should be linked with the national cause. Liberty was a Protestant as well as a Catholic right, and ably and with great effect did he dare public opinion, as then formed, and state those things in the face of all. Himself a Protestant, he was not less a Catholic in his nationality; and exposed to both parties the paltriness of their fears, as regarded the ascendancy of either sect, in the event of a successful revolution. His words fell with desperate effect, especially in Ulster, whose growing adhesion to the national movement more than anything else, forced the government from the wiles of policy into open and undisguised opposition to Mitchel. This remarkable man was born in Dungiven, in the North of Ireland, in the year 1816. His father was a Unitarian minister, who had married Miss Haslett of Derry. While the subject of our sketch was yet young, his parents removed to Newry, where the future revolutionist received the rudiments of an excellent education. He afterwards came to Dublin, where he graduated as Bachelor of Arts, at Trinity College, and carried off several honors. His learning is not only varied, but profound on many subjects, and his knowledge of the classics and ancient law is only equalled by his mastery of the modern systems of government. Mitchel, like nearly all of the leaders of the "Young Ireland" party, was originally intended for the church; but his mind having undergone a change, he entered the office of an Attorney, a Mr. Quinn, in Newry; and at the closing of his apprenticeship, began life as the partner of a lawyer in Banbridge. There is one incident at least of his apprenticeship which cannot be left unchronicled, and this was his marriage with Miss Verner. He was only twenty at the period, and the circumstance is the more noticeable, that the parties eloped. In the Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone, we are struck with the noble devotion of his beautiful wife; and when the life of Mitchel comes to be written, in distinct characters, on the page of history, the love and fortitude of his accomplished wife will not be the least noble or interesting reminscence among the many that will surround his name. That Mitchel's mind had been a long time brooding over the state of his country, before he came out publicly, is evident from the research shown in his "Life of Hugh O'Neil," the great Ulster chief and statesman of the seventeenth century. This work was published towards the close of 1845; and at one bound its author took a high position as a writer and a nationalist. It is spoken of as a work of remarkable power, and a perfect daguerreotype of its able subject and his exciting period. On the death of the lamented Thomas Davis, whom Meagher called their "prophet and their guide," Mitchel became the chief writer and thinker of the Nation. In 1846, he wrote the famous article on Railways, showing how they might be used by the people in troublous times; and were not alone constructed for government use, as the officials had calculated. For this article the paper was prosecuted. In the same year the "Secession" from the O'Connell party took place. On the occasion, Mitchel opposed the "Peace Reso lutions" introduced by the O'Connells, and strongly reprobated the adhesion of repealers to either whig or tory ranks. He said: "For me, I entered this association with the strong conviction that it was to be made an instrument for wresting the government of Ireland out of the hands of Englishmen, whether Whig or Tory, and not a coadjutor of any of them, perpetuating the provincial degradation of the country." And again this timely and scathing warning: "Drive the Ulster Protestants away from you by needless tests, and you perpetuate the degradation both of yourselves and them. Keep them at a distance from you-make yourselves subservient to the old and well-known English policy of ruling Ireland always by one party or the other—and England will keep her heel upon both your necks forever. Slaves, and the sons of slaves, you will perpetuate nothing but slavery and shame from generation to generation." The "Secessionists" formed the Irish Confederation, which was composed of all the talent and energy of the national party. At the commencement of 1848, Mitchel left the Nation, as he deemed a more warlike policy necessary to the preparation of the country, than Mr. Duffy, the proprietor of that journal, would admit. To speak his own principles freely and without constraint, he started the United Irishman, called after the men whose labors he desired to continue to the destiny they augured for Ireland. It was the most powerful exponent of the European mind of the day. With the shibboleth, that, the life of a peasant was equal to the life of a peer, he, in all the consciousness of right, preached the hopeful doctrines of a comparatively new faith. "Since the days of Dr. Drennan," says the writer of a brilliant series of papers furnished to a New York journal, "had not been read in Ireland such noble exhortations as this famous journal put forth. They had all the vigor of Swift, and the point of Berkeley. But there was running through them, and flashing from them, an enthusiasm like that which summoned the young students of Germany to arms, in the Napoleonic war; and which, again, in the upheaving of the nations, in 1848, called forth, in surging crowds, the students of the European schools and universities, from Rome to Berlin, and from Pesth to Paris. It was a divinė literature. It was resonant with the sublime intonation of antiquity. It absorbed and poured out again the songs of the Rhine and Alps, but was touchingly modulated with the sorrows of the Irish race; and, in quick vibrations, elicited the mirth, the scorn, the hope, the vengeance of the Celtic spirit. It was the omnipotent voice of freedom, which speaks in every tone and dialect, and from crowded cities, as from the dreariest solitudes, evokes the responsive chorus. "Whether we speak of sea or fire, in the exhaustless nature of each, we find a type of that spirit, which in Ireland the foreign foe has for centuries sought to master, but has never tamed and never can annihilate. If it be like the fire, and if it sometimes smoulders, a bold hand flinging in fresh fuel, can light it up anew. If it be like the sea, and if it sometimes sleeps, a passing wind will wake it into anger. This has been the history of Ireland; this the explanation of her mysterious relapses and commotions. This gives us an insight into the perplexing future. "Mitchel's writings did not create, but evoked the insurrectionary spirit of the country. The spirit had been there, and there for ever it will abide. But it was smouldering, and he cast it up in flames once more. It was stagnant, and he stirred it from its depths, and lashed it into a storm. "Like a sky-wonder in a gloomy night Illumining the fetid social den, In which souls dwindled in their prime of might; To cheer them from the chamber-house of chains, Where ghouls, with more tongues than the crop had grains, SAVAGE. The government was thrown from its centre. The most decisive steps were necessary—such was the success Mitchel's appeals to Ireland had met with. The villainous “TreasonFelony Bill," or "Gagging Act," was introduced by Sir George Gray into the British Parliament, notoriously to put Mitchel down. W. J. Fox, M. P., the well-known English Liberal, considered the bill "an infringement of the liberty of the subject." If it were passed, he said "No man would be safe in addressing a meeting in times of political excitement." Of course the United Irishman was immediately brought beneath the lasso of the Gagging Act; and Mitchel was arrested May 13, 1848, and committed to Newgate, on the charges of "felony under the provisions of the new act." He was brought to trial on the 26th, and at seven o'clock in the evening, a verdict of "guilty" was returned. On the following morning he was sentenced to fourteen years' banishment. The closing of the scene was deeply exciting. When the sentence had |