critical juncture that Stephens himself was arrested. The military council met at once to check the consternation which this news had already spread. What everyone had feared had come to pass. The one man in whom the entire control of the Fenian movement was vested had been captured. The one man who was conversant with every detail of its varied activities, the only man in the Brotherhood who knew the plans which he had been working up to, had suddenly been taken from them, and there was no one capable of replacing him. He had never trusted his subordinates, and so when the crisis came it found them incapable of carrying on his work. General Millen was elected temporary head of the Fenians, and after a prolonged debate it was decided that nothing should be done until by some means Stephens could be communicated with. By great good fortune none of the confidential papers of the conspiracy had been captured. They were hidden in the hollow legs of the chairs at one of Stephens' houses (for he judged it prudent to have several), and the detectives had not discovered them. Nevertheless this suspension of the work of the Brotherhood was not the only ill result of Stephens' capture. Criticism of his methods, which before had been stifled, now broke out fiercely. Nor were rumours wanting which asserted that he had actually provided for and planned his own arrest. It was said that his scheme was to get himself tried and convicted, when he would, it was stated, find the means of obtaining a pardon from the Crown, and be able to pose thereafter". as a Hibernian Kossuth, or a second Smith O'Brien, with the difference that he might yet live to enjoy life easily through the emoluments of some post or pension hereafter to be conferred by the Crown Head of Great Britain and Ireland." However improbable this may seem, it was yet freely discussed; and even after Stephens succeeded in effecting his escape, by means of two Fenian warders and a key made by a Fenian locksmith, he never regained his former reputation or got over the distrust the Brotherhood had begun to feel for him. Millen despatched messengers to the various provincial centres, bidding them be of good cheer, and asking them to hold themselves constantly ready for action. And then two days later a messenger arrived from America. He brought encouraging tidings. The reports received had been judged satisfactory. The bonds were on the market, and money was coming in plentifully. If the Fenians would only have patience a little while longer, they would be able to take action at last. An American expedition was being planned. Thanks to a new and important member who had just joined O'Mahony's staff, the intervention of the United States was assured. This man, Mr Bernard Killian, possessed great influence in the Cabinet at Washington. He had already obtained the President's promise that, as soon as the Fenians in Ireland declared hostilities, the United States would acknowledge them as belligerents and send the American section over in a fleet of gunboats (he did not say how many) which would blow the English ships out of the water. In short, "tout était pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes," and all this success was due to the admirable harmony which reigned in New York city. In spite, however, of this reassuring news, the Fenian movement was nearing its end. These comforting tidings from America were nevertheless hailed with enthusiasm as a sign that the Fenians might at last begin to hope. The promises were widely circulated among the centres, and everywhere a spirit of optimism took the place of the discouragement that had reigned before. The hopes of all were centred on the Great Convention soon to be held on the other side of the water. It was generally felt that now the time was at last drawing nigh when the days of Saxon misrule in Ireland were numbered. It was the reaction from this burst of optimism, the disappointment and disgust which was produced by the failure of the Convention, which dealt the death-blow to Irish Fenianism. The day after the receipt of this news Stephens succeeded in communicating with the military council, by means of a note sent by the hands of Miss Hopper. This despatch, which was brief and to the point, ran thus: "General Millen to return to U.S. immediately and without loss of time to state case in all its bearings there, and to return with the first expedition, but not not sooner. The landing of the first expedition to be the signal of an universal rising here. Mr Nolan is appointed paymaster." Millen called a meeting of the military council and asked for their opinion as to the advisability of obeying this order and leaving the movement in Ireland without a head. They considered that so long as Stephens could make his wishes known he should be obeyed. Accordingly General Millen prepared to leave Ireland. Three days later Stephens effected his escape. As 800n as the General reached New York, O'Mahony appointed him Chief of the Expeditionary Bureau. It was not a very arduous task which he had been allotted. There were muster-rolls of the volunteers who would be ready to sail for Ireland when the time came, and these had to be certified. There were also war stores to be looked after, to the extent of some fifty old muskets and a large number of second-hand knapsacks. But it was decided that no details should be settled until the general policy of the Brotherhood had been discussed and fixed upon at the in the hope of getting their views adopted, but resolutely determined not to yield an inch. O'Mahony asked the Convention for decisive action. The time had come, he said, when the "men in the gap had waited long enough. They were ready, they were armed, they only awaited the assurance of help from America to sweep the hated Saxon from the land. General Sweeny opposed him with great bitterness of language. Stephens, he asserted, had humbugged his associates. The military organisation in Ireland was a farce. Messrs O'Meehan and Dunne, he said, had been deceived. They now repudiated the reports they had sent in, and admitted they had accepted as facts and without investigation all that Stephens had told them. Their them. They now united themselves with him in demanding an expedition to Canada. Once a base of operations had been secured in that country, it would be time to give the signal in Ireland. Great Convention to be held in Clinton Hall in January. The 2nd of that month was the date when the great event was to commence. Subsequently to the arrival of the last envoy to Ireland, however, the split had declared itself in the Fenian ranks which was destined to ruin their cause. O'Mahony had in November created a new advisory body to help him in his work, which he called his Senate. And now he was in conflict with it. "Instead of harmony and unity of action," writes Millen, "they were blackguarding and vilifying each other in the most scandalous way, flying at each other's throats in a more vicious and vindictive manner than the Kilkenny cats." The leaders of the Senatorial party were Roberts and Sweeny. Their policy was to invade Canada as a preliminary step and so distract the attention of England. O'Mahony wished to afford immediate help in men, arms, and money to Stephens in Ireland. And both parties obstinately refused even to meet privately for a discussion of their differences. Each repudiated the other, qualified it as illegal and sacrificing the general interests to the interests of party, devoted itself to furious diatribes and backbiting. On the 2nd of January the Convention met. On the same day appeared General Sweeny's manifesto. From the beginning the Clinton Hall Convention was a failure. The two parties both attended Of course, if there was no military organisation in Ireland, as he asserted, then one plan was no better than the other. But the assembly had met, not to debate, but to fight. Between such antagonists it was futile to expect a reasonable settlement for the public good. The Convention broke broke up, having accomplished nothing. After three days of acrimonious discussion and a most violent scene between Killian and Sweeny, who accused each other of all the crimes in the calen dar, the Fenian Parliament of York of old, Sweeny, with collapsed. A bare majority considerably fewer than 10,000 passed a vote of confidence in men, "marched them up the O'Mahony and expelled the hill and then, he marched them Senatorial party from the down again." The Dublin Secconspiracy. It was the vir- tion died of inanition and the tual end of the dangers of loss of their leaders. Fenianism. And so, with this fiasco, this great and threatening movement lost its power. It is not necessary to recall how the last embers of revolt were quenched in Ireland, or to speak of the dying flickers of what bade fair at one time to be a fire which should light Ireland from end to end. Roberts and Sweeny demonstrated by a ridiculous travesty of of invasion how powerless the Fenians they led could be against the British Empire. Like the Duke Few men are better than Irishmen when they are well led. But without leaders they invariably quarrel and waste their energies in the bitter prosecution of feuds. We are asked to believe that the men who dominate contemporary Irish politics are capable of composing a government which shall bring peace and prosperity to their country. Are the records of the past such as to inspire us with the belief that the Celt can change his nature? P. L. AHU-GARDANI. BY MAJOR R. L. KENNION. “Figurez-vouz,” disait-il, IN the Persian Book of Kings we read how the hunting monarch Bahram, accompanied by his wife Azadeh, went a-hunting. Four gazelle were spotted, and Bahram asked his lady which of them he should shoot. Azadeh seems to have been a very feminine person, for in reply she set him a very stiff task, promising that if it was successfully accomplished she would call him "Light of the world." This was nothing less than to make a female of the male gazelle and a male of the doe. The first part of the task was managed by the skilful Bahram shooting off the horns of the buck; the second by shooting an arrow at a doe se as to make it lay its ear on its shoulder and lift a hind leg to scratch it. A second arrow was then launched, which pinned ear and hind leg together, giving the doe the appearance of having a horn. Azadeh thereupon burst into tears of pity, which so irritated the monarch that he ordered her to be trampled under the feet of his dromedary, and so "made an end of her." Poor Azadeh ! She was, in her humanity, much in advance of her time. One can hardly help the reflection, however, that the status of husband is not what it used to be. Compare the position of the twentieth century bene dick, hard put to it to squash his wife with dialectics and arguments, with that of one who could employ his dromedary to the same end! Still, Bahram's action was certainly hasty. Gazelle are still found in Persia, wild as the proverbial hawk, on plains flat as the sea and almost like the sea in extent; not in numerous or big herds, but in little isolated parties, with many a weary mile between each. So that let alone turning bucks into does and does into bucks, it is not easy to get a shot at one at all. The Persians have three methods of shooting gazelle— by night over water, a way that has nothing to recommend it to the sportsman; the almost equally unsporting way adopted by the nobility of the country of rounding them up with half a regiment of horsemen and blazing into them with scatter guns; and ahu-gardani. Putting it at its simplest, the word (literally gazelle-turning) means lying behind cover while an assistant moves the quarry up within rifle-shot, but it is not quite so easy as this bare description might lead one to suppose. Indeed, far more often than not, gazelle on the plains of Eastern Persia leave but a bare remembrance of a |