NAPOLEON AND COUNT O'REILLY.

31

Bourbons, the Irish officers who had risen under Napoleon adhered, as we might expect in chivalrous men, to his fortunes; but in their place a new group of Franco-Irish made their appearance, the descendants of the men of the brigade. The last sword drawn for the Bourbons in 1791 was that of an Irish Count; their last defender in 1830 was an Irish general. Three times during the eighteenth century Spain was represented at London by men of Irish blood. An Alexander O'Reilly was Governor of Cadiz; he was afterwards Spanish ambassador at the court of Louis XVI. "It is strange," said Napoleon, on his second entry into Vienna in 1809, "that on each occasion on arriving in the Austrian Capital I find myself in treaty with Count O'Reilly." Napoleon met him on a different scene, for it was his dragoon regiment which saved the remnant of the Austrians at Austerlitz. Numerous Irish names with high rank attached to them will be found in the Austrian army list of the time. In the Peninsula the Blakes, O'Donnells, and Sarsfields, reflected glory on their race. An O'Donnell ruled Spain under the late reign, and to-day a MacMahon is President of France.*

began life as United Irishmen, and ended as staff officers of Napoleon. Who can measure what was lost to Ireland and the empire, by driving these men and their descendants into the armies and diplomacy of France? All of them except the men of '98, have become so French that they scarce speak any other language. There is a St. Patrick's Day dinner in Paris every 17th of March, where the company consists chiefly of military and civil officers of Irish descent, who duly drown their shamrock and commemorate the national apostle, but where the language of the speeches is French, because no other would be generally understood. I reproached a gallant young soldier of this class, whom I met in Paris, with having relinquished the link of a common language with the native soil of his race. "Monsieur," he replied proudly, "when my ancestors left Ireland, they would have scorned to accept the language any more than the laws of England; they spoke the native Gaelic.' 'Which doubtless,' I rejoined, you have carefully kept up: Go dha mor thatha?' But, I am sorry to say, he knew as little Gaelic as English. During my last visit to the City of Brussels, I saw in the atelier of an eminent painter, the wife of a still more eminent sculptor, a portrait occupying the place of honour, which exhibited the unmistakable features of an Irish farmer; and the lady pointed it out with pride as her father, who had been a United Irishman, and had to fly from Ireland in '98, when his cause lay in the dust."-From a Lecture by Si C. G. Duffy, in Melbourne.

"The Marshal looks like an English rather than a French sportsman. His face, indeed, is not French, but Irish, and distinctly recalls the origin of his family. The MacMahons were Irish Catholics of good descent, who followed the fortunes of the Stuarts, and settled and became landed proprietors where the Marshal was born, viz., at Sully (Saone et Loire), some sixty-eight years ago. The MacMahons took kindly to

Within a century, the great Leinster House of Kavanagh counted in Europe an Aulic Councillor, a Governor of Prague, a Field Marshal at Vienna, a Field Marshal in Poland, a Grand Chamberlain in Saxony, a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, a French Conventionist of 1793, Godefroi Cavaignac, Co-Editor with Armand Carrell and Eugene Cavaignac, sometime Dictator in France, and Edward Kavanagh, Minister of Portugal. Russia found among the exiles a Governor-General of Livonia. Count Thomond was Commander at Languedoc; Lally was Governor at Pondicherry; O'Dwyer was Commander of Belgrade; Lacy, of Riga; Lawless, Governor of Majorca. It would be wearisome to enumerate further, but dozens might be added to the above list.

These men, had the laws been what all admit, they should have been, would have done their part in consolidating and

the Bourbons, and the Marshal's father became a peer of France under Charles X., and His Majesty's personal friend. The Marshal, moreover, married into a noble family of Legitimists. His youth was passed under lily leaves. He was a SaintCyrien while the elder Bourbons were at the Tuileries, and when he entered the army he went away for years of rough campaigning to that common cradle of modern French Generals-Algeria; so that he was fighting in Africa while the junior Bourbon was holding his bourgeois court at the Tuileries. A captain of chasseurs at the assault of Constantine, he had carved his way-in Algeria always-to the rank of general of brigade by the time the revolution of 1848 broke out. Then he rose rapidly, keeping the while apart from politics. General of division in 1852, Grand Officer of the Legion in 1853, in command of a division of infantry under Bosquet in the Crimea, created Grand Cross of the Legion and Senator for his part in the assault of the Malakoff; then again fighting in Kabylia in 1857, and Commander-in-Chief of the forces in Algeria-MacMahon's services and rewards were many. The crowning glory of his military career was won in command of the second corps d'armée of the Alps in 1859, on the field of Magenta, when the Emperor created him Duke of Magenta and Marshal of France. The Marshal was deputed to represent his sovereign, which he did with extraordinary pomp, at the coronation of William III. of Prussia in 1861; and in 1864 he was Governor-General of Algeria, appointed to carry out the reforms on which the Emperor was bent. And lastly he led the army from Chalons to Sedan, where he was wounded in time to rid him of the responsibility of surrender. This wound, it has been often said, was not the least of Marshal de MacMahon's strokes of luck. But the time has not yet come for judgment on De MacMahon's part in the Franco-German war; and he is fortunate in this, that his countrymen bear him no grudge for it, calling him the modern Bayard, and the 'honest soldier;' while they cover his comrades of the fatal campaign with mud. His aristocratic and monarchical sympathies have whetted the edge of the weapons which the Left has used upon him; but the rage against him that simmers through the cheap Republican papers is provoked by the disdain with which he folds himself in his soldier's cloak, keeps his hand near his sword, and stands sentinel over the destinies of France, immovable to the last day of his septennate."-"The Rulers of France."-London World, Jan, 3rd, 1877.

enriching the Brito-Hibernian Empire. The two men to whom we owe it, that we have at this moment an Indian Empire, Henry and John Lawrence, who rescued our great Eastern dependency from anarchy, and gave it what bids fair to be an enduring and fruitful peace, were born in the County of Derry. Sir Robert Montgomery, who rose from a humble post in the civil service of the Bengal Presidency, to be Governor of the Punjaub, who distinguished himself as Director-General of the Police for that Province, who disarmed the native force at Lahore in 1857, who, for his services in restoring tranquillity, received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament, and who retired after thirty-six years service with the Grand Cross of the Star of India on his breast, was born in the City of Londonderry. Sir James Emerson Tennent, who also did good service for India, and who won for himself a respectable place in literature and in politics, was a native of Belfast, as was Sir Henry Pottinger, who was Governor-General of Hong Kong, and who distinguished himself as a diplomatist. "Besides the gallant General Nicholson," says a writer in Frazer's Magazine, "Ulster has given a whole Gazette-full of heroes to India. It has always taken a distinguished place in the annals of war. An Ulsterman was with Nelson at Trafalgar, another with Wellington at Waterloo." It would not be easy to enumerate the Irishmen who were with Wellington at Waterloo. Wellington himself was an Irishman, and in enumerating the Irishmen who have distinguished themselves in India, it would be impossible to forget him or his brother. General Sir de Lacy Evans, who served with distinction in India and in the Peninsula; who was present at the capture of Washington, but returned to Europe in time to take part in the battle of Waterloo, where he had two horses shot under him; who commanded the British auxiliary Legion raised to aid the Queen of Spain against Don Carlos in 1835; who commanded the Second Division of the army in the Crimea, and distinguished himself at Alma and at Inkerman, after which he returned to England and received the thanks of Parliament; who, as a member of parlia ment from 1831 to 1841, and from 1846 to 1865, played an enlightened and a liberal part; this fine old hero was born at Miltown, in 1787. Viscount Gough, a field marshal, who commanded

the 87th at Talavera, Barossa, Vittoria and Nivelle; who was wounded at the siege of Tariffa; whose regiment at Barossa captured the eagle of the 8th French, and the baton of a marshal at Vittoria; who commanded the land forces in the attack on Canton; who defeated the Mahrattas at Maharajpore, capturing fiftysix guns; who defeated the Sikhs at Moodkee, Ferozeshah, and Sobraon; who finally subdued the Sikhs in 1848-9; was born at Woodstown, Limerick, in 1779. General Rollo Gillespie, Sir Robert Kane, Lord Moira, the Chesneys, were all from Down; and General Wolseley, who does not need to be described for Canadians, takes his place side by side with the great warrior Irishmen. Among travellers and explorers Irishmen have taken a distinguished place; Captain Butler, the author of "The Great Lone Land," who, as a traveller and a literary man and a soldier, deserves a high place in the world's esteem, is an Irishman. Sir John. Franklin's second in command, Crozier, was from Banbridge. Ulster sent McClintock to find the great explorer's bones, and McClure to discover the passage seeking which Franklin fell.

When we come to statesmen and orators what country can show greater names? Even England has produced no man to equal Burke, nor could any other country produce the versatility of Sheridan. Lord Palmerston's Irish manner charmed the House of Commons first and the English people afterwards. George Canning, who discovered Wellington, was a son of a Derry man; and-but time would fail me to enumerate the Butts, the Duffys, the Plunkets, the Grattans, the Floods, the Currans, the Shiels, the Cairns and the Whitesides. O'Connell stands alone; in the great men of no country can you find a parallel for him and his extraordinary gifts.

Their preachers and divines have been equally great. The most eloquent as well as the ablest man on the English Bench of Bishops to-day is Dr. Magee. As a preacher, Father Burke has attained a reputation outside his own communion. The Episcopal Church in London has no more eloquent preacher than Mr. Forrest. The Rev. Dr. Cooke, of Belfast, among the Presbyterians Carson, the great authority among the Baptists; Dr. Adam Clarke among the Methodists; John of Tuam, Dr. Doyle, Cardinal Cullen among the Roman Catholics are well known.

When we go into law we should be on ground on which Irishmen stand to too great advantage to make it necessary to dwell on their achievements as advocates and jurists. I remember when I was a student at the Temple, most of the leading men in Westminster Hall were Irishmen, and a half a dozen of the ablest judges. The greatest of modern Chancellors, Lord Cairns, was born at Cultra, Co. Down.

When we glance into the realm of art, the names of Barry, Maclise, Hogan, Foley, Crawford, at once strike on the memory. What troops of actors and actresses and singers! In the museum of Oxford as well as in the museum of Trinity, Dublin, the visitor's attention is seized by carvings wrought by Irish hands, which rival the work of Jean Goujon. When you enter St. Stephen's Hall in Westminster Palace, you see on either side marble statues of illustrious men. You cannot but do homage to Irish genius, not merely because Burke is before you as he arraigned Warren Hastings at the bar of outraged humanity, and Grattan emphasizing with outstretched hand his rythmic sentences. Even in such company, the love of liberty will be asserted by the noble figure of Hampden, strength and balance in every line of the figure and every trait of the countenance, and the immortal love of right written on his noble brow. You look for the sculptor's name, and read "Foley," an Irishman, born in Dublin in 1818. Near is Selden by the same artist. If you walk down Patrick Street, Cork, you will see facing Barrack Hill, the statue of Father Mathew. In Dublin, portrait statues of Edmund Burke and Oliver Goldsmith, will challenge your admiration. The young civil servant from Old Trinity,' or the Queen's University, on entering Calcutta, is struck with wonder by the bronze group, "Lord Hardinge and Charger;" all these, with many another noble work and priceless gem have issued from the studio of the great Irish sculptor.

Among the many things which strike the visitor to Washington, nothing leaves so lasting an impress on his memory as the works adorning the Capitol; they are the work of Irish sculptors, McDowell and Crawford. The frescoes in Westminster Palace are by an Irishman. The honour of these, and kindred works, have frequently been given, either to Englishmen or Scotchmen, as the great men of our earlier period have also been at times filched