“In the summer of 1843,” writes Dr. Madden, “accompanied by Anne Devlin, I proceeded to Butterfield Lane, to ascertain the fact of the existence or non-existence of the house in which Robert Emmet had resided in 1803. For a length of time our search was fruitless. The recollection of a locality at the expiration of forty years is a very dim sort of reminiscence. There was no house in the lane the exterior of which reminded my conductress of her old scene of suffering. At length her eye caught an old range of buildings at some distance, like the offices of a farmhouse. This she at once recognised as part of the premises of her father, and she was soon able to point out the well-known fields around it, which had once been in her father’s possession. The house, alongside of which we were standing, on the right-hand side of the lane going from Rathfarnham road, she said must be the house of Mr. Emmet, though the entrance was entirely altered; however, the position of an adjoining house left little doubt in her mind. We knocked at the door, and I found the house was inhabited by a lady of my acquaintance, the daughter of a Protestant clergyman, who had been, strange to say, the college friend and most intimate acquaintance of Robert Emmet, the late Dr. Hayden, of Rathcoole. “The lady of the house, in whom I discovered an acquaintance, left us in no doubt on the subject of the locality—we were in the house that had been tenanted by Robert Emmet. The scene that ensued is one more easily conceived than described. We were conducted over the house—my aged companion at first in silence, and then as if slowly awakening from a dream, rubbing her dim eyes, and here and there pausing for some moments when she came to some recognised spot. On the ground floor she pointed out a small room, on the left-hand of the entrance—‘That’s the room where Mr. Dowdall and Mr. Hamilton used to sleep.’ The entrance has been changed from about the centre to the right-hand end; the window of a small room there has been converted into the door-way, and the room itself into the hall. ‘This,’ said Anne Devlin, ‘was my room; I know it well—my mattress used to be in that corner.’ There was one place, every corner and cranny of which she seemed to have a familiar acquaintance with, and that was the kitchen. On the upper floor, the principal bed-room at the present time attracted her particular attention; she stood for some time gazing into the room from the door-way; I asked her whose room it had been. It was a good while before I got an answer in words, but her trembling hands, and the few tears which came from a deep source, and spoke of sorrow of an old date, left no necessity to repeat that question—it was the room of Robert Emmet.