THE LIFE AND CONVERSATIONS OF ROBERT EMMET, ESQ. There are few persons whose name has been so hailed by the young and ardent, whose firmness and patriotism has been more admired, and whose character has produced a greater effect upon society, than the subject of these pages. Robert Emmet was born in Dublin, in the year 1782, and was the son of Dr. Emmet, for many years state physician in Dublin. He was the youngest brother of Thomas Addis Emmet, who, before the rebellion of 1798, had abandoned a respectable situation at the Irish Bar, in order to project and carry into execution, the schemes of that day, for an Irish Republic, and of course, separation from Great Britain. Emmet was moulded in Nature’s happiest form for his destined service. He possessed the physical qualities necessary for an accomplished speaker, with high intellect to master and employ knowledge, with imagination and feelings to sway the passions and command the heart; with the power of incessant labour to collect, discipline, and perfect the valued materials of a revolutionary measure, he was eminently calculated for the task which he had undertaken. And, had success depended upon the worth and the virtues of one man, Emmet would now have been hailed as the liberator of his country. Early impressions are always the most lasting. Emmet had his young mind filled with a detestation of tyranny and injustice at an early age, by the virtue and patriotism of his private tutor, the Rev. Mr. Lewes, who, though a minister of the Established Church, was yet an enemy to its monopolizing power and persecuting spirit towards his Catholic fellow-subjects. At the age of sixteen he entered Trinity College. Here his progress in classical and mathematical knowledge soon gained him honour and reputation. But his heated spirit had been worked up by the political enthusiasm in which he had been early initiated. At the Historical Society, of which he was a member, he expressed his sentiments so freely on English influence in Ireland, that he came under the suspicions of Lord Chancellor Clare, who ultimately expelled him from College, for denouncing, in a speech he made, the English form of government, and advocating that of a republic.