The history of that unfortunate attempt need not here be written.  Suffice it to say that the arrangements miscarried in nearly every particular.  The men in the numbers calculated upon did not assemble at the appointed time or in the appointed places, and the whole force that turned out in Thomas-street for the attack on the Castle did not number a hundred insurgents.  They were joined by a riotous and noisy rabble; and their unfortunate leader soon perceived that his following was, as had previously been said of the king’s troops, “formidable to every one but the enemy.”  They had not proceeded far on their way when a carriage, in which were Lord Kilwarden, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, his daughter, and his nephew, the Rev. Mr. Wolfe, drove into the street.  The vehicle was stopped, and the Chief Justice was immediately piked by a man in the crowd whose son he had some time previously condemned to execution.  The clergyman also was pulled out of the carriage and put to death.  To the lady no violence was offered, and Emmet himself, who had heard of the deplorable tragedy, rushing from the head of his party, bore her in his arms to an adjoining house.  No attack on the Castle took place; the insurgent party scattered and melted away even before the appearance of military on the scene, and in little more than an hour from the time of his setting out on his desperate enterprise, Robert Emmet was a defeated and ruined man, a fugitive, with the whole host of British spies and bloodhounds employed to hunt him to the death.

Yet he might have foiled them and got clear out of the country if his personal safety was all on earth he cared for.  But in that noble heart of his there was one passion co-existent with his love of Ireland, and not unworthy of the companionship, which forbade his immediate flight.  With all that intensity of affection of which a nature so pure and so ardent as his was capable, he loved a being in every way worthy of him—­a lady so gentle, and good, and fair, that even to a less poetic imagination than his own, she might seem to be a fitting personification of his beloved Erin; and by her he was loved and trusted in return.  Who is it that has not heard her name?—­who has not mourned over the story of Sarah Curran!  In the ruin that had fallen on the hopes and fortunes of the patriot chief, the happiness of this amiable lady was involved.  He would not leave without an interview with her—­no! though a thousand deaths should be the penalty.  The delay was fatal to his chances of escape.  For more than a month he remained in concealment, protected by the fidelity of friends, many of whom belonged to the humbler walks of life, and one of whom in particular—­the heroic Anne Devlin, from whom neither proffered bribes nor cruel tortures could extort a single hint as to his place of abode—­should ever be held in grateful remembrance by Irishmen.  At length on the 25th of August, the ill-fated young gentleman was arrested in the house of a Mrs. Palmer, at Harold’s-cross.