edge, imploring with cries of agony not to be left behind.  In the extremity of his pity Sarsfield proclaimed that his soldiers might take their wives and families with them to France.  It was found utterly impossible, however, to do so, since no transport could be provided for such a multitude.  Room was found for a few families, but the beach was still crowded with those who had perforce to be left behind.  As the boats pushed off the women clung desperately to them, and several, refusing to let go, were dragged out of their depth and drowned.  A wild cry went up as the ships began to move.  The crowd rushed frantically along the shore from headland to headland, following them with their eyes as long as they remained in sight.  When the last ship had dropped below the horizon, and the dull autumn dusk had settled down over sea and shore, they dispersed slowly to their desolate homes.  Night and desolation must indeed have seemed to have settled down for good upon Ireland.

XLV.

THE PENAL CODE.

We are now upon the brink of a century as full of strange fortunes for Ireland as any that had preceded it, but in which those fortunes were destined to take a widely different turn.  In the two preceding ones revolts and risings had, as we have seen, been the rule rather than the exception.  In this one from the beginning down to within a couple of years of its close when a rebellion—­which, in most impartial historians’ opinion, might with a little care have been averted—­broke the peace of the century, hardly a symptom of any disposition to appeal to arms is discoverable.  Two great Jacobite risings convulsed England; the American revolt, so fraught with momentous consequences, was fought and carried, but Ireland never stirred.  The fighting element was gone.  It was in France, in Spain, in the Low Countries—­scattered over half the battlefields of Europe.  The country which gave birth to these fighters was quiet; a graveyard quiet, it may be said, but still significant, if only by contrast with what had gone before.

One advantage which the student of this century has over others is that it has been made the subject of a work which enables us to thread our way through its mazes with what, in comparison to other periods may be called ease.  In his “History of the Eighteenth Century” Mr. Lecky has done for the Ireland of one century what it is much to be desired some one would hasten to do for the Ireland of all.  He has broken down a barrier of prejudice so solid and of such long standing that it seemed to be invulnerable, and has proved that it is actually possible to be just in two directions at once—­a feat no previous historian of Ireland can be said to have even attempted.  This work, the final volume of which has not yet appeared, so completely covers the whole ground that it seems to afford an excuse for an even more hasty scamper over the same area than the exigencies of space have elsewhere made inevitable.