with which his unparalleled successes have been crowned. Whose were the
arms that drove your bayonets at Vimiera through the phalanxes that never
reeled to the shock of war before? What desperate valor climbed the steeps
and filled the moats at Badajos? All his victories should have rushed and
crowded back upon his memory,--Vimiera, Badajos, Salamanca, Albuera,
Toulouse, and, last of all, the greatest--

Tell me--for you were there,--I appeal to the gallant soldier before me,
from whose opinions I differ, but who bears, I know, a generous heart in an
intrepid breast;--tell me, for you must needs remember, on that day when
the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance,--while death fell
in showers when the artillery of France was levelled with a precision of
the most deadly science, when her legions, incited by the voice and
inspired by the example of their mighty leader, rushed again and again to
the onset,--tell me if, for an instant, when to hesitate for an instant
was to be lost, the "aliens" blenched? And when, at length, the moment for
the last and decided movement had arrived, and the valor which had so long
been wisely checked was, at last, let loose,--when, with words familiar
but immortal, the great captain commanded the great assault,--tell me if
Catholic Ireland with less heroic valor than the natives of this your own
glorious country precipitated herself upon the foe? The blood of England,
Scotland, and of Ireland, flowed in the same stream, and drenched the same
field. When the chill morning dawned, their dead lay cold and stark
together;--in the same deep pit their bodies were deposited; the green
corn of spring is now breaking from their commingled dust; the dew falls
from heaven upon their union in the grave. Partakers in every peril, in the
glory shall we not be permitted to participate; and shall we be told as a
requital, that we are estranged from the noble country for whose salvation
our life-blood was poured out?
R. L. Sheil.