A postulate of true magnanimity is modesty. Emmet’s was unique. It is the testimony of John Patten, who was well aware of his kinsman’s immense self-reliance, that “Robert had not one particle of vanity in his composition. He was the most free from conceit of any man I ever knew. You might live with him for years ... and never discover that he thought about himself at all. He was vain neither of his person nor of his mind.” La Comtesse d’Haussonville cannot refrain, in her graceful memoir, from contrasting him with another excellent youth of genius, André Chénier, who very properly expressed his pang of self-pity in face of the guillotine. “_Et pourtant_,” he cried, striking his forehead with that gesture of Gallic candour which is so odd to us and so winning: “_et pourtant il y avait quelque chose ici_!” _Il y avait quelque chose ici_ in Emmet too, although it was not great lyric poetry. He had almost every other capacity. The Rev. Archibald Douglas, in his old age, when Robert Emmet had been nearly forty years in his grave, summed up his conviction about him to Dr. R. R. Madden: “So gifted a creature does not appear once in a thousand years.” We have no portrait of Emmet which antedates his trial. Three artists in good repute sketched him, that day, on bits of waste paper or else on the backs of envelopes, and did it surreptitiously for dread of prohibition: these were Comerford, Brocas, and James Petrie. The two first, viewing Emmet in profile, gained better results than the third; yet Petrie’s drawing serves as the basis of the only well-known engraved pictures. It was Petrie, moreover, who was allowed to take the death-mask of Robert Emmet. The good material accumulated was put to no very memorable use. The Petrie Emmet is somewhat heavy and glowering, and distinctly wry-necked. It is meant, in fact, to be impressive; and the note of artificiality disqualifies it as a true representation of its subject, a man of shynesses and simplicities. Comerford, on the other hand, and Brocas, as effectively, have given us a face to look at which one instinctively believes in. It is stamped with concentration and resolve, but has in it something serene and gentle and sweet, and it harmonises with all we can learn of Emmet’s physical appearance from the printed page. He was about five feet seven inches in height, wiry, slender, erect, healthy, full of endurance, quick of movement. His dark eyes were small and rather deep-set, and sparkling with expression; his nose was straight and thin, his mouth delicately chiselled. He had the powerful chin and jaw-bone never absent from the bodily semblance of a strong-willed personality. The fine pendulous hair bespoke the enthusiast, but it was not worn long save over the forehead, which was noticeably broad and high. What gave a faun-like idiosyncrasy to the whole countenance was the slight upward curve of the perfect eyebrows at the inner edge. If we are to accept Brocas as our best authority