after his liberation, lacking that buoyant pleasantry for which they were wont to be remarkable.  The famine also weighed heavily upon his spirits; every question, he frequently said, must be postponed but the one of saving the lives of the people.  We need not, however, go in search of causes for his death; he had done the work of a host of men, he was seventy-two, and it was natural he should die; but the Irish people were not at all prepared for his death:  no, in their affection for him, they had made up their minds that their Liberator was to live up to that ninety, which he had so often promised them,—­and, with the vigour of forty-five.

In the last days of March, 1847, O’Connell left Dublin for London, to attend his parliamentary duties.  He presented some petitions on the 1st of February, and spoke at some length about the Famine on the 8th; his speech, the last he ever made, occupying about one hundred lines of a newspaper column.  He was imperfectly heard.  One report says, “Mr. O’Connell rose, but spoke very indistinctly, and directed his voice very much to the lower part of the house.”  The opening remark in Hansard is,—­“Mr. O’Connell was understood to say.”  He was very kindly received by the house; hears and cheers are thickly strewn through his speech as reported.  This was in part, no doubt, the kindness of pity for the great old man, in the hour of his feebleness and humiliation.  For he, who in the day of his might, had hurled “his high and haughty defiance” at them all, was there to crave bread, to save the lives of those millions with whom he had so often threatened them.  His last words were an appeal to their charity; they also contained a prophecy, which was, alas! but too strictly verified.  “She is in your hands,” he said, “she is in your power.  If you don’t save her, she can’t save herself; and I solemnly call upon you to recollect that I predict, with the sincerest conviction, that one-fourth of her population will perish, unless you come to her relief. (Cheers from both sides).”

So ended the public career of the great leader of the Irish nation, to be followed in two short months by his death.  Two days after he had spoken in the House of Commons, the rumour reached the Clubs that he was dangerously ill.  This was contradicted, and a letter from himself to the Repeal Association, which was read at their next meeting, reassured the public.  Next, the news came that writing fatigued him, and that his physicians forbade it; so, for the future his son John wrote, in his own name, to the Association, always, as might be expected, taking the sanguine view of his father’s health.  A month passed.  His physicians ordered him to Hastings, and after spending a fortnight there he sailed for France.  His intention was to go to Rome.  At Lyons, he felt so poorly that he was obliged to refuse audiences to the various deputations of that Catholic city, which crowded to his hotel to do him honour.  He arrived at Genoa, his final stage, on the 6th of May, and breathed his last in that city on the evening of the 15th, with the tranquillity of a child.  His faithful friend, the Rev. Dr. Miley, and several of the principal clergy of the place were kneeling in prayer around his bed when he expired.