So stood the hosts on the night of June 30th, 1690, prepared to deliver battle on the dawn of the morrow; and, as darkness settled down and hid each from the view of the other, the feelings that swayed them may be easier felt than depicted. One feeling, that in such moments pervades every bosom alike, from the private to the king, must have been theirs in common--the hope to survive the carnage;--in all else their thoughts must have been as different as the causes they represented. The mercenary can have but one passion and one object--to slay and to dominate. The patriot has many, and all are sacred. The poetry of emotion is his, and over none does it exert a more boundless influence than over the race of which this king's army was mainly composed. The memories of the past, standing out like the immemorial hills; the voices of futurity coming up the long vista of time, and all pleading the reversal of a fate more cruel than Egyptian bondage: while clearer to the ear and nearer to the heart come the pleadings of kindred, and the anxious household lifting up their prayers to heaven for the devoted hearts that shield them from ruin, death--dishonor. All these speak to them, and a thousand fancies, taking the form of life, pass in solemn review, till the hardiest soldier, with moistened eye, and heart full to breaking, grasps his sword, compresses his lip, looks out for the dawning, and sighs for relief in conflict. But did not the Irish of that day deceive themselves? This king, whose cause they had espoused, was not their king. His restoration would still leave their country an appanage of the British Crown, and his house was a name of woe and desolation throughout the land! Would her future, under it, be much brighter than her past? There was, no doubt, many a thoughtful mind in that Irish army that had all those misgivings; but this was not the time to indulge them. Nor should we of the present day be hypercritical. Royalty was then something more than a name, and we should not judge the events of the seventeenth century by the light of the nineteenth, nor the Ireland of untoward circumstances as the nation of her people's will. To the memory of this unhappy king this truth should be generously conceded.... He could have retained his throne had he violated his conscience. He could have ruled the Irish people as his predecessors had done, and at that time they had no power to stay him; for the Catholic descendants of the Palesmen were firm in their allegiance to the English throne, and the native race was destitute of means to strike for separation. He had forfeited his crown and jeopardized his power, for right. He had emancipated them from a bondage servile to mind and body. He was the first royal champion of civil and religious liberty. He had offered them justice in his power, and appealed to their loyalty in his adversity. His cause was their cause. He was banished by his own people, outraged by his own