The Northern papers are relating a story which shows either
that the age of romance is not quite over, or that the Claimant's career has a certain attraction for adventurers. Lord Fitzgibbon, heir to the title and estates of the Earls of Clare, and an officer in the 8th Hussars, was killed in the Balaclava charge, but there was always some uncertainty as to the time and manner of his death, and it is now reported that he didnot die, but was severely wounded and stripped by the Cossacks, and in his forlorn posi- tion treated as an ordinary prisoner from the ranks. He broke some prison rule, and was condemned to the mines in Siberia, whence he has now either escaped or has been released. Lord Fitzgibbon had, fortunately for his relatives, one marked physical peculiarity, namely, a cast in his left eye, and would now be forty years of age. The story is conceivably true, though prisoners in Siberia are not without means of communicating with St. Peters . burg, but it is as probable that the claimant, whoever he is, is relying on popular credulity, or it may be on the readiness of an Irish jury to entertain any narrative romantic enough to excite the imagination.
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