who
had succeeded in obtaining the most absolute power over him.

This was a certain Maurice Mulcahy, a well-known member of the various
illegal clubs of the day, and originally a country schoolmaster. Mulcahy
it was who first infected Fortescue's mind with the poison of this
party,--now lending him volumes of the incendiary trash with which
the press teemed; now newspapers, whose articles were headed, "Orange
outrage on a harmless and unresisting peasantry!" or, "Another sacrifice
of the people to the bloody vengeance of the Saxon!" By these, his
youthful mind became interested in the fate of those he believed to be
treated with reckless cruelty and oppression; while, as he advanced in
years, his reason was appealed to by those great and spirit-stirring
addresses which Grattan and Curran were continually delivering, either
in the senate or at the bar, and wherein the most noble aspirations
after liberty were united with sentiments breathing love of country and
devoted patriotism. To connect the garbled and lying statements of a
debased newspaper press with the honorable hopes and noble conceptions
of men of mind and genius, was the fatal process of his political
education; and never was there a time when such a delusion was more
easy.

Mulcahy, now stimulating the boyish ardor of a high-spirited youth, now
flattering his vanity by promises of the position one of his ancient
name and honored lineage must assume in the great national movement,
gradually became his directing genius, swaying every resolution and
ruling every determination of his mind. He never left his victim for a
moment; and while thus insuring the unbounded influence he exercised, he
gave proof of a seeming attachment, which Fortescue confidently believed
in. Mulcahy, too, never wanted for money; alleging that the leaders of
the plot knew the value of Fortescue's alliance, and were willing
to advance him any sums he needed, he supplied the means of every
extravagance a wild and careless youth indulged in, and thus riveted the
chain of his bondage to him.

When the rebellion broke out, Fortescue, like many more, was
horror-struck at the conduct of his party. He witnessed hourly scenes
of cruelty and bloodshed at which his heart revolted, but to avow his
compassion for which would have cost him his life on the spot. He was
in the stream, however, and must go with the torrent; and what will not
stern necessity compel? Daily intimacy with the base-hearte