The scene presented by Clonmel excited much public surprise. Newspaper correspondents magnified the sullen gloom that prevailed into popular apathy or national cowardice, as suited the bent or purpose of their employers. The truth was, the people exhibited during the trial a decent and respectful forbearance. Empty parade or vociferous sorrow would only mock the lofty purpose of the sufferers; and besides, the mortification which rankled in the public heart was too deep for utterance. The hopes of the people had been dashed, and they were stunned and stupefied by their fall. But so far from being apathetic, nightly assemblages were held to consider if, even in that extremity, something was not yet possible to be done. But, if there were a show of popular indifference on the streets, the courthouse presented a very different spectacle. There everything manifested an intense bitterness of purpose; the court, composed of the two most unscrupulous partisans, Chief Justices Blackbourne and Doherty, and the weakest or falsest political convert, Mr. Justice Moore, simulated the uncontrollable emotions which an overweening loyalty awoke in the bosom of the Catholic Attorney-General. So far were their lordships swayed by the spirit of imitativeness, that the most polished speakers, mistaking the incoherent jargon of the official for the broken utterance of overwrought zeal and shocked loyalty, mimicked his distempered language as the only befitting medium of expression for disturbed feelings such as theirs. The simplest and most usual facilities accorded to murderers and pickpockets on their trial were rudely denied the counsel for the defence. The principles of law, recognised in England as sacred, were scouted from the bench, and the farce of trial proceeded through its different stages to the final _denouement_ with perfect regularity, every one performing the part assigned him with unerring accuracy. Of the intrepid ability which struggled against this fearful combination of bigotry, prejudice and passion, at the bar, on the bench and in the box, I do not purpose to speak here. But I would be unfaithful to my trust, and unjust to the rarest heroism, if I did not record the fortitude and fidelity of O'Donnell, from whom the menaces of the crown, or the frown of the bench, could not wring one word of evidence. In an ordinary man, this would be singular intrepidity; but circumstanced as O'Donnell was, it amounted to a Roman virtue. One brother of his, a doctor, was in jail at Liverpool, charged with political felony; another was hunted through the country, and another was in irons, involved in the same charge as the illustrious accused; for them all he could command his own terms, for much depended on his testimony; but though doom were upon them, and a word of his could avert it, he refused to speak. Honour be his. His integrity almost cancelled the shame and darkness of those disastrous times.