Emmet ended with these words: "My lord, you are impatient for the sacrifice. The blood which you seek is not congealed by the artificial terrors which surround your victim--it circulates warmly and unruffled through its channels, and in a little time it will cry to heaven. Be patient! I have but a few words to say--I am going to my cold and silent grave--my lamp of life is nearly extinguished--I have parted with everything that was dear to me in this life, and for my country's cause with the idol of my soul, the object of my affections. My race is run--the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom. I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world--it is _the charity of its silence_. Let no man write my epitaph; for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them rest in obscurity and peace, my memory be left in oblivion, and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have done." The sentence was pronounced. Robert Emmet was, on the following day, first to be hanged, and then beheaded. When the prisoner was removed from the dock it was about ten o'clock at night. As he passed the grating of a cell in which a friend was confined, he called to him: "I shall be hanged to-morrow." He was allowed no peace during his last hours. The Government became alarmed lest an attempt might be made to rescue him, and an order was sent to convey him to Kilmainham jail, two miles and a half away. Not till he reached there did a humane jailer take off the irons which had been put on so roughly that they had drawn blood. The same man gave him something to eat, no food having been provided for him since before the trial began, at ten in the morning. Emmet then slept soundly for a short time. On awaking he employed the time left him in writing letters to his brother in America, to Miss Curran's brother, and to herself. He was interrupted by a friend, who came to bid him farewell. Emmet's first inquiry was after his mother, and his friend was obliged to tell him that she had died the day before of grief. She had borne with fortitude the banishment of one of her sons for his devotion to the cause of Ireland, and she had encouraged Robert in all his proceedings; but when she knew that he, the pride of her heart, was doomed, in his twenty-third year, to such a terrible death, her heart broke. Robert received the news composedly, and said, after a silence of some moments: "It is better so." In his letter to young Curran he wrote: "I did not look to honours for myself--praise I would have asked from the lips of no man; but I would have wished to read in the glow of Sarah's countenance that her husband was respected." His writing in this letter is as firm and regular as usual.