stern satisfaction, and discerned therein the germ of high hopes for
the future.

But to certain of the Fenian leaders and Fenian circles in America,
the news came with a pressing and a peculiar interest. They were
largely responsible for the outbreak; the war was, in a manner, their
war. Their late head-centre, James Stephens, was chargeable with it
only in a certain degree. He had promised to initiate the struggle
before the 1st of January of that year. Conscious that his veracity
was regarded in somewhat of a dubious light by many of his followers,
he reiterated the declaration with all possible passion and vehemence,
and even went the length of swearing to it by invocations of the Most
High, before public assemblies of his countrymen. When the time came
for the fulfilment of his pledges he failed to keep them, and was
immediately deposed from his position by the disappointed and enraged
circles which had hitherto trusted him. But in the meantime, relying
on his engagement to lead off an insurrection in Ireland, those
circles had made certain preparations for the event, and a number of
their members, brave Irishmen who had had actual experience of war in
the armies of America, had crossed the Atlantic, and landed in England
and Ireland, to give the movement the benefit of their services. To
these men the break-down of James Stephens was a stunning blow, an
event full of shame and horror; they felt their honour compromised
by his conduct; they considered that they could not return to America
with their mission unattempted, and they resolved to establish their
own honesty and sincerity at all events, as well as the courage
and earnestness of the Fenian Brotherhood in Ireland, by taking the
desperate course of engaging forthwith in open insurrection. It was
in conformity with their arrangements, and in obedience to their
directions, that the rising took place on the night of the 5th of