Limerick is a pleasant and prosperous city, and has a very honorable name in Irish history. The most interesting object that it contains is the Castle, which was built by King John, and has stood for more than six hundred years. In 1651, Limerick sustained a terrible siege, by the Parliamentary forces, under General Ireton, the son-in-law of Cromwell. It held out for six months, and would not have surrendered then, though the inhabitants were dying of starvation and plague, had it not been for the treachery of an officer of the garrison--one Colonel Fennel. Among the most faithful and heroic of the city's defenders, was a priest--Terence Albert O'Brien, Bishop of Emly. He was so active and influential that Ireton made him an offer of forty thousand pounds, (two hundred thousand dollars,) and a free pass to the Continent, if he would cease his exhortations, and advise immediate surrender. He scorned the offer, and so when the city at last fell into the hands of the English, he was tried and condemned to death. He was calm and heroic to the last; but before he was beheaded, he addressed a few solemn, warning words to Ireton, which made the stern soldier's blood curdle. He accused him of cruel injustice, and summoned him to appear before the tribunal of God within a few days. It is a singular fact that in a little more than a week from that time, Ireton died of the plague. Limerick was again besieged in 1690, by William III. It was defended by the Irish Catholic adherents of James II. and their French allies, and so well defended, that the King and his army beat a retreat in less than a month. However, they made another trial the next year and with a little better success, for after a six months' siege, the garrison capitulated. A treaty was signed between the two armies, in which it was stipulated that Limerick and the other Irish fortresses should surrender to the new King--that the garrisons should be allowed to march out with all the honors of war, and that they should be provided with shipping to carry them to any country they should please to go to. Then there were several other articles very favorable to the rights and liberties of the Roman Catholics. To the shame of the English government of that day, it must be said that this compact was most dishonorably broken, and through that reign and many succeeding, the Irish Catholics were greatly wronged and meanly persecuted. From this circumstance, Limerick has always been called "The City of the Violated Treaty"--at least, until the year 1847, when, one evening, a famous tea-party given to the rebel leader, Smith O'Brien, was broken up by a mob--on which occasion, Mr. Punch made a little change in the old title, and called it "The City of the Violated _Tea-tray_."