which he would be met would be something
incredible.

The writer of this knows for a fact that, at
the time of the escape from Elba, there were
districts in the far west where it was celebrated
with bonfires and most tumultuous joy — where
the hogshead, and, more welcome still, the keg
of poteen, was set running — and this, too, in
the houses and on the estates of squires holding
the king's commissions of the peace. The
peasantry are highly poetical as a class, and
have quite the taste of the French for military
show. Consequently "a uniform" must figure
in the proposition for every "rising;" and the
gentleman in Mr. Boucicault's play, who is
always figuring along the coast, blazing in a
French uniform and stars imperfectly concealed
in the ample folds of a cloak, is only a type of
this fancy of his countrymen.

Again, with every peasant, America is the
grand ideal of strength and power and wealth—
the Promised Land, the grand republic to which
every one will hurry who can. Though there is
no romance about it, it is the ideal of invincibility;
it is the country of which England is
supposed to stand in awe and terror. It is the
land from which the heavy reckoning is to come
—some day; it is the land from which many
friends ana countrymen return with great Mexican-
looking trunks, studded over with brass
bosses, and with coarse golden rings on their
middle finger. There is no such objectionable
character as this returned Irish-American. The
native goes out simple, courteous, intelligent,
pious, and with sweetness of manner and address,
quite Italian. He conies back familiar,
swaggering, "rowdyish," flashing, impudent, and
irreligious. In a county close to Dublin, a
gentleman of this pattern has been living for a
year or so, mystifying neighbours and police.
He went out a miserable pauper, and returned
with Mexican trunks, and gold rings, and a tuft
to his chin. Nothing could be "made" of him.
When the news of the arrests came, he had
disappeared. But his work was done. It is known
that nearly the whole of a militia regiment had
become enrolled in the "body."

It is this indistinct idea of American power,
and American chastisement for England, that
gives the character to the present movement.
All through the last war, Irish sympathy went
with the Northerns, with the great United States
republic, against the South. The preposterous
idea of Irish-Americans coming in great American
ships, and backed by the great American
government, is the background to the whole.
The thing has been foolishly underrated, but
few Englishmen have a conception of the
amount to which the "organisation" has
extended. Returned American soldiers,
demoralised marauders, have been scattered over
Ireland, inflaming the public mind. The figures
of these loose "oafers," bearded, dressed in a
kind of free-and-easy piratical fashion, with
wideawakes, long skirts, and half coats, have been
familiar to many Dublin inhabitants; and
magistrates and "squireens," who have mixed much
with the people, have long suspected, and
known, that some secret agitation was at work.
Even the old traditions of 'ninety-eight have been
diligently evoked, and the story of New Ross,
where the raw rebels, with only pikes in their
hands, beat the king's troops again and again,
has made the round of the country. The poor
country peasant or Dublin journeyman tailor
has not thought of the chances of pikes against
Armstrong guns, or of the stand or the magnificent
Brotherhood against twenty-six thousand
soldiers, and twelve thousand Lincoln green
policemen, who have Enfield rifles and sword-
bayonets, and each man of whom is worth three
soldiers, as being a trained, intellectual being,
and not a machine.*

* The Irish policeman must read, write, cast
accounts, and pass an examination in various
branches, lie is trained to act by himself, or with
a fellow, is sent into a wild district on "a mission,"
and is thus taught to rely on himself and his own
resources. He can chase a criminal a whole day
over hill and valley, and is generally the best
jumper and wrestler in the parish. Such a
combination ought to make a wonderful soldier.

At the same time, it is not to be supposed
that the mass of the people is disaffected. This
has been more a coquetting with the vanities of
rebellion, than a rebellion. One fact must be
always expected, and seems next to impossible
to be eradicated: that is, a steady dislike to
the English. Some part of it (in the writer's
opinion) must be set to the account of the
English themselves — at least, of such English
as come into the country and carry with them
the tone of the true British supremacy. It is
to be heard from the British contractor and his
workman, who swear at the hodman as "you
damned Hirishman," up to the ofiicial from
Dublin Castle, who coolly tells his host, whose
mutton he is cutting, that this or that is "so
Irish." There is the fatal barrier of RELIGION;
there is the miserable confusion of the land
question; there is in the government a narrow
red-tapeism which would in a dull way fit a
chilling official coldness and constraint to
impulsive manners and temperament.

THE GRANITE CITY.

I DO not know a more delightful sensation
than that which we feel on revisiting after many
years the scenes of our boyhood. When I leapt
on shore from the deck of the City of London,
and set my foot upon my native heath — or more
literally granite — I leapt back through twenty
years into the past, carrying the present along
with me. On these very stones I had stood when
a boy, wistfully gazing after this very ship as
she slowly steamed away, southward bound, for
London! I have watched her until she
disappeared round the headland, and still lingered
there gazing at the trail of smoke which she
left behind. I remember how I sighed as I
turned away — sighed to think that I was not going
with her; how impatient I was with everything