personally mixed up in every part of the case; and we think some taint of lurking insanity must have first suggested pretensions, which actually had no ground whatever to rest on. There does not seem the slightest reason to think he had any connexion whatever with the Stirling family. The case is one which it is difficult to understand on any supposition.

The next trial, that with which Mr. Townsend's first volume closes, is an Irish case-no other than that of Smith O'Brien for high treason. There can be no object in our bringing before our readers any of the particulars of that strange case; and, even if we did not shrink instinctively from the discussion, we have not left ourselves room for comment. Where there is so much to deplore, and so much to make us, as a people, ashamed of the whole business of 1848; while the absurdity of the affair is almost more disgraceful to beings endowed with reason than its criminality-it is some comfort to find an English barristerno great judge, certainly, though Recorder of Macclesfield-praising the mode in which the trial was conducted. He seems somewhat disappointed, no doubt, at the Attorney-General's calm statement of the case for the Crown; the plain business-speech-the only one proper on such an occasion-was not to the Recorder's taste. "The Attorney-General despaired of wearing the mantle of Plunket, and discarded eloquence altogether." But on whomsoever else his praises fall, the hero of his narrative is our cloquent countryman, Whiteside; and it does our heart good to see how much he is admired. In him he recognises the great orator to whom is entrusted "the forensic honour of his country." In describing eloquence, Townsend himself fancies that he is emulating the great sublime he draws. But this is a mistake. The Recorder of Macclesfield is not destined to be a great speaker. Still let us hear him. "Mr. Whiteside, for the defence, struck a key note of national pathos which must have vibrated through the hearts of his hearers. His wit and humour flashed forth occasionally in cross-examining the adverse witnesses, but under manifest restraint, for he must have felt bowed down and oppressed by the hopelessness of his position, and constrained to make technical objections

to the proceedings, which a feeling of chivalrous fidelity to the desperate fortunes of his client alone could justify." Neither of Whiteside's speech in defence of his client, nor of any other part of the case, do we think Mr. Townsend's a faithful abstract. Much of what was most effective in it was

altogether omitted. Of the legal arguments which from time to time arose in the progress of the case, we have no account whatever. Indeed, the fault, the great fault, of Mr. Townsend's book is, that he seldom states a law argument like a man who fully appreciates its force. A short, small, smart joke is what he loves best; and the dulness of detail in some of the English and Scottish cases, seems, every now and then, to be relieved to his mind by some miserable quibble or other, which the ori ginal utterer of it must grieve to see reported. Where there is anything of powerful reasoning preserved in these volumes, it seems but a fortunate accident; of Whiteside's best passages none, or next to none, are given ; of Fitzgerald's, in the same way, very little is preserved. The counsel for the Crown, and the presiding judge, are not much better used; and poor Meagher, who was convicted of high treason at the same commission with O'Brien, has to complain of a note in which his foolish-it is here called his pathetic-appeal at the close of his trial, is printed.

The Chief Justice (Blackburne's) charge is broken into piece-meal fragments. Its great value was as a whole, and there can be no excuse whatever for its omission.

Nothing could be more distinctly proved than the treason of O'Brien and his associates. The verdict could not be other than of guilty; but it was accompanied with a recommendation to mercy; and Lord Clarendon, when in the exercise of the royal prerogative he spared the lives of these men, acted with humanity, which was felt, under all the circumstances of the case, to have been wisdom. After the conviction, there was an argument in the Queen's Bench, in which it was endeavoured to be shown that there was a mis-trial; and the points relied on by the prisoner's counsel were felt by them to be so strong that they applied for a writ of error. Writs of error in capital cases are not allowed "without

express warrant under the king's sign manual, or at least by the consent of the Attorney-General. These therefore can rarely be brought by the party himself, especially where he is attainted for an offence against the State; but they may be brought by his heir or executor, after his death, in more favourable times; which may be some consolation to his family,' Such was the practice in England. As soon as a verdict was obtained, and sentence pronounced, that sentence was carried into effect: and, as in Lord Russell's case, when times became more favourable, if the family had interest enough for the purpose, the attainder was reversed. In the bill for reversing the attainder of Lord Russell, his execution is called a murder. In our day, humanity and good sense are rather more consulted than of old, and the writ of error was not refused. The case thus went formally to the House of Lords; but they somewhat impatiently decided points of law without hearing the case to an end, which points of law, we think it exceedingly probable, had O'Brien been already hanged, would have been disposed of in the other way. The fact seems to be, that the House were afraid of these writs of error being issued in every Irish case, and that the course of justice would be thus impeded by one captious objection or another. The old plan, of not chopping logic till after the criminal was executed, and the friends of his family had come into power, would seem to have been a more reasonable way of securing this result, than the modern one of cutting short a forensic argument. We should hope that the occasion may never again arise of seeking to investigate any of the questions then agitated; as, if the law of Ireland be not the same as that of England in the conduct of trials for high treason-as was successfully asserted by the Crown in O'Brien's case—such anomaly ought at once be cured by legislation.

When the writ of error was disposed of, a new difficulty arose. O'Brien insisted that the capital sentence could not be commuted for transportation without his consent, and he expressed

a decided preference for being hanged. It was doubted whether he was quite sincere in this, as it was impossible for Lord Clarendon to gratify him, consistently with communications made to O'Brien that it was intended to spare his life. To have hanged and beheaded him at this stage, in compliance with the legal rights he insisted on, would have looked like sharp practice, and a bill was passed very rapidly through the Houses to remove any doubts as to the power of the Crown in such a case. Great lawyers said such a bill was unnecessary; yet we incline to think it was wise to pass it, as the view of the law taken by O'Brien is that put forward in several works of authority. See, for instance, Christian's note to Vol. I. of Blackstone, p. 137. The Act was passed, and the prisoners, convicted of high treason and of treason-felony in the Irish insurrection of 1848, were at last shipped off.

Since their arrival in the penal settlement they have been offered tickets of leave, which all but O'Brien have accepted. His refusal to accept a ticket of leave, or give any parole, has necessarily subjected him to the inconvenience of imprisonment; and nothing. can be more unfair than to reproach either the government, which seems to have treated him with all possible humanity, or the governor of the prison in which he insists on living-who is responsible for his safe custody-for consequences which arise from his own determination to preserve the dignity of a rebel general unimpaired. The public sympathy with the family of this most impracticable and wrongheaded man makes every one seek to forgive his strange outrage on the laws of society; but it is one thing to seek excuses or palliations for his conduct in the peculiar constitution of his mind, and another to suffer men engaged in the discharge of very difficult and very onerous duties to be maligned, as every one who tries to do his duty, without ministering to the vanity of a man, in every possible point of view most criminal, is sure of being. This can only be corrected by a saner state of feeling, to which we believe the country is fast returning.

A NEAT little volume, with this title, has been lately published by O'Daly, of Dublin, containing specimens of the indigenous poetry (principally songs) of Munster, both in the vernacular and in an English dress, and accompanied by the music to which they were set. Of the translations it is sufficient to say they are Clarence Mangan's of course excellent: he entered into the spirit of Irish verse with a facility that is surprising, when we remember that (to use the words of the preface) he was totally unacquainted with the original language, and made his versions of Gaelic poetry from lite ral translations, furnished to him by Irish scholars."

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In O'Daly's pretty little book the Munsterman hails, as familiar words, the names of his old acquaintances, Andrew M'Grath, the merry pedlar (or merrymonger, as commonly called); Timothy O'Sullivan, the pious; Denis M'Namara, the foxy; William O'Heffernan, the blind; John O'Tuomy, the merry; Father William English, and others; but he asks, "where is Dermod O'Curnan?-why has all mention of him been omitted?"-yet he deserved a niche in that miniature temple of the Momonian muse, as well from the interest attached to his tragical story, as from the intrinsic merit of his poetry, which is elegiac in its genius, and often terse and antithetical in style, and evinces a mind of much natural refinement. We have never met with any of O'Curnan's poems, translated or printed; and though we have seen some of them in MS. among the peasantry, in the county of Waterford, we believe they are chiefly preserved by oral tradition. O'Curnan seems to have been unknown to Edward O'Reilly, who does not allude to him in his "Chronological Account of nearly Four Hundred Irish Writers;" therefore a short account of the illfated bard may not be superfluous.

Dermod O'Curnan, the son of a farmer, was born about, or a little before, 1740, in the county of Cork, but resided, after he grew up, in the parish of Modelligo, county of Waterford. Young O'Curnan was peculiarly gifted by nature; he had a finely formed person; a strikingly handsome face; a lively disposition; agreeable manners; deep and ardent feelings, and considerable abilities; and was, from his early youth, a poet. Unhappily he fell in love with a pretty peasant girl, a native of Modelligo (the "Mary" of his poems), who was proud of the attachment of a young man so much superior to her usual associates, and encouraged, perhaps reciprocated, his love. But she saw that other girls were anxious to attract his attentions at their dances and rustic recreations; and, inspired by the demon of jealousy, she repaired to one of those old crones of whom formerly there were too many, who professed to deal in charms, spells, and philtres, and purchased from her a potion said to be of virtue to keep her lover constant to herself. This she contrived to mingle in his drink at some convivial meeting; the mischievous compound attacked his brain, and the unfortunate Dermod became incurably deranged. His whole temperament changed; he lost his vivacity, and became melancholy, moody, and unsocial, but retained his poetic talent; and though aware of the fatal injury inflicted on him by his Mary, he still remembered his passion, which seemed to gather intensity from his madness. But now he had become an object of terror and dislike to her, and she repelled him harshly whenever he approached her, as he often did, to complain of his shattered health and his troubled brain, of which he was quite sensible. Her cold and disdainful manner augmented his malady, and he wandered about the solitary parts

of Modelligo, a wretched being, ragged, barefooted, sallow, sickly, with scarcely a trace of his former beauty left; but still frequently composing poems on his love and his despair, which he could be induced by kindness to repeat to his friends, by whom they were committed to memory.

At length he disappeared for some time, and was supposed to have left that part of the country. But one

Sunday morning, in the latter end of summer, while all the rural population was at Mass, he suddenly entered the cottage of his scornful love, near Farnane Bridge. It happened that she had remained at home alone, and was employed cutting brambles with a bill-hook, to feed the fire on which the potatoes were boiling for dinner. Immediately on O'Curnan's entrance he began to speak to her of his enduring attachment, and to entreat her pity; but instead of trying to soothe and amuse the maniac till some one should come in, it appears that she foolishly irritated him by contemptuous expres. sions, and especially by taunting him with his infirmity. Knowing himself to have been in this respect her victim, he became infuriated beyond the usual pitch of his delirium—and, in a wild paroxysm of frenzy, snatching up the billhook, he severed her head from her body. Remarkable retribution! she fell a sacrifice to the madness that she had occasioned by her own superstition and jealousy. No sooner was the fatal deed done, and O'Curnan's fury appeased by the blood of the murdered woman, than the feeble light of such reason as he commonly retained dawned again upon his mind;

he became conscious of the nature and the consequences of his act, and rushed from the house to conceal himself.

The dismay of Mary's family, at finding her headless corpse, on their return from chapel, may be conceived. On searching for the murderer, the track of the madman was easily discovered; he was found lying hid among the standing corn in a neighbouring field; the blood on his hands and clothes bore witness against him, but none such was needed; he confessed all that had passed with sufficient coherency, and was conveyed to prison. The fate of O'Curnan was the reverse of that of Sophocles: when the Greek poet was charged with de rangement, his verses were accepted by the judges of the case as a proof of his sanity; O'Curnan's, on the contrary, furnished to his jury a strong presumption of his lunacy, which being established by evidence as to his habits, and their cause, the "Mad Poet" was acquitted of wilful murder, but was confined for life as a dangerous maniac. The tragedy we have related occurred about eighty-seven years ago.

After O'Curnan had lost his reason, chancing one day to meet the object of his unfortunate attachment, he complained to her of illness; she asked him, "What ailed him—what was his sickness?" In reply to which, he poured forth a poem which he afterwards recited to persons who committed it to writing. A manuscript copy was given to us by a country schoolmaster who taught Irish; and from that we make the following translation direct from the vernacular: