At ten o’clock, p.m., on the day of his trial, the barbarous sentence of the law—­the same that we have so recently heard passed on prisoners standing in that same dock, accused of the same offence against the rulers of this country—­was passed on Robert Emmet.  Only a few hours were given him in which to withdraw his thoughts from the things of this world and fix them on the next.  He was hurried away, at midnight, from Newgate to Kilmainham jail, passing through Thomas-street, the scene of his attempted insurrection.  Hardly had the prison van driven through, when workmen arrived and commenced the erection of the gibbet from which his body was to be suspended.  About the hour of noon, on the 20th of September, he mounted the scaffold with a firm and composed demeanour; a minute or two more and the lifeless remains of one of the most gifted of God’s creatures hung from the cross beams—­strangled by the enemies of his country—­cut off in the bloom of youth, in the prime of his physical and intellectual powers, because he had loved his own land, hated her oppressors, and striven to give freedom to his people.  But not yet was English vengeance satisfied.  While the body was yet warm it was cut down from the gibbet, the neck placed across a block on the scaffold, and the head severed from the body.  Then the executioner held it up before the horrified and sorrowing crowd that stood outside the lines of soldiery, proclaiming to them—­“This is the head of a traitor!” A traitor!  It was a false proclamation.  No traitor was he, but a true and noble gentleman.  No traitor, but a most faithful heart to all that was worthy of love and honour.  No traitor, but a martyr for Ireland.  The people who stood agonized before his scaffold, tears streaming from their eyes, and their hearts bursting with suppressed emotion, knew that for them and for Ireland he had offered up his young life.  And when the deed was finished, and the mutilated body had been taken away, and the armed guards had marched from the fatal spot, old people and young moved up to it to dip their handkerchiefs in the blood of the martyr, that they might then treasure up the relics for ever.  Well has his memory been cherished in the Irish heart from that day to the present time.  Six years ago a procession of Irishmen, fifteen thousand strong, hearing another rebel to his grave, passed by the scene of that execution, every man of whom reverently uncovered his head as he reached the hallowed spot.  A few months ago, a banner borne in another Irish insurrection displayed the inscription—­

“REMEMBER EMMET.”

Far away “beyond the Atlantic foam,” and “by the long wash of Australasian seas,” societies are in existence bearing his name, and having for their object to cherish his memory and perpetuate his principles.  And wherever on the habitable globe a few members of the scattered Irish race are to be found, there are hearts that are thrilled by even the faintest allusion to the uninscribed grave-stone and the unwritten epitaph.