'Et sunt sua fata sepulchris.'(1)
(1) This prophecy has since been realised; for the aisle in
which Sir Robert's remains were laid has been suffered to
fall completely to decay; and the tomb which marked his
grave, and other monuments more curious, form now one
indistinguishable mass of rubbish.
The events which I have recorded are not imaginary. They are FACTS; and there lives one whose authority none would venture to question, who could vindicate the accuracy of every statement which I have set down, and that, too, with all the circumstantiality of an eye-witness.(2)
(2) This paper, from a memorandum, I find to have been
written in 1803. The lady to whom allusion is made, I
believe to be Miss Mary F——d. She never married, and
survived both her sisters, living to a very advanced age.
THE LAST HEIR OF CASTLE CONNOR.
Being a third Extract from the legacy of the late Francis Purcell, P. P. of Drumcoolagh.
There is something in the decay of ancient grandeur to interest even the most unconcerned spectator—the evidences of greatness, of power, and of pride that survive the wreck of time, proving, in mournful contrast with present desolation and decay, what WAS in other days, appeal, with a resistless power, to the sympathies of our nature. And when, as we gaze on the scion of some ruined family, the first impulse of nature that bids us regard his fate with interest and respect is justified by the recollection of great exertions and self-devotion and sacrifices in the cause of a lost country and of a despised religion—sacrifices and efforts made with all the motives of faithfulness and of honour, and terminating in ruin—in such a case respect becomes veneration, and the interest we feel amounts almost to a passion.
It is this feeling which has thrown the magic veil of romance over every roofless castle and ruined turret throughout our country; it is this feeling that, so long as a tower remains above the level of the soil, so long as one scion of a prostrate and impoverished family survives, will never suffer Ireland to yield to the stranger more than the 'mouth honour' which fear compels.(3) I who have conversed viva voce et propria persona with those whose recollections could run back so far as the times previous to the confiscations which followed the Revolution of 1688—whose memory could repeople halls long roofless and desolate, and point out the places where greatness once had been, may feel all this more strongly, and with a more vivid interest, than can those whose sympathies are awakened by the feebler influence of what may be called the PICTURESQUE effects of ruin and decay.
(3) This passage serves (mirabile dictu) to corroborate a
statement of Mr. O'Connell's, which occurs in his evidence
given before the House of Commons, wherein he affirms that
the principles of the Irish priesthood 'ARE democratic, and
were those of Jacobinism.'—See digest of the evidence upon
the state of Ireland, given before the House of Commons.