Strange, surely, that it was not so! Strange, surely, that there was no whisper all this time from the bystanders! Strange, surely, that the bystanders, as the ships, ship after ship, sailed away with those very Saxon soldiers, began to turn their regards off altogether from the ships, and to fling unquiet doubtful glances one on the other! The detested foreigner was gone;--and was there, therefore, more neighbourly love among those that remained? What! Erin Mavourneen, is not your emancipation come? Why is there no shout? The Saxons are going. The quick strokes of the paddle-wheels whiten the waters. Where is the pæan of the ransomed and redeemed? The sail bellies bigly to the wind. From Erin the Green, the Saxons are gone. Then rose from earth to sky--what? IRELAND IS LEFT TO ITSELF--WHOLLY, ENTIRELY, ABSOLUTELY TO ITSELF. The Repealer has his wish. The sea runs between Ireland and England--and all that is Irish and all that is English. The cable is cut. The Emerald Isle is adrift. No Saxon soldier pollutes her soil; but not a Saxon shilling glistens in her purse. The British Viceroy is no more; neither is the British Chancellor of the Exchequer any more--THERE. Ireland has got its own parliament. ALSO IRELAND HAS GOT ITS OWN POOR. Not a stiver of English millions now crosses St George's Channel. Not for one death by starvation now is England or the Saxon answerable. IRELAND HAS HER OWN EXUBERANT EXCHEQUER. IRELAND POURS ABUNDANCE INTO THE MYRIAD MOUTHS OF HER FAMINE-STRICKEN PEOPLE. Shout, then, O Ireland! shout! The sail bellies bigly to the wind. From Erin the Green the Saxons are gone. The sun of Repeal is at its noon. Then rose from earth to sky--what? And they looked into the faces of each other with a dull, blank look--and from earth to sky arose the yell of wild despair, of irretrievable confusion, and of maddening perdition. The Repealer had his wish. The cable was cut. Ireland was adrift--and LEFT TO ITSELF. Order, law, justice, peace, trade, industry, money, prosperity, and--oh terrible truth!--INDEPENDENCE were gone away--quite away with the SAXON. * * * * * And the Milesian Republic endured--we blush to number the hours of its ephemeral and horrible existence. Every where the fair face of the beautiful ISLE was hideously seamed with scars of civil war. Every where mounted upwards the smoke of roof-trees destroyed, and hearthstones desolated. Every where over the surface of the great surrounding ocean boomed the discordant wail of the land torn by the vultures of anarchy.