come to GREEN-STREET, where there is a rude
frowning old-fashioned Newgate — exact twin
sister to London Newgate—and where there are
a crowd, and lights, and countless police.

It is about seven o'clock in the evening. I
stop a moment, and the one word that is in most
mouths and comes uppermost in each conversation
—"Faynian" — would explain the whole.
The restorers of the old Irish militia are being
tried within. A weary day is over. The newsboys
are hoarse with proclamation of the work done;
and here are the black vans come to take away
the prisoners to their prison. I am just in time.

The procession is worth seeing. It has the
air of nothing seen before; but most of all
resembling a grotesque funeral. His was surely
a mortuary mind — the coachmaker's — who
devised the prison van, with the view, no doubt,
that even as he travelled the prisoner might not
lose the feeling that he was still in jail. It is like
a nightmare, to see two enormous black vans
driven by men in black, and with black
conductors at the door, galloping at full speed,
with hussars in front, behind, and on every side—
with funereal police in long dark cloaks riding
behind, and a train of outside cars " bowling"
along, each crowded with policemen. Which
would seem to countenance the theory that
everything in Ireland is constructed with an
administrative view; for these vehicles would
appear to have come into being with exactly
this object—to be sat on by policemen in
charge of a criminal, who can go in front in his
own proper carriage, while his guardians can
follow in easy attitudes, with their eyes well on
him, so that they can jump off all at once, and
at a second's notice, on the least symptom of
danger. The whole is a strange and wild
procession. It is like an Irish legend; and as the
cavalcade sweeps by through dangerous districts,
where the inhabitants are collected to see the
show, and swarm down from the attics of the
chief justice and chancellors of a hundred years
ago—wild men and women, looking still wilder
under the flaring gas, fresh from steaming and
unhealthy pursuits; and as the vans reel round
the corners there rise cheers and cries, and
stones begin to fly, falling on the exposed police,
who thus discover that their cars, however
excellent as ottomans, have still disadvantages.

On some of these days when there is a
luckless conspirator on his trial, I enter the
court — though indeed this is a matter of
difficulty, for the whole place is encumbered with
enormous policemen, all six feet high and
bearded, looking like heavy dragoons in
disguise; and these persons so swarm at the gates
and passages, at the corners, and on the steps,
that the eye seems to be affected for a long time
afterwards, and can see nothing but dark blue
patches and white spectral numbering.

And here, now, is the court itself, which looks
like a large amphitheatre, with a dark unpleasant
little well in the centre that seems very deep, and
from which diligent police draw prisoners just as
they might come and draw water. An unhappy
conspirator has been brought to the surface—
swart, Italian-looking, with plenty of black hair
well tossed back. Two judges in scarlet—a
refreshing bit of colour in all that gloom—and the
" counshillors" down in a little cockpit of theirs,
where indeed many a " main" is fought, and
fought well; where they flutter their briefs like
feathers at each other, and drive cruel and
sarcastic spurs into each other's brains, and
peck each other soundly, and finally give a
crow of victory when the battle is over and
the victory won. And here again the police
element is overpowering, overflowing from
galleries to dock, from dock to cockpit, from cockpit
to jury-box. In the gallery there is certainly a
well-dressed crowd of loyal citizens, and
countrymen and agriculturists. But as the agriculturists
all wear heavy moustaches and beards,
and as the clothes of the agriculturists have a
new and "stagey" air—being clearly "properties"
from the police green-room—it is not
uncharitable to suppose that these simple rustics
and "virtuous peasants" (for there is a red
waistcoat or two) are authorised masqueraders.
Everything seems tinctured with police. Even
the judges come down to court with mounted
policemen cantering about their carriages, and
go home, when the day is done, attended by the
same secure and cheerful company.

In Irish political trials there is a regular
performer, who always comes on and lends a
specially dramatic interest to the whole. This is
the Informer, as he is known to the crowd: the
Approver, as he is more courteously known to
the law. It is dramatic to see this actor's
entrance; his furtive glance at the galleries,
as if there were enemies there, ready to
spring on him; his timorous answers to the
almost contemptuous questioning of the Crown
lawyers, who seem anxious to have done with
the "dirty work;" his gradual gathering of
confidence as he feels safe; his cowering look as
the prisoners' counsel advance to grapple with
him; his fawning explanations and self-justification;
his falling back on brazen impudence and
bravado as he is obliged to confess some fresh
piece of treachery; his half-savage and defiant
confession as he is brought to bay and the truth
wrung from him; and the bitter scowl of secret
rage at the skilful counsel who has forced him
to make a degrading picture of himself. It were
almost to be wished that this mode of proving
guilt were not known to our law; though it must
be admitted that it is always introduced with
reluctance, and thrown in as a make-weight;
and that on this occasion all parties concerned
seemed to rest very little on the " Informer's"
assistance.

More dramatic, too, as the night of the long
weary day draws on, and the lamps are lighted;
when the unwearied judges still take their notes
with unslackening assiduity, and the counsel—
unwearied, too, in voice, wit, wisdom, energy, and
vigilance—declaim and debate as freshly and as
vigorously as in the morning: though the Conspirator,
up to his middle in his cold well, is long
weary in body, and yet more weary and heart-sick
in mind, and perhaps wishes over and over again