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Yes! I loved thee and thine, though thou wert not

my land;

I have known noble hearts and brave souls in

thy sons,

And I wept with delight on the patriot band

Who are gone, but I weep them no longer as once !

For happy are they now reposing afar

Thy Curran, thy Grattan, thy Sheridan,―all, Who for years were the chiefs in this eloquent

war,

And redeem'd, if they have not retarded thy

fall!

Yes! happy are they in their cold English graves! Their shades cannot start at thy shouts of to

day;

Nor the steps of enslavers and slave-kissing slaves Be damp'd in the turf o'er their fetterless

clay!

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Till now I had envied thy sons and thy shore! Though their virtues are blunted, their liberties

fled,

There is something so warm and sublime in the

core

Of an Irishman's heart, that I envy-their dead!

Or if aught in my bosom can quench for an hour

My contempt of a nation so servile, though

sore,

Which, though trod like the worm, will not turn upon power,

'Tis the glory of Grattan--the genius of Moore !

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"What a noble fellow," said Lord Byron, after I had finished reading, was "Lord Edward Fitzgerald !-and what a "romantic and singular history was his! "If it were not too near our times, it

"would make the finest subject in the "world for an historical novel."

"What was there so singular in his life and adventures ?" I asked.

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"Lord Edward Fitzgerald," said he, was a soldier from a boy. He served in America, and was left for dead in one "of the pitched battles, (I forget which,) "and returned in the list of killed.

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Hav

ing been found in the field after the re"moval of the wounded, he was recovered

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by the kindness and compassion of a "native, and restored to his family as one

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from the grave. On coming back to "England, he employed himself entirely "in the duties of his corps and the study of military tactics, and got a regiment.

"The French Revolution now broke out, "and with it a flame of liberty burnt in "the breast of the young Irishman. He

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paid this year a visit to Paris, where he "formed an intimacy with Tom Paine, and came over with him to England.

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"There matters rested, till, dining one day at his regimental mess, he ordered "the band to play Ça ira,' the great revolutionary air. A few days afterwards he received a letter from head-quarters, "to say that the King dispensed with his "services.

"He now paid a second visit to America, "where he lived for two years among the "native Indians; and once again crossing "the Atlantic, settled on his family estate "in Ireland, where he fulfilled all the du

"ties of a country-gentleman and magis

"trate.

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Here it was that he became ac

quainted with the O'Connors, and in

conjunction with them zealously exerted "himself for the emancipation of their

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country. On their imprisonment he was

proscribed, and secreted for six weeks "in what are called the liberties of Dub"lin; but was at length betrayed by a

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Major Sirr and a party of the military "entered his bed-room, which he always kept unlocked. At the voices he started "up in bed and seized his pistols, when

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Major Sirr fired and wounded him.

Taken to prison, he soon after died of

his wound, before he could be brought

to trial. Such was the fate of one who

"had all the qualifications of a hero and

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