of the means to the object-the former in January, 1760, the latter in August, 1798; and the only expedition of commensurate power, that commanded by Hoche in 1796, like the Spanish Armada, was defeated by the elements. M. Thiers, in his History of the French Revolution, justly wonders that Napoleon overlooked, in his multifarious engines of attack on England, this first and most obvious one, or, at least, that no attempt was made under the imperial sway.

He adverts to Ireland on several occasions in his History, as the constant aim of the Directory, particularly in the seventh volume, pages 328, 343, 344; and in the eighth, page 486, he states that Hoche, who commanded the expedition above alluded to, had it in contemplation to erect Ireland into a republic, similar to those ephemeral governments in Italy, then simul

In 1759-but his real name is said to have been O'Farrel, son of an officer in the Irish Brigade. He adopted his mother's name in apprehension of the English law, to which, as still a British subject, he was amenable.

"Une

taneously pullulating over the continent. république nouvelle s'élevait en Italie, et allait y devenir le foyer de la liberté. Hoche croyait beau et possible d'en élever une pareille en Irlande, à côté de l'aristocratie Anglaise." And he concludes the account of Hoche's abortive enterprise-" Ainsi finit cette expédition qui jetta une grande alarme en Irlande, et qui révéla son point vulnérable." This work, published first in 1826, when the author was only twenty-eight years of age, (1798–1826,) betrays the most malignant spirit against England, to which truth is constantly sacrificed; nor, though modified in expression, after a ripening interval of above twenty years, does the feeling appear much softened, in his History of the "Consulate and Empire," now in progress of publication. He cannot forgive the conqueror of Napoleon, the god of his idolatry; for so the fallen emperor appears. Some faults, even in the second edition of the earlier composition, are inexcusable. These it would transgress our bounds to detail, while, like Mr. Alison's, his military details and descriptions are singularly and technically animated and correct, inferior only to the unrivalled delineations of General Napier, though, like Mr. Alison, a civilian. In the Scotch historian's elaborate work, we had more than once occasion to mark some errors, such as his reliance on the Memoirs of Fouché as authentic, while he should have known that the publisher or printer, Lerouge, had an action brought against him for the counterfeit, and was fined; when he obtained damages for the fraud from Alphonse de Beauchamp, who sold the composition as genuine. So long since as the month of March, 1838, and again in November 1842,

we warned Mr. Alison of the forgery, in the Gentleman's Magazine. The fact has since been pointedly urged by the Quarterly Review, and with great severity in number (151.)

The services of the Irish troops in the pay of Spain, at this precise period, desultory and transient as they appear in Mr. O'Conor's narrative, are not of an importance to demand special attention; but some of the associated or incidental statements require correction. At page 70, and year 1653, the Cardinals Mazarin and Turenne, are represented as witnesses of the siege of Bois-le-duc, which, as regards the former, may possibly be true, though we have some reasons to doubt it; but in respect to the latter is certainly inaccurate, for no Cardinal of the name has ever existed. Yet it is shortly after reproduced, which removes the blame of error from the press to the pen. The family of Turenne contributed, indeed, princes to the Church, as Cardinals are distinguished; for "Principibus præstant, et Regibus æquiparantur," but always under the title of Bouillon, a duchy derived from the marriage of Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Turenne's father, in 1591, with Charlotte de la Marck, though the great soldier was the fruit of a second wedlock, his mother being Elizabeth, daughter of William the Silent, founder of the Dutch house of Nassau and of the Stadtholderate. His family had been Calvinists till about that time; but he did not become a Catholic until 1668, under the instruction of Bossuet.* reference to this siege of Bois-le-duc, and the attending circumstances, the historian Thuanus (Le Président de

In

See St. Simon's Mémoire's, tome v., p. 316, and Cardinal de Beausset's Life of Bossuet, tome i., p. 112.

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