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PREFACE. |
xvii |
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In the mean while, this great conspiracy was hastening on, with fearful precipitancy, to its outbreak ; and vague and shapeless as are now known to have been the views even of those who were engaged practically in the plot, it is not any wonder that to the young and uninitiated like myself it should have opened prospects partaking far more of the wild dreams of poesy than of the plain and honest prose of real life. But a crisis was then fast approaching, when such self-delusions could no longer be indulged^ and when the mystery which had hitherto hung over the plans of the conspirators was to be rent asunder by the stern hand of power.
Of the horrors that fore-ran and followed the frightful explosion of the year 1798, I have neither inclination nor, luckily, occasion to speak. But among those introductory scenes, which had somewhat prepared the public mind for such a catastrophe, there was one, of a painful description, which, as having been myself an actor in it, I may be allowed briefly to notice.
It was not many weeks, I think, before this crisis, that, owing to information gained by the college authorities of the rapid spread, among the students, not only of the principles but the organisation of the Irish Union*, a solemn Visitation was held by Lord Clare, the vice-chancellor of the University, with the
* In the Report from the Secret Committee of the Irish House of Lords, this extension of the plot to the College is noticed as " a desperate project of the same faction to corrupt the youth of the country by introducing their organised system of treason into the University." |
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