It is a curious fact that the Liberator, in the lapse of years, forgot where he had originally found the passage, as the following extract from the proceedings of the Repeal Association, on the 12th of April, 1844, will show:-- "Mr. O'Connell--As Mr. Steele began by correcting some errors which had crept into a published report of some of his observations, there is quite enough in that fact to justify me in following his example. The errors to which I allude appear in a book recently published by a Frenchman, the Viscount D'Arlingcourt, whom I met accidentally at Tara, and who felt somewhat surprised and mortified, on being informed that I had not heard of him before. In his work he speaks of the meeting, and he makes me state to him that six lines which I wrote in an _album_ he presented to me for the purpose, were my own composition. Now, I am a plain prose writer, and I neither wrote, nor said I wrote, the lines in question. You may recollect them; they are as follows:-- O Erin shall it e'er be mine, To wreak thy wrongs in battle line; To raise my victorhead and see Thy hills, thy dales, thy people free,--That glance of bliss is all I crave, Betwixt my labours and my grave! (Cheers.) The rhythm is perfect, the versification excellent, and my disinclination to take the parentage is not because of any defect in them; but it is a matter of fact, there is only one word which I inserted, and which I claim as my own composition--that word is 'Erin.' In the original lines the word was 'Scotland;' they are from a poem of Miss Mitford, called '"Wallace '--a poem not as well known as it ought to be." "Mr. Maurice O'Connell--The lines are by Miss Holcroft." "Mr. O'Connell--My son differs with me as to the authorship, but I cannot help that; but there is one thing we cannot dispute about, and that is, the lines are not mine." Although Mr. Maurice O'Connell undertook to set his father right, he was equally at fault himself, for the lines are Scott's. In the Lord of the Isles, canto 4, stanza 30, King Robert says:-- 'O Scotland! shall it e'er be mine To wreak thy wrongs in battle line; To raise my victorhead and see Thy hills, thy dales, thy people free,--That glance of bliss is all I crave, Betwixt my labours and my grave." Then down the hill he slowly went, etc.