than if I were decorated with the star and garter of England.”  Four or five police inspectors assisted him to step into the van, the door was closed after him, the word was given to the escort, and off went the cavalcade at a thundering pace to the North-wall, where a government steamer, the “Shearwater,” was lying with her steam up in readiness to receive him.  He clambered the side-ladder of the steamer with some assistance; on reaching the deck, the chains tripped him and he fell forward.  Scarcely was he on his feet again, when the paddles of the steamer were beating; the water, and the vessel was moving from the shores of that “Isle of Destiny,” which he loved so well, and a sight of which has never since gladdened the eyes of John Mitchel.

The history of Mr. Mitchel’s subsequent career, which has been an eventful one, does not rightly fall within the scope of this work.  Suffice it to say that on June the 1st, 1848, he was placed on board the “Scourge” man-of-war, which then sailed off for Bermuda.  There Mr. Mitchel was retained on board a penal ship, or “hulk,” until April 22nd, 1849, when he was transferred to the ship “Neptune,” on her way from England to the Cape of Good Hope, whither she was taking a batch of British convicts.  Those convicts the colonists at the Cape refused to receive into their country, and a long struggle ensued between them and the commander of the “Neptune,” who wished to deposit his cargo according to instructions.  The colonists were willing to make an exception in the case of Mr. Mitchel, but the naval officer could not think of making any compromise in the matter.  The end of the contest was that the vessel, with her cargo of convicts on board, sailed on February 19th, 1850, for Van Dieman’s Land, where she arrived on April 7th of the same year.  In consideration of the hardships they had undergone by reason of their detention at the Cape, the government granted a conditional pardon to all the criminal convicts on their arrival at Hobart Town.  It set them free on the condition that they should not return to the “United Kingdom.”  Mr. Mitchel and the other political convicts were less mercifully treated.  It was not until the year 1854 that a similar amount of freedom was given to these gentlemen.  Some months previous to the arrival of Mr. Mitchel at Hobart Town, his friends William Smith O’Brien, John Martin, Thomas F. Meagher, Kevin Izod O’Doherty, Terence Bellew MacManus, and Patrick O’Donoghue, had reached the same place, there to serve out the various terms of transportation to which they had been sentenced.  All except Mr. O’Brien, who had refused to enter into these arrangements, were at that time on parole—­living, however, in separate and limited districts, and no two of them nearer than thirty or forty miles.  On his landing from the “Neptune,” Mr. Mitchel, in consideration of the delicate state of his health, was allowed to reside with Mr. Martin in the Bothwell district.