his old vehicle, and was busy in preserving order and regularity in the procession. There were some three or four ragged fiddlers before him, who played with all their might, and in notes of the harshest discord, a tune which they intended for the popular air of "Nancy Dawson," and which they selected for no other reason than that it was connected with his name. It was only at intervals that the hard and vigorous scraping of these village violins was distinctly audible; for the cries of "Down with Foster!" and "Dawson for ever!" resounded from every side in yells of vehement uproar, and monopolized the hearing faculties. A wonderful enthusiasm prevailed through this vast gathering; and in the faces of the fierce and athletic peasants who drew their favorite on, as they occasionally turned their heads back to look on him, and shouted in the retrospect, the strongest passions of mingled joy, ferocity, and determination, were expressed.

In a few minutes Mr. Dawson and his gig were drawn into the main street of Dundalk, and stopped at Magrath's hotel, which was the rendezvous of patriotism during the election. There the committee, which had been hastily gotten up, was collected, and welcomed Mr. Dawson on his arrival. He descended amid loud acclamations, and soon after appeared at a window in the tavern, whence he addressed the people. Several thousands were assembled, and in an instant deep silence was obtained. In a plain, brief, perfectly simple, and intelligible speech, Mr. Dawson told them that for their sake, and not to gratify his personal ambition, he was determined to oppose Mr. Foster and Mr. Fortescue, and to break the Oriel and the Roden yoke. His speech was received with the most rapturous plaudits, and it was manifest that, whatever might be the issue, a spirit had arisen among the people which portended far more than could have been originally calculated. While Mr. Dawson and others of the same party were addressing the people, the carriages of the leading gentry, drawn by four horses, were seen entering the town, but, in order to avoid the multitude, wheeled round through a street parallel to that in the opening of which the people were gathered. Astonishment and apprehension were visible in their faces.

They perceived already that a dreadful struggle was about to take place.

The wonted harangues having been delivered to the people, Mr. Dawson and his committee proceeded to the Court-house, which occupies one side of a square in the centre of the town. This building presents in its exterior a very beautiful object. It was erected under the immediate superintendence of Mr. Foster, who furnished the design, which he took from the Temple of Theseus; for Mr. Foster values himslf upon a universality of acquisition, and is a sort of walking encyclopedia, or peripatetic repertory of all the arts and sciences, and is as profoundly skilled in architecture as he is in any of the crafts of the Custom-House or the mysteries of the Excise. Opening Stuart's Athens, he lighted on the Temple of Theseus, and selected it as a model for a Court-house at Dundalk; and, accordingly, the most beautiful and inconvenient temple in which the rites of justice have ever been performed has been produced under his architectural auspices.

In that part of this incongruous edifice which is allocated to the County business, the High-Sheriff assembled the freeholders to read the writ. On his left hand stood Mr. Leslie Foster. How changed from him who had, a few hours before, derided as impotent the efforts of the Roman Catholic body to push him from his stool in the legislature! His complexion is naturally pale, but it now became deadly-white. He surveyed the dense mass of the people with awe, and seemed to recoil from the groans and hootings with which he was clamorously assailed. When proposed as a candidate, he delivered a speech, in which he clumsily sought to reconcile his auditors to his resistance of their claims, and appeared to be aware of the wretchedness of the task which he had imposed upon himself. The only relief which he received was derived from the execration which the mention of Lord Roden and his party produced in the assembly; for, obnoxious as that nobleman is through the rest of Ireland, his fanaticism and narrow-heartedness have secured for him a more condensed and concentrated odium in the town of Dundalk. Mr. Dawson spoke with equal brevity and perspicuity, and made it his boast that he be

longed to the middle classes, and was best calculated to represent their feelings and to do justice to their interests.

On the succeeding day the polling commenced with activity, Mr. Fortescue being sustained by the Roden influence and a large portion of the Protestant aristocracy; the rest of that body were the supporters of Mr. Foster; while Mr. Dawson relied upon a few Roman Catholics of fortune, and on the spirit of agrarian insurrection, which had broken out among the forty-shilling freeholders. For the first few days, Mr. Foster and Mr. Fortescue acted in conjunction, because they calculated that they should be able to throw Mr. Dawson out; but, after some demonstration of the power of the people, the agent for Mr. Fortescue (Mr. Johnson) broke off the coalition, and the three candidates rested upon their individual resources.

In this state of things, Mr. Sheil, who was counsel for Mr. Dawson, applied to Mr. Johnson, as agent for Mr. Fortescue, and offered to give him a certain number of votes, upon condition that Mr. Fortescue should co-operate with the popular party in throwing Mr. Foster out; but Mr. Johnson, confident at the time that Lord Roden's interest was paramount, declined to accede to a proposition which it is probable his employer would have regarded as unworthy of him. Mr. Fortescue was, however, outwitted by Leslie Foster; for the coalition of the first days threw so many additional votes into the scale, as enabled him, ultimately, though only by a very small majority, to defeat his incautious and unskilful auxiliary.

Some time elapsed before any decided demonstrations of superiority took place; and the exertions of all parties were prodigious. Emissaries were despatched night and day through every part of the county, and no means of persuasion were spared by the Catholic, or of terror by the Protestant faction, to bring the freeholders in. Priests and attorneys were seen scouring the country in all directions, and landlords and drivers, armed with warrants of distress, knocked at the door of every hovel. The spirit of exertion which animated the contending parties extended itself to the counsel, and Mr. North (the brother-in-law of Mr. Foster), Mr. Murray, who was employed by Mr. Fortescue, and Mr. Sheil, who acted for VOL. II-11

Mr. Dawson, in the High Sheriff's booth, exhibited a zeal and alacrity which a mere professional sympathy with their clients could scarcely have supplied.

The Sheriff's booth was in a small room adjoining the County-court, and offered, through the iron bars of its single window on the ground-floor, a dismal spectacle. A wall, at the distance of about four feet from this window, rises to a considerable height, and forms a small quadrangular space, covered with rank grass and broken stones, in which the murderers at Wildgoose Lodge are buried. In intervals of leisure, the eyes of the persons, whose business it was to remain in this room, would involuntarily rest upon this spot, and the conversation turned from the subject of the election to the terrible atrocity of which that dreary piece of ground was the memorial. The meditations which it supplied were, however, of brief duration, for a question connected with a vote would arise to dissolve them.

As the election proceeded, the anxieties of Mr. Foster augmented. He seemed to lose all command and self-possession. He would rush into the Sheriff's booth with a precipitate vehemence, which was the more remarkable from the contrast which it formed with his usual systematic and well-ordered behavior. "Soldiers!" he would cry, "soldiers, Mr. High-Sheriff! I call upon you to bring out troops, to protect me and my supporters. My life is in peril-my brother has just been assailed-we shall be massacred, if you persevere in excluding troops from the town!" Such were the exclamations he would utter, under the influence of mingled anger and alarm; for I believe that his fears, though utterly unfounded, were sincere. To these appeals the friends of Mr. Dawson would oppose equally vehement adjurations. "What! call out troops! bayonet the people! No, Mr. Foster; the scenes of 1798 are not returned; the Sheriff will not be deluded by the phantoms which issue from your over excited imagination, or accede to your sanguinary invocations."

The High-Sheriff was placed in a very embarrassing condition in the midst of this uproar of remonstrance. It was said that his leanings were personally favorable to Mr. Foster; but

he is a brewer of the famous Castlebellingham ale, and the interests of his brewery being at variance with his political predilections (if he have any), he was kept in a state of painful hesitation, until Mr. Chaigneau, who acted with the utmost impartiality as Assessor, resolved his difficulties, by very properly stating, that when evidence of danger should be laid before the Sheriff upon oath, he would act upon it. The town remained perfectly peaceable. There were, indeed, loud cries and vehement shoutings, but no personal molestation was offered to anybody. A perpetual procession of fiddlers and fifeplayers moved through the streets, who played no other air than "Nancy Dawson" from morning until twelve at night.

At the head of this body of everlasting minstrels were two singular persons, who carried large banners of green silk, with national emblems and mottoes figured upon them. One of these strange individuals was a doctor—a large, bloated, plethoric mass of a man, dressed in old rusty black, covered with snuff, with a protuberant belly, and a short, waddling gait, which a quantity of matutinal potations had rendered exceedingly unsteady; while his countenance, composed of large blotches of orbicular red, with a pair of large glazed eyes, surmounted by white shaggy eyebrows, confirmed the conjectures which the irregularity of his movements suggested. The doctor carried the Dawson standard, having two or three stout fellows to co-operate in his sustainment. When he arrived at the end of the street, in turning round to direct the procession, of which he was the chief leader, the doctor would utter a loud but inarticulate shout, and return toward the courthouse; and when he had arrived there, he would again wheel about at the head of the multitude with a similar hurrah. Thus, he traversed, from morning till sunset, the principal street of the town, taking a glass of Irish restorative at brief intervals in these strange perambulations.

Next in command to the doctor was old Harry Mills, whose fame has since travelled across the Atlantic, and who has not only had his health drunk in America, but has received a subscription of twenty pounds from the New World. This peasant was among the most conspicuous figures at the Louth elec