out as one of entire truth; the history is of a crisis as important as any, that the eventful period of the last half century has produced; and the story is more moving, more pathetic, and of more thrilling interest, than almost any tale of romance invented to excite the sympathies of human nature, and the tenderer feelings of the heart. Before we had read this book, we had heard the name of Theobald Wolfe Tone, who had suffered, with many others of his countrymen, for attempting to effect a separation of Ireland from England; for having been a United Irishman, taken in arms, bearing the commission of a French general officer, and waging war against the Irish, or, should we say, the British government. We had always understood him to have been a man of lofty courage and eminent talents, and of an amiable and virtuous private character. The specimens we had seen of other distinguished United Irishmen, who had been for many years our fellow citizens, had impressed us very favorably; but we had never before seen the history of that epoch drawn out so fully, nor formed a proper conception of the solid arguments upon which the rebellion of the Irish people could be defended, nor of the extensive views of those who put all to hazard on the chance of liberty or death.

When we took up these volumes we intended no more, than to exercise an impartial judgment within the sphere of our literary duties; we did not, nor do we yet, enter the field as champions of Ireland against England; we rather hope that some propitious change may remove the causes of such a disastrous strife, wherein men, formed to shine as an ornament and honor to their country, perish on the scaffold. But without engaging in that quarrel we must say, that had we been the most devoted partisans of England's power and empire, still by the reading of this narrative, our hearts would have been subdued into respect and admiration for the man, who in so extraordinary a degree united the highest and most attractive qualities of the head and heart. It is rare to find such endowments in one individual; quick and brilliant conceptions, a judgment solid and exact, powers of argument clear and convincing, great firmness of purpose, with a temper gentle and winning, and a cheerful and pleasing vein of native wit, that in the darkest hours of danger and dismay lighted and cheered his way, and in the very heat of battle played like a lambent flame around his crest. Add to this a heart framed for friendship and love, and it must be owned, that, perish where he

might, when or for what he might, when Tone fell, there fell a noble being.

And now, after long years are past, his son and relict claim to be heard in his behalf. They appeal to the great tribunal of humanity and to posterity, to man below, to heaven above, for a reversal of that sentence, which doomed him to a traitor's death. We are told by the editor, the son and worthy representative of such a father, that more than a quarter of a century has been suffered to pass, lest the disclosures in this story of his father's life might compromit his friends, or any of those who acted with him. At length, and when there remained but two survivors of his family, the precariousness of human life required the consummation of the long made vow. A monument was to be raised from the materials which his own hands had provided; and to the record of his conviction as a traitor, was to be opposed and confronted the record of his life. It is a tribute,' says the son, 'which I owe to the memory of my father, and a sacred duty; believing as I do that in the eyes of impartial posterity it will do honor to his character.'

No

Our duty as reviewers of this book is not an easy one. ordinary rules of criticism can be fairly applied to writings, never intended to meet the public eye, and which never would have appeared in their present form, had the author lived to complete the history of his country, of his own life, and his own times. We are told by the editor, and it is often repeated by his father in different passages of his diaries, that they were intended for his family and one or two select friends; and nothing, indeed can be more evident; for to whom else could be addressed those glowing expressions of heartfelt love, those inward confidences of the soul, those playful sallies of whim and humor, those transitions from grave to gay, not to be felt or understood but by the few to whose fond memory they might recall the happier hours of social and domestic intercourse?

We shall endeavor to give a fair summary of the nature and contents of the book, without overloading our article with quotations, in which if we were to indulge ourselves, we should be led too far. And, with respect to the digressions and raillery so amusing, and often so affecting, it would be injustice to repeat them to our readers, who might not yet have become acquainted with the genius and character of him, from whom they proceeded, nor have entered into the feelings of the little community, with whom they were current, and for whom only they were intended.

If it be asked, why reveal to the public what was intended only for the social or domestic circle? we should say, that candor suggests a ready answer. The justification, or vindication, of Tone's character and honor, was not to be a denial of any fact, nor the particular inculpation of any individual. On his trial he disclaimed all subterfuge, all compromise. He would have stated with manly composure the grounds on which he acted, and the reasons why he took up arms. He was not allowed to exhibit his side of the question. He was denied a hearing on the only point to which he cared to speak. He made but one request, which was to die the death of a soldier, and as an enemy taken in honorable warfare. Had that been thought admissible, these memoirs perhaps had never seen the light. It was because he was refused that boon, not denied to the French emigrants standing nearly in the same situation before the military tribunals of the French republic, as he did before that court martial assembled to pass sentence upon him, that this vindication of his character has been after so long delay, produced. He was sentenced to a mode of death, which to himself abstractedly, might have been indifferent, but which affected him through those whom he loved much more than his own life. It was calculated to wring the heart of his aged and sorrowing parent, to give a triumph to a malignant faction, and to wound his honor as a soldier, for he held the commission of a chef de brigade, and of adjutant general in the French army, and had served as such. If, then, the object was to confound him with common malefactors and felons by the manner of his death, and to fix the stigma of shame and infamy on him and his posterity, how natural, how honorable, and how sacred is the task, by which his son has undertaken to lay before the world his acts, his opinions, his words, his writings, his secret thoughts and very inward breathings of his soul. And this may well account for and excuse whatever may seem redundant in these volumes; for the son and relict of this extraordinary man well knew, that more was required of them, than their own silent sorrow, or smothered and unavailing recollections.

It was not enough, that they adored his memory. It was not enough, that he had died lamented, and that in the dark and dismal night of terror, that enveloped all connected with him, some few and faithful friends had stolen secretly with trembling steps to scatter a few tear bedewed flowers on his

grave; or that, in later times and under better auspices, his name had been sounded with bolder acclamation. It was not enough, that his fate had been pitied, and his private worth acknowledged. It was not enough, that he should have a place in story, with brave outlaws, or convicts half redeemed from the shame of their crimes by their courage, amiable qualities, or high endowments. It was not enough for those who gloried in his name to seek excuses for him, as for one of a good heart but unsound judgment, an honest enthusiast, who does wrong intending right. Those with whom his vindication lay were too candid and too enlightened not to know, that revolt and rebellion against organized power and settled government may be and often have been the work of guilty and remorseless ambition, and this even where the governments sought to be overturned were themselves corrupt. They were willing that his merit should be graduated upon that scale, which descends to Cataline and mounts to Cato; and for their patriot hero they claim the highest point; and they proudly, and we cannot say vaingloriously, place him by the side of that last and best of the free Romans, who, when his country's cause was lost, and her last hope gone, fell upon his own sword, and closed his eyes in willing death, before the hand of the executioner could dishonor his person, or he be led forth to swell the triumph of his fratricidal foe. The stake they go for is an important one. The world must be their judge. They have laid the very soul of their beloved martyr bare to view. His failings and frailties, of which he was himself the sternest censor, are all set forth. Truth, sacred truth, is the foundation on which they place his monumental image, faithful to the life, uncurtailed in any one of its proportions.

It was with this view, no doubt, that so many of the lighter fragments have been inserted, and that so many of his graver writings have been retained, to serve as cumulative evidence, how profoundly he had examined the subject of his country's unhappy condition, and probed the wounds under which she suffered and groaned. And though there may be many repetitions in these various tracts, yet the historical knowledge they contain, and the moral and political lessons they impress, render them well worth preserving. Others, who have written long histories of Ireland, have, like the historians of other countries, indulged in speculations, and dwelt more upon fabulous antiquities, than the purposes of true and useful history would

warrant. Swift and Molineux were the authors, who treated the cause of Ireland with a view to her condition then, her rights and her wrongs. But when Swift wrote, the great mass of the population were broken and brayed, and while he dissected the religious dissensions between high church and low church, and the political factions of Whig and of Tory, he thought no more of the majority of the people, and the most ancient possessors, than if they had been so many beasts of the field. And as the whigs and patriots in and out of parliament entertained no more enlarged or extensive views, when the American revolution first stirred their patriotic feelings, and raised their thoughts towards the equal independence of their country, its free legislation and free trade; when they formed that army of volunteers, which was first raised to defend their unprotected coasts against invasion, and afterwards to give efficacy to their remonstrances against the usurpations of an English government and legislature over that of their own then independent kingdom, as they asserted it to be; so, though their success was brilliant, and a blaze of uncommon talent shone forth within their parliament, yet a few years undid all that they had done. Religious intolerance divided the land, and, as the house that is divided against itself cannot stand, so neither could they. Instead of securing that equality and independence, which was already within their grasp, they lost all, because they were too interested, too proud, or too bigoted, to share the privileges they challenged for themselves with the mass of their countrymen.

It was at this interesting epoch that Tone, who had already given early proofs of his talents, was led to consider the cause of such a failure, and deeply examine the true state and condition of his country. We shall here use the words of the editor in his preface.

In opening these pages, it should be remembered that the situation and political organization of Ireland at that period were perfectly different from what they had been before and have fallen to since. She possessed at that precise moment a separate government and a national legislature nominally independent. My father never considered himself as an Englishman, nor a subject of Great Britain, but as a native and subject of the kingdom of Ireland, most zealously and passionately devoted to the rights, liberties, and glory of his country. At the epoch of the American war (1782), the unguarded state of that island, the efforts of the patriots in its legislature, and the simultaneous and formidable