Tiberius. Raise up thy face, my beloved! I must not shed tears. Augustus! Livia! ye shall not extort them from me. Vipsania, I may kiss thy head.... for I have saved it. Thou sayest nothing. I have wronged thee; ay? Vipsania. Ambition does not see the earth she treads on; the rock and the herbage are of one substance to her. Let me excuse you to my heart, O Tiberius : it has many wants; this is the first and greatest. Tiberius. My ambition, I swear by the immortal Gods, placed not the bar of severance between us. A stronger hand, the hand that composes Rome and sways the world.... Vipsania... overawed Tiberius. I know it; Augustus willed and commanded it. Tiberius. And overawed Tiberius! Power bent, Death terrified, a Nero! What is our race, that any should look down on us and spurn us! Augustus, my benefactor, I have wronged thee! Livia, my mother, this one cruel deed was thine! To reign forsooth is a lovely thing! O womanly appetite! Who would have been before me? tho' the palace of Cesar cracked and split with emperors, while I was sitting in idleness on a cliff of Rhodes, eyeing the sun, as he swings his golden censer athwart the heavens, or spanning his image, as it overstrides the sea. I have it before me; and though it seems falling on me, I can smile at it; just as I did from my little favourite skiff, painted round with the marriage of Thetis, when the sailors drew their long shaggy hair across their eyes, many a stadium away from it, to look thereon, and to mitigate the effulgence from the brightest effigy of the brightest God. These too were happy days: days of happiness like this I could recall and look back upon with unaching brow. O land of Greece! Tiberius blesses thee, bidding thee rejoice and flourish. Vipsania. Tiberius! is it to me that you were speaking? I would not inter. rupt you; but I thought I heard my name, as you walked away and looked up toward the East. So silent! Tiberius. Who dared to call thee? thou wert mine before the Gods.. do they deny it? Was it my fault.... Vipsania. Since we are separated, and for ever, O Tiberius, do not let us think on the cause of it: do not let either of us believe that the other was to blame : so shall separation be less painful. Tiberius. O mother! and did 1 not tell thee what she was, patient in injury, proud in innocence, serene in grief! Vipsania. Did you say that too? but I think it was so: I had felt little. One wave has washed away a thousand impressions of smaller from my memory. Could Livia, could your mother, could she who was so kind to me.. Tiberius. The wife of Cesar did it.. but hear me now, hear me.. be calm as I am. No weaknesses are such as those of a mother, who loves her only son immoderately, and none are so easily worked upon from without. Who knows what impulses she received? She is very kind; but she regards me only; and that which at her bidding is to encompass and adorn me. All the weak look after power, protectress of weakness. Thou art a woman, O Vipsania! is there nothing in thee to excuse my mother.. so good she ever was, so loving to me! Vipsania. I quite forgive her; be tranquil, O Tiberius! Tiberius. Never can I know peace.. never can I pardon.. any one. Threaten me with thy exile, thy separation, thy seclusion! remind me that another climate might endanger thy health!.. There death met me and turned me round. Threaten me to take our son from us! our one boy! our helpless little one! him whom we made cry because we kissed him both together. . rememberest thou? or dost thou not hear? turning thus away from me! Vipsania. I hear; I hear; O cease, my sweet Tiberius! stamp not upon that stone.. my heart lies under it. O she Tiberius. Ay, there again death, and more than death, stood before me. maddened me, my mother did, she maddened me.. she threw me to where I am, at one breath. The Gods cannot replace me where I was, nor atone to me, nor console me, nor restore my senses. To whom can I fly? to whom can I open my heart? to whom speak plainly? There was upon the earth a man 1 could converse with, and fear nothing: there was a woman too I could love, and fear nothing. What a soldier, what a Roman, was thy father, O my young bride! How could those who never saw him have discoursed so rightly upon virtue! Vipsania. These words cool my breast, like pressing his urn against it. He was brave: shall Tiberius want courage ? Tiberius. My enemies scorn me. I am a garland dropt from a triumphal car, and taken up and looked on for the place I occupied.. and swung away and laughed Senators! laugh, laugh. . Your merits may be yet rewarded. . be of good cheer! Counsel me, in your wisdom, what services I can render you, conscript at. fathers! Vipsania. This seems mockery: Tiberius did not smile so, once. Tiberius. They had not then congratulated me. Vipsania. On what? Tiberius. And it was not because she was beautiful, as they thought her, and virtuous, as I know she is, but because the flowers on the altar were to be tied together by my heart-string. On this they congratulated me. Their day will come. Their sons and daughters are what I would wish them to be; worthy to succeed them, and ready too. I would not make them love me, as they must do, for it: but this will pass away. Vipsania. Where is that quietude, that resignation, that sanctity, that heart of true tenderness? Tiberius. Where is my love? my love? Vipsania. Cry not thus aloud, Tiberius! there is an echo in this place. Soldiers and slaves may burst in upon us. Tiberius. And see my tears? There is no echo, Vipsania; why alarm and shake me so? We are too high here for the echoes: the city is all below us: methinks it trembles and totters: would it did! from the marble quays of the Tiber to this rock. There is a strange buz and murmur in my brain; but I should listen so intensely, I should hear the rattle of its roofs, and shout with joy. Vipsania. Calm, O my life! calm this horrible transport. Tiberius. Spake I so loud? Did I indeed then send my voice after a lost sound, to bring it back; and thou fanciedst it an echo? Wilt not thou laugh with me, as thou wert wont to do, at such an error? What was I saying to thee, my tender love, when I commanded... I know not whom... to stand back on pain of death? Why starest thou on me in such agony? Have I hurt thy fingers, child? I loose them now let me look! Thou turnest thine eyes away from me. Oh! oh! I hear my crime! Immortal Gods! I cursed then audibly, and before the sun, my mother!" We could have wished to give one whole conversation of those which are assigned to some of the great names of antiquity, but the best of these are rather long, and we have already passed our limits. We should have been glad, had our limits permitted, to have presented some specimens of these noble compositions, particularly the second conversation, between Demosthenes and Eubulides, which relates chiefly to the news, which is supposed to have just reached them, of the death of Philip. In concluding our most imperfect and inadequate notice of these volumes, we must be allowed to generalize our opinion of them as a whole by stating, that, together with oversights and errors, both of matter and of style, and a few (we should perhaps say, not a few) extravagancies both of sentiment and opinion, (resulting, in almost every instance, from a vehemence of temper, acting upon what will by many be looked upon as an almost fanatical love of political liberty, and a consequent hatred of those things and persons who hourly bring what remains of it into peril,) we conceive this work to include a geater proportion of profound and original thinking, of moral and political wisdom, of elegant scholarship, of acute criticism, and of eloquent, poetical, and just expositions and enforcements of all these, than is to be found within the same number of consecutive pages in any other work of the day. SKETCHES OF THE IRISH BAR.-NO. XX. The last Clonmel Assizes. THE delineation of the leading members of the Irish Bar is not the only object of these sketches. It is my purpose to describe the striking scenes, and to record the remarkable incidents which fall within my own forensic observation. That these incidents and scenes should take place in our courts of justice, affords a sufficient justification for making the " Sketches of the Irish Bar" the medium of their narration. I might also suggest, that the character of the Bar itself is more or less influenced by the nature of the business in which it is engaged. The mind of any man who habitually attends the assizes of Clonmel carries deep, and not perhaps the most useful, impressions away from it. How often have I reproached myself with having joined in the boisterous merriment which either the jests of counsel, or the droll perjuries of the witnesses, have produced during the trial of a capital offence! How often have I seen the bench, the jury, the bar, and the galleries of an Irish court of justice, in a roar of tumultuous laughter, while I beheld in the dock the wild and haggard face of a wretch who, placed on the verge of eternity, seemed to be surveying the gulf on the brink of which he stood, and presented, in his ghastly aspect and motionless demeanour, a reproof of the spirit of hilarity with which he was to be sent before his God! It is not that there is any kind of cruelty intermixed with this tendency to mirth; but that the perpetual recurrence of incidents of the most awful character divests them of the power of producing effect, and that they "Whose fall of hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir As life were in't," acquire such a familiarity with direness, that they become not only insensible to the dreadful nature of the spectacles which are presented, but scarcely conscious of them. But it is not merely because the Bar itself is under the operation of the incidents which furnish the materials of their professional occupation that I have selected the last assizes of Clonmel as the subject of this article. The extensive circulation of this periodical work affords the opportunity of putting the English public in possession of many illustrative facts; and in narrating the events which attended the murder of Daniel Mara, and the trial of his assassins, I propose to myself the useful end of fixing the general attention upon a state of things, which ought to lead all wise and good men to the consideration of the only effectual means by which the evils which result from the moral condition of the country may be remedied. a In the month of April 1827, a gentleman of the name of Chadwick was murdered in the open day, at a place called Rath Cannon, in the immediate vicinity of the old Abbey of Holycross. Mr. Chadwick was the member of an influential family, and was employed as land agent in collecting their rents. The person who fills this office in England is called " steward;" but in Ireland it is designated by the more honourable name of a land agency. The discharge of the duties of this situation must be always more or less obnoxious. In times of public distress, the landlord, who is himself urged by his own creditors, urges his agent on, and the latter inflicts upon the tenants the necessities of his employer. I have heard that Mr. Chadwick was not peculiarly rigorous in the exaction of rent, but he was singularly injudicious in his demeanour towards the lower orders. He believed that they detested him; and possessing personal courage, bade them defiance. He was not a man of a bad heart; but was despotic and contumelious in his manners to those whose hatred he returned with contempt. It is said that he used to stand amongst a body of the peasantry, and, observing that his corpulency was on the increase, was accustomed to exclaim, “I think I am fattening upon your curses!" In answer to these July.—VOL. XXIII. NO. XCI. C taunts, the peasants who surrounded him, and who were well habituated to the concealment of their fierce and terrible passions, affected to laugh, and said "that his honour was mighty pleasant; and sure, his honour, God bless him, was always fond of his joke!" But while they indulged in the sycophancy under which they are wont to smother their sanguinary detestations, they were lying in wait for the occasion of revenge. Perhaps, however, they would not have proceeded to the extremities to which they had recourse, but for a determination evinced by Mr. Chadwick to take effectual means for keeping them in awe. He set about building a police barrack at Rath Cannon, It was resolved that Mr. Chadwick should die. This decision was not the result of individual vengeance. The wide confederacy into which the lower orders are organised in Tipperary held council upon him, and the village areopagus pronounced his sentence. It remained to find an executioner. Patrick Grace, who was almost a boy, but was distinguished by various feats of guilty courage, offered himself as a volunteer in what was regarded by him as an honourable cause. He had set up in the county as a sort of knight errant against landlords; and, in the spirit of a barbarous chivalry, proffered his gratuitous services wherever what he conceived to be a wrong was to be redressed. He proceeded to Rath Cannon; and without adopting any sort of precaution, and while the public road was traversed by numerous passengers, in the broad daylight, and just beside the barrack, in the construction of which Mr. Chadwick was engaged, shot that unfortunate gentleman, who fell instantly dead. This dreadful crime produced a great sensation, not only in the county where it was perpetrated, but through the whole of Ireland. When it was announced in Dublin, it created a sort of dismay, as it evinced the spirit of atrocious intrepidity to which the peasantry had been roused. It was justly accounted, by those who looked upon this savage assassination with most horror, as furnishing evidence of the moral condition of the people, and as intimating the consequences which might be anticipated from the ferocity of the peasantry, if ever they should be let loose. Patrick Grace calculated on impunity; but his confidence in the power and terrors of the confederacy with which he was associated was mistaken. A brave, and a religious man, whose name was Philip Mara, was present at the murder. He was standing beside his employer, Mr. Chadwick, and saw Grace put him deliberately to death. Grace was well aware that Mara had seen him, but did not believe that he would dare to give evidence against him. It is probable, too, that he conjectured that Mara coincided with him in his ethics of assassination, and applauded the proceeding. Mara, however, who was a moral and virtuous man, was horror-struck by what he had beheld; and under the influence of conscientious feelings, gave immediate information to a magistrate. Patrick Grace was arrested, and tried at the summer assizes of 1827. I was not present at his trial, but have heard from good authority that he displayed a fearless demeanour; and that when he was convicted upon the evidence of Philip Mara, he declared that before a year should go by he should have vengeance in the grave. He was ordered to be executed near the spot where his misdeed had been perpetrated. This was a signal mistake, and produced an effect exactly the reverse of what was contemplated. The lower orders looked upon him as a martyr; and his deportment, personal beauty, and undaunted courage, rendered him an object of deep interest and sympathy upon the scaffold. He was attended by a body of troops to the old Abbey of Holycross, where not less than fifteen thousand people assembled to behold him. The site of the execution rendered the spectacle a most striking one. The Abbey of Holycross is the finest and most venerable monastic ruin in Ireland. Most travellers turn from their way to survey it, and leave it with a deep impression of its solemnity and grandeur. A vast multitude was assembled round the scaffold. The prisoner was brought forward in the midst of the profound silence of the people. He ascended and surveyed them; and looked upon the ruins of the edifice which had once been dedicated to the worship of his religion, and to the sepulchres of the dead which were strewed among its aisles, and had been for ages as he was in a few minutes about to be. It was not known whether he would call for vengeance from his survivors, or for mercy from Heaven. His kindred, his close friends, his early companions, all that he loved and all to whom he was dear, were around him, and nothing, except an universal sob from his female relatives, disturbed the awful taciturnity that prevailed. At the side of Patrick Grace stood the priest-the mild admonitor of the heart, the soother of affliction, and the preceptor of forgiveness, who attended him in the last office of humanity, and who proved by the result how well he had performed it. To the disappointment of the people, Patrick Grace expressed himself profoundly contrite; and, although he evinced no fear of death, at the instance of the Roman Catholic clergyman who attended him, implored the people to take warning by his example. In a few moments after, he left existence. But the effect of his execution will be estimated by this remarkable incident. His gloves were handed by one of his relations to an old man of the name of John Russel, as a keepsake. Russel drew them on, and declared at the same time, that he should wear them "till Paddy Grace was revenged:" and revenged he soon afterwards was, within the time which he had himself prescribed for retribution, and in a manner which is as much calculated to excite astonishment at the strangeness, as detestation for the atrocity of the crime, of which I proceed to narrate the details. Philip Mara was removed by Government from the country. It was perfectly obvious, that if he had continued to sojourn in Tipperary, his life would have been taken speedily, and at all hazards, away. It was decided that all his kindred should be exterminated. He had three brothers; and the bare consanguinity with a traitor (for his crime was treason) was regarded as a sufficient offence to justify their immolation. If they could not procure his own blood for the purposes of sacrifice, it was however something to make libation of that which flowed from the same source. The crimes of the Irish are derived from the same origin as their virtues. They have powerful domestic attachments. Their love and devotion to their kindred instruct them in the worst expedients of atrocity. Knowing the affection which Mara had for his brothers, they found the way to his heart in the kindest instincts of humanity; and from the consciousness of the pain which the murder of "his mother's children" would inflict, determined that he should endure it. It must be owned, that there is a dreadful policy in this system. The Government may withdraw their witnesses from the country and afford them protection; but their wives, their offspring, their parents, their brothers, sisters, nay their remotest relatives, cannot be secure, and the vengeance of the ferocious peasantry, if defrauded of its more immediate and natural object, will satiate itself with some other victim. It was in conformity with these atrocious principles of revenge that the murder of the brothers of Philip Mara was resolved upon. Strange to tell, the whole body of the peasantry in the neighbourhood of Rath Cannon, and far beyond it, entered into a league, for the perpetration of this abominable crime; and while the individuals who were marked out for massacre were unconscious of what was going forward, scarcely a man, woman, or child looked them in the face, who did not know that they were marked out for death. They were masons by trade, and were employed in building the barrack at Rath Cannon, on the spot where Chadwick had been assassinated, and where the funeral of Patrick Grace (for so his execution was called) had been performed. The peasantry looked in all probability with an evil eye upon every man who had put his hand to this obnoxious work; but their main object was the extermination of Philip Mara's brothers. They were three in number-Daniel, Laurence, and Timothy. On the 1st of October they were at work, with an apprentice in the mason trade, at the barrack at Rath Cannon. The name of this apprentice was Hickey. In the evening, about five o'clock," they left off their work, and were returning homewards, when eight men with arms rushed upon them. They were fired at; but the fire-arms of the assassins were in such bad condition, that the discharge of their rude mus |