nevertheless supplies a key to much of his character. As a youth he had been an enthusiastic amateur actor, often taking part in those private theatricals which delight the performers almost as much as they weary the patient audience. The pages of his diary are punctuated with tags and quotations from numerous old plays in which he had faced the footlights. Like many professional mummers, he had come unconsciously to ignore the line dividing the drama from real life, and in his everyday existence would often express himself in terms of the theatre and adopt a histrionic attitude which he deemed becoming to the rôle he had chosen. His love of intrigue was fostered by a keen dramatic sense which enabled him to picture himself playing the interesting part of the conspirator of melodrama, throwing his long black cloak about him, drawing his soft felt hat over his eyes, and whispering 'But hush! ' we are observed!' or scowling-as we find him doing each time his plans are foiled-Ha! ha! A time will come! He was by nature intensely emotional; his spirits rose and fell rapidly, his mood would be buoyant and melancholy in turns, and the tears came to his eyes on the slightest provocation. Indeed, in Paris he seems to have been always weeping. When the mob shouted to see an ensign pass with the tricolor flag,' Here was no fiction!' he exclaims in his journal, and 'that it was that drew the tears irresistibly into my eyes!' He frequently found himself crying when he watched the French troops passing his window, and when Carnot presented the 'wreaths and standards to the soldiers' the tears coursed down his cheeks. Nevertheless, underlying his pretentious theatrical pose and his lachrymose sentimentality lay an earnest and very real devotion to an unselfish cause, extraordinary personal courage, and an admirable spirit of self-sacrificing patriotism. When patriotism is genuine, as Froude says, it confers on the most misguided enthusiast a certain nobility of temperament. It may stifle conscience and destroy scruple, but in the enthusiast it creates a readiness to sacrifice fortune, life, even reputation itself, to the cause which he has embraced; and in the case of Tone the sacrifice was willingly and even cheerfully made.

He was taken to Dublin in chains, and there confined in the military prison. By strict law he should have been brought before the King's Bench, but the fact that he held a commission

in the French army gave the authorities an excuse for trying him by court-martial, though if carried to its logical conclusion this argument should have rendered him altogether immune from trial. He appeared in court arrayed in full French uniform, and when called upon to plead, 'Guilty!' he cried, true to the old theatrical instinct which seldom wholly deserted him, ́ for 'I have never during my life stooped to a prevarication !'

Throughout his trial Tone maintained a calm and dignified demeanour which impressed, if it could not influence, his judges. In his defence he had carefully prepared a lengthy paper, much of which the President of the Court rightly adjudged irrelevant, and suppressed. Part of the apology which he was not allowed to read was devoted to paying a graceful tribute of thanks to the Catholics who had stood by him in his misfortune.

'I have laboured to create a people in Ireland, by raising three millions of my countrymen to the rank of citizens. I have laboured to abolish the infernal spirit of religious persecution by uniting the Catholics and Dissenters. To the former I owe more than can ever be repaid; the services I was so fortunate as to render them they rewarded munificently; but they did more: when the public cry was raised against me, when the friends of my youth swarmed off and left me alone, the Catholics did not desert me-they had the virtue even to sacrifice their own interests to a rigid principle of honour; they refused, though strongly urged, to disgrace a man. who, whatever his conduct towards the Government might have been, had faithfully and conscientiously discharged his duty towards them, and in so doing, though it was in my own case, I will say they showed an instance of public virtue and honour of which I know not whether there exists another example.'

All this, and much more to the same effect, was quite beside the point, as the President politely explained. Tone indeed had no plausible plea to urge in his defence; he had admitted his guilt, the Court could but find him guilty, and impose the only possible punishment-death. The prisoner heard the sentence unmoved. 'I have forfeited my life,' he admitted. 'The Court will do its duty. I shall not be wanting in mine;' and merely begged that he might be accorded the privilege of suffering the honourable death of a soldier. This was refused him, illogically enough, and he was condemned to be hanged like a common felon. He, however, anticipated the fulfilment of the sentence by cutting his throat in prison on the evening before the day fixed for his execution.

A few weeks earlier, with the other Irishmen who took part in Hardy's expedition, he had discussed the permissibility of committing suicide rather than fall into the hands of the English, and had stoutly maintained that to adopt such a course, and thus deprive their enemies of the shame of murdering them, would be unjustifiable. But in the shadow of the scaffold Tone changed his mind and felt no scruples in availing himself of that 'sharp antidote against disgrace,' as suicide is termed by Edmund Burke. His attempt at selfdestruction, like that of Haydon and many another man before and since his day, was not immediately successful, and he lingered for nearly a week before finding in death a merciful release from pain. They say I know everything,' he smilingly remarked to the prison surgeon, referring no doubt to the statement that had been made as to his complete knowledge of the French plans for a descent upon Ireland, but you see, doctor, there are some things I do not know. I find I am a bad anatomist!'

Wolfe Tone, as Mr. C. L. Falkiner justly observes, must always be remembered as the first of the Fenians, in spirit and sentiment, if not in name. He was in many ways a typical Irish revolutionist, adventurer and patriot, combining what the poet Moore calls a truly Irish mixture of daring ' in design with light-heartedness of execution.' Impetuous, fearless, witty. garrulous, he possessed a wonderful personal charm which made him attractive even to his enemies, and his old friend Plunkett (afterwards Lord Plunkett), bearing testimony in the House of Commons to the greatness of his abilities, declared that he had a heart which nothing but the accursed spirit of perverted politics' could mislead or pervert. Unscrupulous though he might be about the means of attaining his end, that end-the conversion of what was merely a Protestant colony into an independent nation--was not, from his own point of view, unworthy of the sacrifice he made on its behalf.

HARRY GRAHAM.

A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ADMIRAL

AND DIPLOMAT

The Life of Edward Mountagu, K.G., First Earl of Sandwich. By F. R. HARRIS. Murray. 2 vols. 8vo. 1912.

DWARD MOUNTAGU, First Earl of Sandwich, holds a somewhat prominent place in the history of the seventeenth century, due, perhaps, to two incidents which were almost accidentsin his career-his share in the Restoration of Charles II., and his death in the battle of Solebay. Apart from these two incidents, the ordinary reader might be puzzled to say what he knows about him. It is not that there was nothing else in his career that was noteworthy, nothing which roused public or party feeling, but either the matters were not of permanent interest, or Mountagu's share in them was obscure. Most people probably know that he was ambassador at Madrid and succeeded in temporarily arranging our relations with Spain; students of naval history have of course known that his action in the battle of Lowestoft has been highly commended, and have speculated on what it was that he did; they have discussed his conduct relative to the Dutch East Indian prizes, although unable to trace the hidden meaning of the outcry; but through all, the Earl of Sandwich has remained a somewhat shadowy personage, burly and good-looking, as appears from Lely's portraits; stolid and good-tempered, as appears from Pepys's Diary; but still a man of whom not very much was to be said.

This overlying mistiness is what the present Earl of Sandwich wished to remove, and, with his countenance and assistance, Mr. Harris has to a great extent removed in the work which we have named above. Foremost, and occupying the chief place in this assistance, must be named the free access which Mr. Harris has had to the Sandwich papers-journals, memoranda and letters-preserved at Hinchingbrooke. To these he has brought ability, interest and a trained capacity for historic work, and the result is that we have a clearer view of the first Earl than ever before. We do not indeed find ourselves always in agreement with Mr. Harris's conclusions, and from time to time we seem to diagnose the 'lues Boswell

'iana' in a wish to attribute certain incidents in his hero's career to his exceptional talent or qualities, when a more unprejudiced examiner would regard them as the result of other and entirely commonplace causes.

Possibly the first instance of this is also one of the clearest. Edward Mountagu, born on the 27th of July 1625, was just eighteen when he was appointed, by Cromwell's influence, to the command of a regiment—' not,' says Mr. Harris, ' because ' of his birth, for with Cromwell that weighed little-but because he saw in him the material out of which leaders are 'fashioned.' Does Mr. Harris really suppose that Mountagu's cousin the Earl of Manchester, his father-in-law John Crew, his brother-in-law Sir Gilbert Pickering, and his life-long friend Oliver Cromwell, were guided not by family ties and affection, but solely by their knowledge of the youngster's merit?

That young Mountagu took the Parliamentary side was unquestionably due to the influence of his kinsmen and friend. He does not seem to have had, at any time, any puritanical notions about religion, and his political principles were always monarchical, though, from personal motives, he may have preferred a Cromwell to a Stuart, as long as a Cromwell was available. Granted that he was fighting for his friends and the principles of his friends, he certainly fought well. His regiment and his name were distinguished at Marston Moor, where, as Mr. Harris tells us, with an originality which we think is entirely his own, 'the Parliamentarians, by their dash and brilliance, earned themselves the name of "Ironsides."' 'The brigade of Col. Russell, Col. 'Pickering and Col. Mountagu (none of them, we may notice, 'holding the command by right of birth) stood as a wall of Brasse.'

After Marston Moor, Manchester and Cromwell began to draw apart, and Mr. Harris says that to Mountagu, ' full ' of a stubborn enthusiasm, the policy of energy and the 'fighting for freedom made a strong appeal.' This way

of looking at the matter is at variance with every estimate we can form of the character of the man, who even as a lad had, according again to Mr. Harris, dedicated [to Cromwell] a dogged hero-worship.' By the time, he says, that Mountagu was upon the threshold of manhood, Cromwell's local power 'was so strong as to appeal to the youth in a way the rigid