prised that secresy and fidelity towards each other, should characterise the people of this country when engaged in the concoction of treason. It is, in their minds, wholly unaccompanied by any sense of guilt or sin. On the contrary, they labour under an insane persuasion that they are engaged in a good work; and that in pulling down a Protestant Government, and extirpating heresy from the country, they are doing that which is positively meritorious, and which, like charity, will cover a multitude of sins. Now I do not suppose there is a man in the county of Dublin who has servants of the Roman Catholic persuasion more attached to him than mine are to me, and yet -"

But, while he was speaking, the report of a musket rung in his ear; he started, and instinctively drew a pistol from his holster, and firing it at an individual who was in the act of taking from his shoulder a gun which he had just discharged, both he and his companion put spurs to their horses and galloped furiously in the direction of Kilmainham. When they had proceeded for some time, and felt that there was no pursuit, and that they were not threatened with any immediate danger, they slackened their pace, and Captain Wilcox, turning round to address Mr. Clarke, perceived, for the first time, that the shot which was fired at them had taken effect in the side of his head, and that his face was covered with blood. Fortunately, the wound was not mortal, nor even dangerous, although the appearance of his mangled friend was, at the moment, sufficiently frightful. He resolved immediately to return with him, and have the best advice and assistance that could be procured; and it was, we believe, Mr. Clarke himself who suggested, that, before they went any where else they should present themselves, in their present condition, to Mr. Marsden. If he does not believe us now," says Wilcox, "he would not believe, even though one rose from the dead."

The incredulous Under-Secretary was quietly sipping his wine, and amusing his company by an account of the foolish alarmists who had so unceremoniously intruded upon his hour of privacy and enjoyment, to disturb him with their idle tales, when his

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door was assailed by the loud and vehement knocking of men who would not be denied. When it was opened, Captain Wilcox did not ask whether Mr. Marsden was at home, but desired the servant to tell his master that they must see him immediately; the summons was instantly obeyed; the UnderSecretary stood before them. Upon seeing the wounded man he exclaimed, "Mercy on me! Captain Wilcox, what's the matter?" Matter, Sir," rejoined the Captain, "it is too late now to ask what's the matter-the town is in insurrection, and its principal streets may, by this time, be in possession of the rebels." Good God!" said Marsden, is it indeed so?-what is to be done?" Wilcox was far too generous to reproach him, at such a moment, for his incredulity. If he before was provoked by his obstinacy, he then pitied his consternation, and was determined to do all in his power to retrieve the almost fatal error which had been occasioned by his pertinacious self-sufficiency. Marsden was thoroughly frightened. That he saw. And it was his duty to do all that in him lay that the country should not suffer more from his terrors at night, than from his over-confidence in the morning. Having, therefore, seen that his friend was taken proper care of, he immediately applied himself to re-assure the faltering Secretary, and to devise the best means of meeting the formidable attack, which, he was persuaded had already commenced, and against which the city was so completely unprovided. "What are your means of defence, supposing the castle to be attacked?" he asked. "Oh, attacked! But do you think it will be attacked?-do you think that the rebels dare attack the castle?" This was too much for Wilcox, he however checked his indig nation, and replied, with a severe gravity, "I think, Sir, you have already seen enough to remove any doubts respecting that. The question is not now, what they will dare, but what they can do; if they think, that by attacking the castle they can take it, you may depend upon it, it is not by boastful words they will be scared from their purpose. It is our duty, therefore, to suppose the worst, and to provide against it. If they should attack the castle, what are we to do?"

“I know of none," said the Secretary. "How many stand of arms have you?" "Not one within reach." "How many round of ammunition ?" "Not a single one.”

Such was the condition of Dublincastle at the moment when Emmet and his partizans were already in arms. It must be unnecessary to inform the reader, that the party by whom Captain Wilcox and Mr. Clarke were fired at, was the same that had been despatched from Palmerstown for the purpose of intercepting them on their way to the castle. By some divergence from the usual rout, either on the part of these gentlemen, or of the assassins, they missed them as they went, and could not, therefore, prevent the fatal communication, but met them as they returned, and were determined upon a bloody vengeance. How narrowly the Captain and his friend escaped, has been seen. It should be added, that Wilcox's ball took effect in the hand of the individual at whom he fired, and whose presence of mind was such, that he threw away his gun, separated himself from his accomplices, and running to a distant part of the quay, pretended to be the victim of the very villany of which he was the perpetrator, and that it was against him the fury of the assassins was directed. He actually obtained surgical assistance from a loyal man, upon the audacious misrepresentation.

The alarm had now become general, and the loyalty of Dublin was instantly in arms; that is, in such arms as the individuals could procure for themselves. The yeomanry, in great numbers, came to the castle, but they might as well have gone any where else; for there was neither a head to direct them what to do, nor an arsenal from which they might be furnished for the conflict. While they were thus assembled in uncertainty and terror, the mangled bodies of the Rev. A. Wolfe and Lord Kilwarden were brought in. Nothing could exceed the horror or the anguish with which the piteous spectacle was regarded. There lay the venerable judge, who never dispensed justice but in mercy, and whose last words were a prayer, that his ruthless as

sassins might not be cut off by any summary process of military vengeance, and that no one should suffer for his murder, until duly convicted by the laws of the land. There he lay in dust and gore as he had been taken from the pikes of the savages, whose first overt act of treason, with an atrocious propriety, was, to imbrue their hands in the blood of the mild and benignant representative of the majesty of the law; there he lay, still retaining in his countenance that expression of piteous and beseeching anguish, which could no more excite the sympathy of his merciless tormentors than it could soften the steel by which they pierced him to the heart. Beside him, in similar guise, lay his nephew, a young man of mild manners, and the kindest heart; while the screams of his daughter, Miss Wolfe, who narrowly escaped a similar fate, were heard, amid the noise and tumult by which she was surrounded; her's was indeed a voice of lamentation, which would have penetrated even a heart of stone. She had been saved, it is said, by the gallantry of some of the rebel chiefs; but her very preservation, after she had witnessed the inhuman butchery of her beloved parent, was sufficient to prove, that even the "tender mercies of the wicked are cruel."

"Fir

It was now about half-past nine o'clock. The night was pitchy dark. Major (the present General) Shortal was taking his rounds in the Star fort in the Phoenix Park, to which he had been at that time but recently appointed, and which he still commands, when his attention was arrested by firing in the city. "What is that?" he said to the person in attendance upon him. ing, your honour," was the reply. The Major paused, and listened again. "It is," he said, "and platoon firing too. You may depend upon it there is something wrong." At that moment a considerable number of persons approached the fort, and desired to speak with him. The Major advanced. They told him the real state of the case; that the rebels were in arms-that the Castle was about to be attackedthat they applied for arms and ammunition, and could procure none-and that, unless they were supplied by him the consequences might be most deplorable. "You are aware, gentlemen," observed Shortal, that I cannot give

any supply of ammunition from this place, without orders from the Government. Have you any such orders?" "No," it was answered; "the Government have been taken completely by surprise. We have been left without orders or directions of any kind. For God's sake, Sir, do not stand upon ceremony on an occasion like this. Consent to supply us, or all may be lost." Shortal felt the situation in which he was placed as most critical. But he was a soldier and a man of sense; and was soon convinced that the emergency was such as to justify a departure from ordinary rules; still he was resolved to proceed with caution. "What you say, gentlemen," he observed," is very strong. But how can I be sure that I am not this moment talking to some of the emissaries of the rebels? Is there any one amongst you whom I know?" "Yes, here I am," said the present Surgeon-General. "Is that Crampton?" asked Shortal. "The same," was the reply." Then," said the Major, "Crampton shall be the countersign." The men were immediately admitted, and the ammunition was procured.

But by this time an effectual check had been given to the progress of the insurgents. They had assembled in great numbers, and were well supplied with weapons which might have rendered them very formidable. But they were under no sort of control or discipline; and many of them availed themselves of the implements of destruction which were placed in their hands, to pursue some project of individual plunder, instead of bending all their energies to the accomplishment of their common object.

The leaders, too, were divided amongst themselves. From the moment they had received the information of the language used by Clarke to the workmen at Palmerstown the majority of them resolved that the insurrection should commence at nine o'clock. But there were some who pertinaciously maintained that they should still adhere to their original purpose, and not appear in arms until they were fully supported by their friends from the country. The opinion of the former prevailed; but not so completely as to give that hearty unity to their measures that could alone render them successful.

Emmet did whatever could be done by personal valour and enthusiasm, to keep his followers together, and animate them to take the castle by a coup de main; but he soon found how little mere numbers availed against the discipline and the well-directed fire of the military; who, although but a handful of men, under the conduct of Lieutenant Brady, put the rebels to flight in all directions, and restored order and tranquillity.

By the flashes of the musketry Emmet was to be seen flying from man to man, exhorting his people to maintain their ground, and recklessly exposing his own person in the thickest of the conflict; while Lieutenant Brady might be observed chewing tobacco, and giving his orders with a coolness and precision which was admirably seconded by the gallant fellows he commanded, and who threw in their fire with a steadiness and effect which speedily rendered the cause of the insurgents as desperate as their project was abominable. The morning had begun to dawn before Emmet could be induced to abandon the scene of action, when he and a few others retired into the county of Wicklow, where he remained for some time concealed.

About the same hour Capt. Wilcox began to retrace his steps home. He had not seen or heard anything of his family since the evening before, when he left them in the midst of treason and surrounded by danger: and the reader may imagine with what trembling solicitude he approached the precincts of his residence, where his wife and children had been for so many hours defenceless and exposed, liable, at any moment, to fall victims to the sanguinary fury of the disappointed ruffians by whom he had himself been devoted to destruction. The quiet and soothing flow of the river, the balmy freshness of the breeze, and melodies poured from the emulous throats of thousands of the feathered tribe, who rendered the atmosphere vocal with living harmony, were all lost upon the anxious ear and the straining eye of the husband and the father, who, at every step, was fearful of encountering some sight or sound of woe, which might consign him, for the remainder of his days, to solitude and bereavement. But his mansion was unmolested. The

The researches of De Humboldt and his associates attach themselves more particularly to descriptive and to physical geography, the details belong to experimental philosophy, natural history, and the other branches of pure science; but, as in geology, the speculation becomes one of physics, the moment the element of time is introduced, so the fixed principles of the other sciences receive a wider application when we connect them with the history of the earth or other planets.

The most important researches are those on the age and relative situation of the mountain chains, and on the comparative elevation of the steps, and table lands of the almost unexplored continent of Asia; the considerations on volcanic geology, the researches in zoology, and the experimental discoveries in terrestrial magnetism and climatology-the last of which has taken its name, and may almost be said to have originated with the first of these celebrated men.

The combined results of astronomy and physical geography, pointed out by Mr. de Humboldt, in the relation of mountain heights, and oceanic depths, or of continental and pelagic masses, with the figure of the earth, have received a further impulse from the new light thrown upon the causes of the inflexion of the isothermal lines, and the empirical laws which have been recognised in the distribution of heat upon the globe. Sir William Herschell has already instituted enquiries into that portion of geological dynamics which are connected with astronomy-providing a link between the revolutions of our globe, and those of the system of which it is but a single member, and the phenomena of volcanoes, now taken out of the domains of geognosy, to become one of the most important objects of the physics of the globe,

render the doctrine of parallelism of chains of synchronous elevation one of the most striking additions made in modern times to the philosophy of geology and consequently to the progressive development of our knowledge of the relation and mutual dependance of all physical phenomena.

Baron Humboldt and his companions Professors Ehrenberg and G. Rose embarked at Niznei-Novgorod on the Volga, to descend to Casan and the Tatar ruins of Bolgari. From thence they went by Poun to le Katherinebourg on the eastern slope of the Ural a vast country of mountains composed of many chains almost parallel, the summit of which scarely attain an ele vation of fourteen or fifteen hundred yards, and which follow, like the Andes, the direction of a line of the meridian from the tertiary formations neighbouring lake Aral to the green-stone rocks upon the Icy sea.

Humboldt visited for a month the central and nothern parts of Ural, so rich in alluvial deposits which contain gold and platinum, the mines of Malachite of Goumecheoski, the great magnetic mountain of Blagodad, and the celebrated repositories of topaz and of bervl at Mourzinsk. Near Nizni Tagilsk, a country which may be compared to the Choco of South America, a piece of platinum was found that weighed more than eight Kilogrammes. From Iekatherinebourg the party proceeded by Tiouman to Tobolsk on the Irtyche, and from thence by Tara and the step of Baraba, so much dreaded on account of the abundance of a kind of musquito, to Barnaoul on the banks of the Ob, to the picturesque lake of Kolyvan and to the rich silver mines of Schlangenberg, of Ridderski, and of Zyrianovski, situated upon the south-western acclivity of the Altaï, of which the loftiest