now I shall close.  True it is there are many feelings that actuate me at this moment.  In fact, these few disconnected remarks can give no idea of what I desire to state to the court.  I have ties to bind me to life and society as strong as any man in this court can have.  I have a family I love as much as any man in this court loves his family.  But I can remember the blessing I received from an aged mother’s lips as I left her the last time.  She, speaking as the Spartan mother did, said—­’Go, my boy, return either with your shield or upon it.’  This reconciles me—­this gives me heart.  I submit to my doom; and I hope that God will forgive me my past sins.  I hope also, that inasmuch as He has for seven hundred years preserved Ireland, notwithstanding all the tyranny to which she has been subjected, as a separate and distinct nationality, He will also assist her to retrieve her fallen fortunes—­to rise in her beauty and majesty, the Sister of Columbia, the peer of any nation in the world.”

General Burke, as our readers are well aware, was not executed.  The government shrank from carrying out the barbarous sentence of the law, and his punishment was changed to the still more painful, if less appalling fate, of penal servitude for life.  Of General Burke’s private character we have said little; but our readers will be able to understand it from the subjoined brief extracts from two of his letters.  On the very night previous to his trial he wrote to his mother from Kilmainham Prison:—­

...  “On last Easter Sunday I partook of Holy Communion at a late mass, I calculated the difference of time between this longitude and yours, for I knew that you and my dear sisters were partaking of the sacrament at early mass on that day, as was your wont, and I felt that our souls were in communion together.”

We conclude with the following letter from General Burke, which has never before been published, and which we are sure will be of deep interest to our readers.  It is addressed to the reverend gentleman who had been his father confessor in Clonmel:—­

   “KILMAINHAM GOAL,

   “4th, Month of Mary.

   “DEAR REV.  FATHER,

" ...  I am perfectly calm and resigned, with my thoughts firmly centered with hope in the goodness and mercy of that kind Redeemer, whose precious blood was shed for my salvation; as also in the mediation and intercession of His Blessed Mother, who is my Star of Hope and Consolation.  I know, dear father, I need not ask you to be remembered in your prayers, for I feel that in your supplication to the Throne of Mercy I have not been forgotten....  I have only one thought which causes me much sorrow, and that is that my good and loving mother will break down under the weight of her affliction, and, oh, God, I who loved her more than the life which animates the hand that writes to be the cause of it!  This thought unmans and prostrates me.  I wrote