for an asylum: his conduct towards M'Donnell leads to no other conclusion. He endeavored to have this person assassinated, but the shot of Murphy, a miscreant whom he employed, only wounded Mr. M'Donnell in the leg. Murphy was arrested on suspicion of this foul act, kept a short time in prison, and discharged without trial. Fitzgerald, taking up the cause of Murphy, entered a complaint against M'Donnell for false imprisonment, and procured a warrant for his arrest. Accompanied by a band of retainers, and a person named Brecknock as his lawadviser, Fitzgerald proceeded to capture the object of his malice, and carry him in the first place to his own residence at Turlough. The design was, if possible, to provoke a rescue, and to shoot M'Donnell in the scufflesuch, according to Brecknock, being allowable in law! This diabolical plot went exactly as was intended. A hubbub took place, and poor M'Donnell was remorselessly shot through the head. This was the crowning act of Fitzgerald's mad career. Wretchedly as the law was administered in Ireland, it could not overlook the horrible outrage that had been committed. Fitzgerald, an accomplice named Fulton, and his adviser Brecknock, were pursued by a crowd of partisans, captured, and consigned to prison for trial. Fitzgerald was found concealed among a bundle of bedclothes, and dragged with indignity from his home, which was forthwith pillaged so effectually by the mob, that not a single article of any value was left in it from garret to cellar.

The trial of the murderer and his accomplices shortly afterwards took place, and all were found guilty and condemned. Strange to say, Fitzgerald was on the occasion calm, reasonable, and resigned. The only favor he asked of the judge was 'to give him a long day' to settle his affairs; but the sun was not allowed to set on the criminals after the passing of sentence. It would appear as if the high-sheriff, the prosecutors, and indeed all the gentry of Mayo, were afraid that if there were any delay, a reprieve might have been procured by means of Fizgerald's high connections.' The execution was disgracefully managed. The rope by which Fitzgerald was hung up broke, and he fell to the ground. Rising to his feet, he requestVOL. III-I 97

ed a better rope to be brought, and that there might be no more botching. The second time, the rope slipped from the cross-beam, and the feet of the wretched man again reached the ground. A bystander, shocked with the spectacle, interposed, and drawing up the rope, fixed it so effectually that an end was soon put to Fitzgerald's sufferings. The two others appear to have been executed at the same time without any accident. The description given of what followed is too characteristic to bear omission. 'The body being taken down, it was, by the sheriff's permission, conveyed, unmutilated, to Turlough House; and it is a striking fact, that he who had been reared in the lap of luxury, and the associate of the highest in the land, was waked with lights placed in bottlesso utter had been the wreck, so entire the plunder of a house which had contained such an abundance of various valuables, that not a single candlestick was left for the performance of the last rite he should require on earth.' Such was the inglorious end of Fighting Fitzgerald!

Enough, we think, has now been said respecting the prevalence of duelling up till a comparatively late period. The strange thingis, that a practice so repugnant to religion, reason, law, and decency, should so long have received the sanction of public opinion. Although divines preached, and moralists railed against it, still the custom of fighting by challenge continued. It in fact remained in force so long as the law gave it a shelter. At length, by a marked improvement in public feeling, a few years ago, the practice began to be scouted and ridiculed; and on the occurrence of a very shocking duel within the military circle, the highest authorities found it necessary to interpose. A knowledge that in future, the person who killed another in a duel would be tried as a murderer, had its proper influence. Society at large sanctioned this view of affairs, and it became somewhat perilous to be concerned in homicidal encounters. An argument in favor of duelling cannot be omitted. It was alleged, that but for this guard on personal honor, no man would be safe from insult; and that in the army especially, life would not be endurable without this protection. The experience of only a few years has demonstrated the fallacy of these suppositions.

A respect for mutual rights and feelings has indeed advanced with the decay of duelling; and as society no longer considers a man to be a coward who shrinks from the acceptance of a challenge, but rather approves of his reluctance, so do individuals, under a higher sense of delicacy, refrain from saying or doing what is calculated to wound the feelings of each other. Thus has duelling disappeared from amongst us, and now only exists where rude natures have not received the polish of an advanced civilization.

THE MOTHER OF NAPOLEON.

MARIA LETIZIA RAMOLINI, the mother of Napoleon Bonaparte, was descended from a noble Italian family, and was born at Ajaccio, in the island of Corsica, on the 24th of August, 1750. Being possessed of great personal attractions, she was married at an early age to Carlo Bonaparte or Buonaparte, an advocate, the descendant of an Italian family as noble as her own, which had settled in Corsica in the sixteenth century. In January, 1768, she gave birth to her eldest son Guiseppe (Joseph), who became king of Naples, and subsequently of Spain and the Indies.

At the time of the marriage of Carlo Bonaparte to Maria Letizia Ramolini, the island of Corsica was the scene of war and tumult. The people, under their celebrated leader Pascal Paoli, had struggled for several years to assert their independence of the Genoese Republic; and, having baffled that enemy, they had now to contend with the king of France, to whom Genoa had made over her claims, as if a nation had been a piece of merchandise liable to be bartered from one hand to another. Carlo Bonaparte was the friend and zealous co-patriot of Paoli, and had distinguished himself in the war against the Genoese. In 1768, when an army of 5000 French landed for the purpose of reducing the island, the most of the considerable families in Ajaccio, including that of Bonaparte, found it necessary

to fly to the mountainous country in the interior, where for some time they made a bold resistance, though ultimately obliged to submit. Madame Bonaparte accompanied her husband during the whole progress of this irregular warfare; the existence of her second and most remarkable child appears to have commenced amidst the hardships and wild adventures of a mountain campaign. When the island was finally settled under French rule, in June, 1769, she returned with her husband to their house in Ajaccio, which is described as one of handsome appearance, forming one side of a court which leads out of the Rue Charles.' On the 15th August, being the festival of the Assumption, she attended high-mass, but, finding herself unable to sit out the ceremony, hastened home, and no preparations being made for her reception, she gave birth to her son upon an old piece of tapestry representing a scene from the Iliad. It has been reported that Paoli was the godfather of the child thus brought into the world; but that hero had ere now quitted the island and taken refuge in England. His godfathers were Laurent Giubeya and Celtruda Bonaparte, and he received the name of Napolione, which had been introduced into the paternal house some generations before. It was considered a fortunate circumstance by his friends, in after-life, that he was born subsequently to June, 1769, when the island was annexed to France, as though by nation and language an Italian, he thus became a born citizen of the country which he was afterwards to rule.

The subsequent children of Madame Bonaparte were Mariana (Marie Anne Elisa),* who became Grand-Duchess of Tuscany; Luciano (Lucien), Prince of Canino; Paoletta (Marie Paulette), afterwards Madame Leclerc, and finally Princess Borghese and Duchess of Guastalla; Luigi (Louis), who became king of Holland, but renounced the crown rather than become the oppressor of his subjects; Annunziada (Annonciade Caroline), afterwards Madame Murat and Queen of the two Sicilies; Girolana (Jerome), afterwards king of Westphalia. The family became in time

*The names of the Bonaparte family are here given in their original Italian forms, while the French modifications afterwards adopted by them follow within parentheses.

reconciled to the French government, and obtained the friendship of the governor of the island, the Count de Marbœuf, by whose interest Carlo Bonaparte was included in a deputation of the Corsican nobles,* sent to Louis XVI. in 1776. His conduct on this occasion obtained for him the office of assessor of the tribunal of Ajaccio, the income of which enabled him to maintain his increasing family, which the smallness of his patrimony, and some habits of expense, would otherwise have rendered difficult. During a subsequent journey to France as one of a deputation of Corsican nobles, he was attacked by schirrus in the stomach, and breathed his last at Montpelier, February, 1785, in the house of the father of Madame Junot, leaving his family, the youngest of whom was only two months old, entirely unprovided for.

The duty of rearing a number of young children upon the resources of a poor widow, fell to the subject of this memoir, and was performed by her in a creditable manner. The Count de Marboeuf had provided for Napoleon by placing him at the Military School of Brienne, from which he had already been removed to Paris, to complete his education in the general school there. Her daughter Mariana was also brought up by the government at St. Cyr. The life of Madame Bonaparte was one of poverty until the elevation of her son; but before that period she was destined to encounter adventures not less singular than those which she had experienced during the struggle for Corsican independence. In 1792, Paoli was sent by the French government to take the military command of Corsica; but being unfavorable to the progress of Jacobin principles, he soon became exposed to the resentment of his constituents, and projected the surrender of the island to a British fleet. Napoleon, now a captain of artillery in the French service, chanced to be in his native island upon leave of absence, and, being strongly opposed upon principle to the design of Paoli, made a bold but unsuccessful attempt to thwart it. Being baffled in an attempt to take Ajaccio out of the hands of Paoli, he and his family were proscribed, and compelled to fly. He took refuge in the *The nobles of Corsica were individuals who had never been in trade; but the family of Carlo Bonaparte was of the higher order of nobility. I*

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