the Wicklow mountains, were all who
remained of the grand association which was to place the Island of
Saints at the feet of the Father of Christendom.

Sadder history in the compass of the world's great chronicle there is
none than the history of the Irish: so courageous, yet so like cowards;
so interesting, yet so resolute to forfeit all honourable claims to
interest. In thinking of them, we can but shake our heads with Lord
Chancellor Audeley, when meditating on this rebellion, and repeat after
him, "they be a people of strange nature, and of much inconstancy."[374]

[Sidenote: Fitzgerald retreats into Thomond, intending to sail for
Spain.]

[Sidenote: O'Brien persuades him to remain.]

Lord Fitzgerald was now a fugitive, with a price upon his head. He
retreated into Thomond, intending to sail for Spain, and to attempt with
his own lips to work persuasion with the emperor.[375] There was an
expectation, however, that the Spaniards might be already on their way:
and O'Brien persuaded him to remain, to prevent the complete
disintegration of his party. Sir James de la Hyde was therefore sent to
Charles; and the wretched young nobleman himself wandered from place to
place, venturing, while Skeffington still lay at Maynooth, into the
neighbourhood of his home, among his own people, yet unable to do more
than evade the attempts which were made to capture him. The life of the
rebellion was gone from it.

[Sidenote: Fidelity of the people.]

There was no danger that he would be betrayed. The Irish had many
faults--we may not refuse them credit for their virtues. However
treacherous they were to their enemies, however inconstant in their
engagements, uncertain, untrue in ordinary obligations, they were
without rivals in the world in their passionate attachments among
themselves; and of all the chiefs who fell from Fitzgerald's banner, and
hastened with submission to the English deputy, there was perhaps not
one who, though steeped in the blood of a hundred murders, would not
have been torn limb from limb rather than have listened to a temptation
to betray him.

[Sidenote: Arrival of Lord Leonard Grey. Fitzgerald writes to him with
an offer of surrender.]

At length, after a narrow escape from a surprise, from which he rescued
himself only by the connivance of the Irish kerne who were with the
party sent to take him, the young earl, as he now called himself, weary
of his wandering life, and when no Spaniards came, se