remembered the promises of the French
plotters; he did not foresee that Napoleon was
too selfish and too busy just then to do much for
Ireland; money was scarce, merchants were
timid, the peasantry was cowed and scared; the
Presbyterians were incensed by the cruelties at
Wexford, and the Catholics distrustful of the
north. Ardent and impetuous, Emmet had
returned, eager to draw the sword, about the same
time, and probably in conjunction with, an Irish
officer named Russell, who had been released
from Fort George after the troubles of '98, on
condition of his transporting himself out of his
Majesty's dominions, and who had now returned
with a secret French commissioner as
general-in-chief.

This Russell was a religious enthusiast, a wild
interpreter of prophecies. He was to head an
insurrection in Down and Antrim contemporaneously
with a landing of the French in Scotland
and with Emmet's seizure of Dublin Castle.

To other motives for ambition Robert Emmet
now (in 1803) added the strongest of any.
He fell in love, with all the passion of his
vehement nature; he had won the heart of a
daughter of that great forensic orator, Curran.
Mr. Curran was irresolute in the cause of
the United Irishmen, and he did not share
in the dreams of the handsome young enthusiast.
The prairie was ready to light, but the fire had
still to be put. The lives of thousands of rash
men were dependent on the momentary caprice
of this fugitive, who, led away by enthusiasm,
would have seen ten thousand men
fall dead by his side, nor have felt a moment's
regret, if he could only have planted the
green flag and the " Sunburst " on the walls
of Dublin Castle, and have filled its cellars
with English prisoners. The one idea had
grown dominant, and he had now braced
himself to make the Curtius' leap. On his first
return he had taken the name of Hewitt, and
hidden himself in the house of a Mrs. Palmer,
at Harold's Cross. There he corresponded
with the leading conspirators, and sketched out
his rough plans. On the 24th of March, 1803,
he went with a Mr. Dowdall, who had been
formerly secretary to the Whig Club, and
contracted for a house at a place called Butterfield-lane,
near Rathfarnham. But their mysterious
and stealthy movements soon exciting suspicion,
and the spot not being central enough, they
soon left there. About the end of April, when
Ireland's meadows began " the wearing of the
green" more luxuriantly and rebelliously than
ever, Emmet's friends took for their young
leader a roomy malt-house in Marshal's-alley,
Thomas-street, which had been long unoccupied.
It was a retired place, the space was ample,
above all, it was central and near the heart of
the city, at which the first desperate blow was to
be struck. There he lodged, while men were
forging pike-heads, moulding cartridges,
running bullets, stitching green and scarlet-faced
uniforms, hemming green flags,and filling rocket-cases
—taking only a few hurried hours of sleep
on a mattress, when, exhausted in mind and
body, he sank back amid the clang of the
hammers and the clatter and exultation of twenty
hard-working associates. In one depôt alone this
indefatigable conspirator had accumulated
forty-five pounds of cannon-powder, eleven boxes of
fine powder, one hundred bottles quilted with
musket-balls and bound with canvas, two
hundred and forty-six ink-bottles filled with powder
and encircled with buck-shot, to be used as
hand-grenades, sixty-two thousand rounds of
ball-cartridge, three bushels of musket-balls,
heaps of tow mixed with tar and gunpowder
for burning houses, twenty thousand pikes,
bundles of sky-rockets for signals, and many
hollow beams filled with combustibles. The
arms were stored in various depôts through the
city, but chiefly in Mass-lane and Marshal's-alley.
The White Bull Inn, in Thomas-street,
was a haunt of the conspirators, and there
tailors and other workmen were made drunk,
decoyed to the depôt, and forced to lend their
aid. Spies and suspected persons found lurking
near the depôts were lured in and detained. The
volcano would soon burst out, the hidden fires
were already foaming upwards towards the
surface.

When already the police agents were beginning
to have glimpses of danger, and to patrol
the bridges and quays of Dublin armed, an
accident had almost betrayed Emmet's plans.
An explosion took place at one of the depôts
in Patrick-street during the manufacture of
some gunpowder. Those who know the
recklessness of the lower orders of Irish, especially
under excitement, may easily guess the cause of
the accident. Some of the workmen, in the
absence of their foreman, would smoke over a
barrel of gunpowder, or some of the rebel smiths
would hammer at the red-hot pike-heads, and
drive the sparks to where their comrades were
filling rocket-cases. The half-drunken rebels
were suddenly astonished by a burst of flame
and a roar of momentary thunder. One man,
in dashing up to a window to escape suffocation,
gashed open an artery in his arm, fell back, and
bled to death. A companion was taken
prisoner by the police, who instantly rushed in.
Luckily, however, for Emmet, Major Sirr and
the Dublin police, over-secure, were pacified by
lies and misrepresentations, and the government
took no alarm. The levees at the Castle went on
as usual, though there were still rumours of a
"rising" that made the Lord-Lieutenant order
the patrols of certain stations to be doubled.

In the mean time, Robert Emmet was racked
with fears and anxieties, and with sorrow for
the recent loss of life (strange contradiction in
a man who was about to send thousands to
death). He dreaded detection just as the great
enterprise was about to bear fruit. He moved
now for the third time, hiding in the depôt at
Mass-lane. There, with feverish restlessness, he
spent all day, urging on the blacksmiths and
bullet-makers, and at night slept for an hour at
a time, when exhausted, between the forge and
the rocket-makers' table.

There were not yet more than eighty or a
hundred conspirators actively engaged with
Emmet, Dowdall, and Quigley, but these men