countenance barbarity or debasement. I would not have submitted to a foreign oppression for the same reason that I would have resisted tyranny at home."

have

LORD NORBURY. Mr. Emmett, you have been called upon to show cause, if any you have, why the judgment of the law should not be enforced against you. Instead of showing any thing in point of law why judgment should not pass, you proceeded in a manner the most unbecoming a person in your situation. You have avowed, and endeavored to vindicate, principles totally subversive of the government, totally subversive of the tranquillity, well-being, and happiness of that country which gave you birth; and you have broached treason the most abominable.

'You, sir, had the honor to be a gentleman by birth, and your father filled a respectable situation under the government. You had an eldest brother, whom death snatched away, and who, when living, was one of the greatest ornaments of the bar. The laws of his country were the study of his youth; and the study of his maturer life was to cultivate and support them. He left you a proud example to follow; and if he had lived, he would have given your talents the same virtuous direction as his own, and have taught you to admire and preserve that Constitution, for the destruction of which you have conspired with the most profligate and abandoned, and associated yourself with hostlers, bakers, butchers, and such persons, whom you invited to council when you erected your provisional government."

"If the spirits," said Emmett, "of the illustrious dead participate in the concerns of those who were dear to them in this transitory scene, dear shade of my venerated father! look down on your suffering son, and see has he for one moment deviated from those moral and patriotic principles which you so early instilled into his youthful mind, and for which he has now to offer up his life!

My lord, you are impatient for the sacrifice. The blood which you seek is not congealed by the artificial terrors which

surround your victim; it circulates warmly and unruffled through its channels, and in a little time will cry to Heaven. Be yet patient! I have but a few words more to say. I am going to my cold and silent grave; my lamp of life is nearly extinguished. I have parted with every thing that was dear to me in this life, and, for my country's cause, with the idol of my soul, the object of my affections. My race is run; the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom. I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world-it is the charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph; for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let no prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them rest in obscurity and peace, my memory be left in oblivion, and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have done."

These were the last words which Robert Emmett ever spoke in public, and these words deliberately avowed and justified the treason for which his life had been pronounced the forfeit. Indeed, he does not appear to have been a young man upon whose mind adversity could produce any effect. He was buoyed up by a characteristic enthusiasm, and this, tempered as it was by the utmost amenity of manners, rendered him an object of love and admiration even in his prison. Of his conduct there I have had, well authenticated, some very curious anecdotes.

One day previous to his trial, as the governor was going his rounds, he entered Emmett's room rather abruptly, and observing a remarkable expression in his countenance, he apologized for the interruption. He had a fork affixed to his little deal table, and appended to it there was a tress of hair. "You see," said he to the keeper, "how innocently I am occupied. This little tress has long been dear to me, and I am plaiting it to wear in my bosom on the day of my execution!" It need scarcely be stated that the tress was Miss Curran's: she was

in his heart till it ceased to beat. Within an hour of his execution he thus wrote of her: "My love, Sarah! it was not thus that I thought to have requited your affection. I did hope to be a prop round which your affections might have clung, and which would never have been shaken; but a rude blast has snapped it, and they have fallen over a grave." On the day of that fatal event, there was found, sketched by his own hand, with a pen and ink, upon that very table, an admirable likeness of himself, the head severed from the body, which lay near it, surrounded by the scaffold, the ax, and all the frightful paraphernalia of a high-treason execution. What a strange union of tenderness, enthusiasm, and fortitude do not the above traits of character exhibit! His fortitude, indeed, never for an instant forsook him. On the night previous to his death, he slept as soundly as ever; and when the fatal morning dawned, he arose, knelt down and prayed, ordered some milk, which he drank, wrote two letters (one to his brother in America, and the other to the secretary of state, inclosing it), and then desired the sheriffs to be informed that he was ready. When they came into his room, he said he had two requests to make-one, that his arms might be left as loose as possible, which was humanely and instantly acceded to. I make the other," said he, "not under any idea that it can be granted, but that it may be held in remembrance that I have made it—it is, that I may be permitted to die in my uniform."* This, of course, could not be allowed; and the request seemed to have had no other object than to show that he gloried in the cause for which he was to suffer. A remarkable example of his power both over himself and others occurred at this melancholy moment. He was passing out, attended by the sheriffs, and preceded by the executioner. In one of the passages stood the turnkey who had been personally assigned to him during his imprisonment. This poor fellow loved him in his heart, and the tears were streaming from his eyes in torrents. Emmett paused for a moment; his hands

* The color of the rebel uniform was green.

were not at liberty-he kissed his cheek-and the man, who had been for years the inmate of a dungeon, habituated to scenes of horror, and hardened against their operation, fell senseless at his feet. Before his eyes had opened again upon this world, those of the youthful sufferer had closed on it for

ever.

Such is a brief sketch of the man who originated the last state trials in which Mr. Curran acted as an advocate. Upon his character, of course, different parties will pass different opinions. Here, he suffered the death of a traitor; in America, his memory is as that of a martyr; and a full length portrait of him trampling on a crown is one of their most popular sign-posts. Of his high honor Mr. Curran had an almost extravagant opinion. Speaking of him to me on the occasion already referred to, he said, bitterly as he felt himself aggrieved, 'I would have believed the word of Emmett as soon as the oath of any man I ever knew."

Very far is it from my intention to disobey the last request of Emmett, by attempting to place any inscription upon his tomb: that must await the pen of an impartial posterity; and to that posterity his fate will go, were there no other page to introduce it than that of the inspired author of Lalla Rookh, who was his friend and contemporary in college, and who thus most beautifully alludes to him in his Irish Melodies:

"O breathe not his name! let it sleep in the shade
Where, cold and unhonored, his relics are laid!
Sad, silent, and dark be the tears that we shed,

As the night-dew that falls on the grass o'er his head.

But the night-dew that falls, though in silence it weeps,
Shall brighten with verdure the grave where he sleeps ;
And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls,
Shall long keep his memory green in our souls.”

Mr. Curran had been originally nominated as one of Emmett's counsel. But, of course, the delicacy of his situation forbade his acting. I am permitted, by the kindness of my friend, Mr. William Henry Curran, to copy from his very val

uable work a letter addressed by Emmett to his father after his conviction. I can not do so, however, without a passing tribute to one whose filial piety has shone so brightly amid his other many virtues. These humble pages, affectionately inscribed to his dear father's memory, were intended rather as personal sketches than as a historic portraiture. That, however, will be found, drawn by a master-hand, in his son's admirable biography.

FROM ROBERT EMMETT TO JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN, ESQ.

I did not expect you to be my counsel. I nominated you, because not to have done so might have appeared remarkable. Had Mr. -been in town, I did not even wish to see you; but, as he was not, I wrote to you to come to me at once. I know that I have done you very severe injury-much greater than I can atone for with my life; that atonement I did offer to make before the Privy Council, by pleading guilty if those documents were suppressed. I offered more—I offered, if I was permitted, to consult some persons, and, if they would consent to an accommodation for saving the lives of others, that I would only require for my part of it the suppression of those documents, and that I would abide the event of my own trial. This was also rejected; and nothing but individual information (with the exception of names) would be taken. My intention was, not to leave the suppression of those documents to possibility, but to render it unnecessary for any one to plead for me, by pleading guilty to the charge myself.

'The circumstances that I am now going to mention I do not state in my own justification. When I first addressed your daughter, I expected that in another week my own fate would be decided. I knew that, in case of success, many others might look on me differently from what they did at that moment; but I speak with sincerity when I say that I never was anxious for situation or distinction myself, and I did not wish to be united to one who was. I spoke to your daughter,