ad
already proved a failure, and in France, the enemy of England, they
found their new hopes for the emancipation of Ireland.

[Sidenote: 1791--The United Irishmen]

There were among the Irish rebels, as they were soon to declare
themselves, many men of great abilities and of the purest patriotic
purpose. Among the very foremost of these were Theobald Wolfe Tone and
Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Both these men, like all the other leaders of
the movement that followed, were Protestants, as Grattan was. Wolfe
Tone was a young man of great capacity and promise, who began his
public career as secretary to an association formed for the purpose of
effecting the relief of the Roman Catholics from the civil and
religious disabilities which oppressed them. This society, after
awhile, was named the Association of United Irishmen. The United
Irishmen were at that time only united for the purpose of obtaining
Catholic Emancipation. The association, as we shall soon see, when it
failed of its first object became united for other and sterner
purposes. Wolfe Tone was a young man of a brilliant Byronic sort of
nature. There was much in his character and temperament which often
recalls to the mind of the reader the generous impulse, the chivalric
ardor, and the impetuous eccentricity of Byron. Tone, as a youth, was
a careless student, or, indeed, to put it more distinctly, he only
studied the subjects he cared about and was in the habit of neglecting
his {310} collegiate tasks until the hour arrived when it became
absolutely necessary that he should master them enough at least to pass
muster for each emergency. He was a keen and close student of any
subject which had genuine interest for him, but such subjects were
seldom those which had anything to do with his academical career. He
studied law after a fashion in one of the London Inns of Court, and he
was called to the Bar in due course; but he had no inclination whatever
for the business of an advocate, and his mind was soon drawn away from
the pursuit of a legal career. He had a taste for literature and a
longing for travel and military adventure in especial, and for a time
he lived a pleasant, free and easy, Bohemian sort of life, if we may
use the term Bohemian in describing days that existed long before Henri
Murger had given the word its modern application.

[Sidenote: 1763-89--Theobald Wolfe Tone]

One of the many odd, original ideas which floated like bubbles across