As to aid from England, in carrying on democratic revolutions on the Continent, especially in Italy, if not in France, I might count on it with entire confidence, so far as beginning the movements and getting into trouble were concerned. But I thought possibly I might find her aid like the devil’s, which suffices to help one into a scrape, but leaves him to get out the best way he can. She had no interest in helping the reformers to establish democracy, but she was ready enough to throw the Continental states into confusion and anarchy. Hers has of late years been only a half-way genius. Nevertheless, I found in her a few choice spirits, and erected a mesmeric battery, which has since done some service to the cause I had at heart. Priscilla was still more successful among the philanthropic ladies and women with whom she was able to communicate. We made sure, without much difficulty, of Exeter Hall. It was a battery already charged, and served, with skill and ability. We prepared an agent to visit Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and other considerable English towns, and, upon the whole, were very well satisfied with our mother country, and in good spirits left England for Dublin. We were received there with true Irish hospitality. The Liberator was then in his glory, and filled a large space in the eyes of the world. He had obtained the Catholic Relief Bill, and opened to his co-religionists of Great Britain and Ireland a political arena, and was now agitating for the legislative independence of his native country. A few months after he was arrested, and sentenced to a fine and a year’s imprisonment, which virtually put an end to his movement. It broke his heart both as a patriot and as a lawyer. He received us very coolly at first, because we were Americans, and the Americans held negro slaves; but on learning that we were abolitionists and philanthropists, he opened his large heart to us, and bid us a hundred thousand welcomes. We could not, however, make much of O’Connell. He was an admirable type of the general Irish character, and not easily understood. He struck us as a bundle of opposing qualities, not usually thrown together in the same individual. A pious Catholic, he was surrounded by unbelievers, and the patron of the whole herd of philanthropists, whose chief aim was to rid the world of his religion; a man of impulse, as capricious as a child, wily as a village attorney, and subtle as the most crafty lawyer, and acting always upon calculation; a warm-hearted patriot, a genuine lover of his country, yet with a sharp eye to the “rint,” and leaving it doubtful to many minds whether he had any higher motives in what he did than to gain personal distinction, and to elevate his family. He however interested us as the inventor of a “peaceful agitation,” an invention which could have been made only by an Irish lawyer, and it was as a “peaceful agitator” that we chose to think of him. We found his