place, events have occurred in Ireland which go far to justify the prediction here made.

On the 8th of August there is a letter from Mitchel to his wife :

MY DEAR JENNY,

... About ten days ago, I visited General Beauregard. Next day he returned my visit, and sat with me for some time. He was just about starting for Vichy, a watering-place in the centre of France, where he is recommended to go for his health, which, he says, has been a good deal shattered—and, in fact, he looks old. I had also a visit one day from a young Cabell of (I think) Buckingham County, in Virginia, who, after serving the whole four years of the war, has come abroad to put himself to an engineering school, in order to have some way of earning a livelihood. He says he knows the Moseley family well. Seems a fine young man ; dined with me in a restaurant, and I learned from him as well as from General Beauregard, very much of what is going on over there. I also get the Daily News (that is, the semi-weekly edition), and can trace the progress of events. It is a progress backwards. I can see no prospect of a speedy end being put to martial law in Virginia; and till that happens, I cannot resolve to try and live over there. They would not let me write in Virginia at all—not so much as put pen to paper upon any subject. So that if I went to that side of the water at all, I should have to stay in New York. Even there I might be taken up again, if I wrote anything, for I think there are going to be rough times there.

In the following month of September, he writes to his brother William :

This is to inform you that Father Kenyon, John Martin, and I, are happily met, after vicissitudes. I am back in my old quarters here, and here also are installed those two. I was glad to get away from the place in the Rue Rivoli, where I was poisonedin the most literal sense poisoned—by foul air, and where I had like to die, but for a capital constitution I have. I find poor Father Kenyon sadly altered in every way. My present intention. is to leave this, and go to America before the end of October;

་ ་ ན་

1866.]

DEATH OF JOHN B. DILLON.

249

There were few

but I will write to you before that, if I don't see you. The death
of John Dillon is a real and bitter sorrow to me.
men of his type in the world. He was all wrong, about almost
everything. Nevertheless, he was better than most folk who are
all right. He was very much attached to you, and, I suppose,
you to him. I am sorry I wrote as I did in last Saturday's Nation
about his project (for his it was) of the Bright banquet. But it
was a bad project, and is an intolerable idea—that is, to me.

Mr. John B. Dillon, referred to in the above, had died only a few days before the letter was written. He and Mitchel had differed considerably on matters political, both during the Young Ireland times and more recently. But their differences had never interfered with their friendship. Mitchel's letters show that there were few men for whom he had a greater regard and respect than John Dillon.

Towards the end of September, Father Kenyon and John Martin returned to Ireland, and Mitchel was again left alone. He now began to prepare for returning to America. He had been nearly a year away, and he was naturally anxious to rejoin his family. It was clear to him that he could not manage to bring them over to live in France; and the only alternative was to go back to them in America. On the 16th of October, there is a letter to his brother William, in which I find this passage:

I am going soon to America, but don't know what day yet. We had an astonishing life of it while Father Kenyon was here for a fortnight. The worst of it was, he would hardly ever go to bed. As to the fine account he gives you of my health and spirits, you must know I deliberately deceived the poor old fellow about all that. I knew I would never see him again, and tried to make his visit pleasant. I am neither in very good health nor in good spirits at all. How can I, with such prospects before me and my children? What may become of me, indeed, matters little, but I am wretched about them.

Towards the middle of October, he was ready to leave.

It was his last visit to France; and he had a kind of presentiment that it would be so. With this feeling, he perhaps lingered a little longer than he otherwise would have done, paying farewell visits to friends. Here is his account of his last days in France :

There is charming autumnal weather now in France, which I enjoy in an unquiet kind of way. Profitons de nos derniers beaux jours. I go to pay my last visits to certain friends, French and Irish; to the family of Bramet at Choisy; to the Bayers in Paris, and the ladies kiss me on both cheeks and send kind messages to my family; to the good Père Hogan at the Seminary of St. Sulpice; to M. Marie-Martin and his wife, at whose pleasant house I have often visited; to my friends the Leonards, now returned from their sea-bathing, and to the worthy and admirable Mr. Doherty, aged, white-haired, yet still young in heart; also to the grave of my daughter Henrietta in the cemetery of Mont Parnasse, whither I carry a laurieriin (what we call laurustinus) in a large pot, and place it on the tombstone, and "Adieu !"

He took his passage on the Pereire, of the French Transatlantic line, and made his arrangements so as to join the ship at Brest, instead of at Havre, as on former occasions. He was anxious to see something of Bretagne, and, in particular, of Brest. He thought of Wolfe Tone and of the expedition that was to start from Brest harbour. The journey through Bretagne is described at some length in the "Journal." He arrived at Brest late at night, and the next morning had a few hours to walk about the town before going on board. When he went on board the Pereire, the captain at once recognized him; he was the same captain who had commanded the ship l'Europe, in which Mitchel had come over the previous year. Mitchel had his last glimpse of France that October evening :

I looked back until the last blue lines of the French coast faded into the evening mist. Perhaps it is the last time I shall ever see that fair and pleasant land. Yet who knows? If this

1866.]

FAREWELL TO FRANCE!

251

unnatural and poisonous entente cordiale happily come to an end in my time, I will certainly come again; and then I may have the chance of steaming out of the Goulet of Brest for another destination. Anyhow, Vive la France!

Nothing further worthy of notice occurred until Mitchel once more, and for the fourth time in his life, landed at New York.

CHAPTER VII.

CLOSING YEARS AND DEATH.

1866-1875.

WITH the landing at New York, mentioned at the close of the last chapter, the "Jail Journal Continuation" comes to an end. Of the last eight and a half years of his life, Mitchel has left us no account; and the materials for writing the narrative of his life during this period are very scanty. He wrote but few private letters during these years. I shall, therefore, be obliged to tell the story of John Mitchel's closing years very briefly. This is the less to be regretted, firstly because, for the greater part of this time, Mitchel's life was very uneventful; and secondly, because, as already intimated, he never recovered, mentally or physically, from the effects of his imprisonment in Fortress Monroe. He never was the same man again. No doubt there is a great deal of good writing in the Irish Citizen; and the "History of Ireland” and “Letters in Answer to Froude" show a literary faculty that would be remarkable in any ordinary man. But for John Mitchel these writings are rather below than above the average. His best writing, both literary and political, was done before he reached his fiftieth year.

Of Mitchel's changed appearance, after his release from Fortress Monroe, I have received the following description from a member of his family: "On first seeing him after