posterity. For his part, therefore, he renounced the leadership of O'Connell till he mended his ways."
The meeting arrested wide attention, but O'Connell had a counter- stroke in reserve. Nothing was rarer than for a bishop to appear at Conciliation Hall, but a bishop was induced to appear to denounce the Nation and its writers. He came there, he said, "to enter his solemn protest against the puny efforts of the Young Irelanders. They are the enemies of religion. They thought to spread infidelity through the land, but they have failed. They thought to sever the ties which united the clergy and laity. In this they failed also." Here was an assistant whose office, at any rate, made him important, and I determined to join issue with him. I wrote with perfect gravity and respect inviting him to specify some of the instances, or any one instance, in which the Nation had preached infidelity or endeavoured to separate the priests from the people. This was a demand which a Catholic gentleman was entitled to make, and which it was not conceivable any gentleman, lay or ecclesiastic, would refuse. The bishop made no answer, having no good answer to make, nor did I hear much of his existence for half a dozen years after, when Mr. William Keogh, who had violated his pledges and his oath for office, appeared before his injured constituents leaning on the arm of the Bishop of Elphin, the prelate in question. A keen and critical audience read this tirade next day, an audience who knew that the statements were profoundly untrue, and this unhappy spectacle of bishops moved like pieces in a game of chess had the serious and tragic effect of making the declarations of men who had been regarded with unmeasured reverence as at times no more reliable than the ordinary professions of Conciliation Hall.
As they were not permitted to pursue their literary projects in peace the Young Irelanders at last decided to resume the platform and hold at least one public meeting. They met in the historic hall of the Rotunda, which was decorated with banners and mottoes which appeal to a poetic people. The attendance and enthusiasm were immense, and there appeared not merely the seceders but a number of the most solid and respectable of the middle-class Repealers, and the
