at the time was that lenity
would have been a safer and a better policy than severity, and that in
the momentary prostration of the country, lay the precise conjuncture
for those measures of grace and favour which were afterwards rather
wrung from than conceded by the English Government. Be this as it may,
Dublin offered a strange spectacle at that period. The triumphant joy
of one party--the discomfiture and depression of the other. All the
exuberant delight of success here, all the bitterness of failure there.
On one side, festivities, rejoicings, and public demonstrations; on the
other, confinement, banishment, or the scaffold.

The excitement was almost madness. The passion for pleasure, restrained
by the terrible contingencies of the time, now broke forth with
redoubled force, and the capital was thronged with all its rank, riches,
and fashion, when its gaols were crowded, and the heaviest sentences of
the law were in daily execution. The state-trials were crowded by all
the fashion of the metropolis; and the heart-moving eloquence of Curran
was succeeded by the strains of a merry concert. It was just then, too,
that the great lyric poet of Ireland began to appear in society, and
those songs which were to be known afterwards as 'The Melodies,' _par
excellence_, were first heard in all the witching enchantment which his
own taste and voice could lend them. To such as were indifferent to
or could forget the past, it was a brilliant period. It was the last
flickering blaze of Irish nationality, before the lamp was extinguished
for ever.

Of this society I myself saw nothing. But even in the retirement of my
humble life the sounds of its mirth and pleasure penetrated, and I
often wished to witness the scenes which even in vague description were
fascinating. It was, then, in a kind of discontent at my exclusion, that
I grew from day to day more disposed to solitude, and fonder of
those excursions which led me out of all reach of companionship or
acquaintance. In this spirit I planned a long cruise down channel,
resolving to visit the island of Valentia, or, if the wind and weather
favoured, to creep around the south-west coast as far as Bantry or
Kenmare. A man and his son, a boy of about sixteen, formed all my crew,
and were quite sufficient for the light tackle and easy rig of my craft.
Uncle Pat was already mounted on his pony, and ready to set out for
market, as we prepared to start. It was a bright spring morning