most eloquent discourse was listened to with attention and
delight by the vast congregation that had gathered round the cenotaph of
the immortal patriot. Let a passage or two here suffice to give an idea of
the magnificent panegyric:

"It is, then, because these two loves--the love of religion and the love of
liberty, common to all good Princes, to all great minds, to all truly
learned men, to all elevated souls, to all generous hearts might be said
to be personified in Daniel O'Connell--because in him they manifested
themselves in all the perfection of their nature--in all the energy of
their deeply-felt conviction--in all the potency of their strength--in all
the splendor of their magnificence, and in all the glory of their triumph;
it is because of all this that this singular man--who was born and has
lived at such a distance from Rome--is now admired, is now wept for by you,
as if he had been born in the midst of you. Hence it is that this great
character, this sublime nature, has awakened all your sympathies."

O'Connell had studied for some time at the College of St. Omer, in France.
What he saw and learned in that country is ably described by the Italian
orator:

"He saw with his own eyes monarchy compelled to degrade itself, and to
inflict its death-wound with its own hand; he saw the throne that base
courtiers had dragged through the mire defiled by the grip of parricidal
hands, and buried, fathoms deep, beneath a sea of blood; he saw the best
of kings expire upon a scaffold, the victim not less of other men's crimes
than of his own weakness; he saw that vice was hailed, as if it were
virtue, wickedness uplifted, as if it were morality atheism, proclaimed
aloud, as if it were religion; that the 'Goddess of Reason' (or rather a
vile strumpet) was recognized as the only Deity, and honored with
hecatombs of human victims; the people decimated and oppressed by cruel
tyrants, in the name of the people; whilst beneath the shade of the tree
of liberty was instituted universal slavery; and that the most Christian,
as well as the most civilized of all nations, had fallen down to the
lowest limits of impiety and barbarism.

"Now, God having so disposed that the young O'Connell should be witness of
these events--the most celebrated and the most instructive to be found in
the annals of history--they served to inspire him with the greatest horror
for tumults and rebellion; they persuaded him that there is nothing more
i