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THE
IRISH MONTHLY.
A Magazine of General Piterature.
EDITED BY THE REV. MATTHEW RUSSELL, S.J.
NINETEENTH YEARLY VOLUME,
I8QI.
DUBLIN: M. H. GILL & SON, O’CONNELL STREET. LONDON : BURNS AND OATES; SIMPKIN, MARSHALL AND CO. |
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ARD COLL es > coa “FEB 8 1917 LIBRARY
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CONTENTS.
STORIES.
Fritz. By Frances Wynne .. ee How it happened in Ballybrook. By Jessie e Tulloch se Notice to Quit. By Julia O’Ryan ee oe Kileen’s Trust. By J. O’G. L. ws si Won by Worth. By Attie O'Brien,
CHAPTER I. . The Bud Blossoms
. First Impressions
. The Lord of the Soil
. A Pre-Ballot Election
. Our Dootor and his Sister .. . Canvassing - ve . Mr. Huntingdon invites himself to tea
. A Woodland Encounter . . At the Boardroom ee . . Mrs. Wiseman ventilates her Opinions . The Doctor’s Dinner Party
. Wound up with Music... . Too Soon and Too Late
. Over the Fire ..
. Peg Murphy in Luok
. A Revolt against Dullneas .. . A Little Conversation
The Desmond Family
Breaking New Ground A Dance
. Darby’s Bed .. . Electioneering and other Matters
SKETCHES OF PLACES AND PERSONS.
Thomas Davis, By Judge O’ Hagan ee Recollections of John Boyle O’Reilly. By Count Plunkett
An Irish Chief Baron of the last Century. By the Editor
An Unknown Hero. By M. W. Brew...
The late Professor Casey
The Religious Vicissitudes of Adare. By the Rev. T. E. Bridgett, C.SS.R
iV . Contents.
Dear Old Maynooth. By the Rev. Richard O'Rennody
Part I. oe ee died Part II, . es ee oe Part III. Dr. P. A, Murray oe oe oe Another Sailor Jesuit (Father Granville Wood) se ae Professor Casey. Another Tribute to his Memory .. ee
Items about Irish Men and Women :—
Father Arthur O’Leary, Digby Pilot Starkey, Paul McSwiney,
John McCarthy, Joseph O’Mara, George Darley
Denis Florence MacCarthy. By John 0’ Hagan oe os A French Poet-Archbishop (de la Bouillerie) By the Editor An Ancient Monastic Town—Shrewsbury. By M, A. C. In an Ulster Town. By Magdalen Rock.. Sketches in Irish Biography. No. 20—Dr. Callan of Maynooth — ‘¢ Uncle Remus.” By O. K. .. oe se ae Note on “Dr. Murray of Maynooth.” ,.,, . The Benedictines in Ireland. By the Rev. J. A. Howlett, 0.8 B. The O’Conors of Connanght. By Judge O’Connor Morris At Killarney. By Rosa Mulholland ve At Cork. By the Same - At Youghal. By theSame ... . Rose Kavanagh. Scraps from her life and letters, By the Editor Our Poets. No. 25. The Rev. Abram Ryan oe Rostrevor as a Health Resort. By Dr. R. J. Reilly .
Essays AND REVIEw3.
rish Youth and High Ideals. By tho Rev. P. A. Sheehan On Concentration. By the Present Writer os oe Art as a Profession and as a Branch of Education. By Denny Lane A Plea for the Minor Songsters. By M. E. Francis oe , Overworked Words. By 8.G. D. ee we ee Miss Augusta Winthrop and her Critics .. Wilkie Collins and the Novelists of the Day. By W. 7. J obnston, M.A.
PAGE
612,
D. F. MacCarthy’s ‘‘ Waiting for the May,” and its Imitators. By M.R. ..
An Old Irish Orchard. By Rosa Mulholland
The Last of a Hated Race, By the Editor
The Primate’s First Confession
Wanted an Irish Novelist. By R. M. and others
Confirmation Day. By Magdalen Rock ..
In an Irish Village. By M.E. Francis ..
St. Aloysius, Model of Youth. By the Rev. W. A. Sutton, S J. Holiday Time. By Magdalen Rock
The Poet and the Painter. An Episode in the Night of the Big Wind.
By M. D., Belfast .. oe Child Life in Shakespeare's Plays. By Montagn L. Griffin A Last Word on Calderon’s Picture. By Hilaire Belloc A Sunday in the Country. By Magdalen Rock
136 216 337
143
142
157 209 181 308 269 296 363 377 449 481 505 5261 617 601 629 640
39
70
78
82 102 148 199 237 271 321 348 368 374 393 417 422
428 434 478 536
The Mystery of ‘‘ Shall ’’ and “Will.” By the Rev. Frederick Kolbe, D.D. 540, 569
Contents.
‘ Nores on New Books.
Poteen Punch.—Peter’s Rock in Mohammed’s Flood.—Father Bridgott's Blessed John Fisher.—D. £. Mail and Irish Times on Miss Wynne’s Poems, &c., &c.
PAGE
55
John Francis O’Donnell’s Poems. —Mary i in the Epistles, — Frank Mathew’ 8 -
Life of Father Mathew.—A Casket of Irish Pearls— Dom Jerome Vaughan’s St. Thomas Aquinas.—_The Westminster Series by Cardinal Manning.—A Happy Year.—The Christian Virgin in her Family.—The Press on Cardinal Newman.—The Blind Apostle and a Heroine of Charity.—South African Catholic Magazine.—The Eagle ..
Mr. Piatt’s Eesays.—Lady Merton.—Christian Apology.—Sketches In Westmeath.—New C. T. 8. Publicatiens.— Life of B. Margaret Mary.— Science of the Saints. —Festival o the Rosary at the Tomb of Dominic.— Christian Art in our own Age.—TIndex-Catalogue of Capel-street Library.— The Young Man in Catholic Life-—The Lamp, &c. oe
The Disappearance of John Longworthy.—Order in the Physical World.— Acts of English Martyrs.—Fr. Bridgett’s Sir Thomas More oe
Fr. Edmund O’Reilly, 8. J., on the Relations of the Church to Society.— Percy Wynne. —Médaille’ g Meditations.—Various Editions of ‘* The Messenger of the Sacred Heart.’’—Nature Notes.—Magazine and Book Review.—Our Alma Mater.—The Highlander.—Men and Women in the Far-off Time.— Demon of Gold, &c.—Catholic Fireside, &c., &c. .
How to get on.—The Birthday Book of the Sacred Heart —Blessed Angelina of Marsciano.—Ecolesiastical Antiquities of Brigown. — Rereontenary Life of St. Aloysius, &c., &c.
Representative Irish Tales. — Mother Kaveria Fallon. —A Saint among Saints.- — A Cracked Fiddle.—The History of St. Dominick.—Several Lives of St. Aloysius.—Mrs. Hope’s Works.—Fr. Hayden’s Introduction to Irish.— Memoir of Mrs. Craven.—Elbel’s Theology.—Solace for the Affiicted.— Fr. Gerard’s ‘‘ Missing Link. — Mise Banim’s ‘‘ Here and there through Ireland ”’
Michael Villiers, Idealist, and Other "Poems, _Dr. Schanz’s 8 Christian Apology.—Catholic Truth Society Publications.—Life of Father Curtis, 8.7.
The New Tustrated Lives of 88. Ignatius and Aloysius, —Lord Charle- mont’s Memoirs and Correspondence.—Letters of Archbishop Porter.— Lerins Abbey.—Fredk. Pustet’s Publications.—An Irish Wild Flower.— &c. ee
A Nun: Her Order and her Friends. — Miss Starr’s ” Christmastide. —Wash- bourne’s Roman Missal.—Missionary Record of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.—The Science of God.—Gertrude Mannering, &c. -
Autobiography of Archbishop Ullathorne.—Dorrie—The Curé d’Ars.—Life and Glories of St. Joseph.—The Lady of Raven’s Combe.—Wilmer’s Handbook of the Christian Religion.—Sermons in Pictures.— Madeline’s Destiny.—C. T. 8. Publications. Illustrated Bible History, &c.
John Sherman.—Blanaid.—Peter, or the Power of a Good Education.— Hunolt’s Sermons.—A Jacobite Narrative of the Irish War 1688-1692.— Catholic Home Almanac.—Catholic Family Annual, &c. oe
108
163
223
275
334
378
443
614
662
vi Contents.
2
Poems vNp MIscELLANEOUS PAPERS.
Altar Lights. By Katharine Tynan ee ee Father Damian. ByG.T... ve The Memory of Slievegullion. _ By T. O'R. w Month’s Mind. By M.B. .
Life’s Pilgrimage. By D. B.
My Mother. By 8. M. P. i ee Land! Land! By M. R. oe - os To ————_ By Jessie Tulloch ve =
Saint Lucy. By D. B. A Last Sunday in Ireland. By Magdalen Rock
Ad Lucem. By Susan H. Connolly ee A Spring Song. By David Bearne es
' A Father’s Memory. By ML. ve oe Sickness. By D. B. . oe oe Gathered Early. By J. M. R. oe oe A Tear. By the Rev. D. B. Collins os os A Churchyard Scene. By Magdalen Rock os “I worship thee, sweet Will of God!” By E, B. The Irish Thrush. By William W. Hanna oe Rose Kavanagh. By Katharine Tynan .. ee A Cry in the World. By Dora Sigerson oe Sympathy. By Patrick J. Coleman ee oe
A Rose and a Robin. By Mary Furlong
To the Memory of Rose Kavanagh. By Thomas Donohoe
The “ Month of Mary” Altar. By K.D.
St. Philip’s Last Mass. By the Rev. David Bearne, 8. J.
To Rose in Heaven. By Katharine Tynan
Spring’s Gifts. By Magdalen Rock ve oe Venit Nox. By Robert James Reilly .. ve A Friend Long Dead. By M. A. oe we Land of my Youth. By Patrick J. Coleman vs St. Teresa’s Bookmark ee ee ee In Memoriam Rosae. By Eugene Davis.. <‘_ .. The Captain’s Son. By Susan H. Connolly
‘* Ecce Sto ad Ostium.”” By K.D.B. .. oe
Seeking. By Dora Sigerson .. 2. The Widow’s Crown of Sorrow. By Jessie ie Tulloch os
The Two Paths. A Villanelle. By 5. M. P. oe Wood Notes. By the Rev. David Bearne, 8.J. ve Time and Tide. By Robert James Reilly ee Jetaam. By Patrick J. Coleman oe 7 Glenismole. By Mary Furlong oe oe
A Girl’s Thought. By Alice Furlong ..
On the Opening of Our Lady’s Grotto at Hodder. By J. W. A.
Lost and Found. By Constance Hope... o. O Heavenly Grace. By Marian St. La Puy ee A Girl’s Picture. By C. G. O’B. .
PAQK 18 18 26 33 38 69 72 81 87
101 105 126 133 148 151 156 179 180 198 209 216 223 236 263 274 274 280 294 306 307 317 318 825 347 361 362 367 373 402 402 416 420 427 463 477 480 493
Contents. vil
PAGE.
An Emigrant. By Jessie Tulloch . °° 6494 To a Lady in my Garden. By Hilaire Belloc 501 Lady Kathleen. By Dora Sigerson 510 The Urn of God. By E.5. .. §21 The Vesper Bell. By Eugene Davis ee 634 The Artist’s Wakening. By Montagu L. Grifán -- 539 Lough Gara. By Patrick J. Coleman 549 A Day too Late. By Magdalen Rock 567 By the Sea. By Jesaie Tulloch - 581 Dr. Murray as Edinburgh Reviewer: with Letter by T. Carlyle 582 The Master of the Roses. By Katharine Tynan 587 The Coming-back of the Dead. By Mra. Piatt 600 A Loet Kingdom of Gods. By James J. Piatt 607 Forsaken. By Alice Furlong 608 Altar Work for Foreign Missions. A Peculiar Allocution 609 A Choice. By Emily H. Hickey ee 627 A Child in the Park. By Sarah M. B. Piatt 628 Time and the Lady. By Dora Sigerson .. 639 Brother Giles and the Theologian. By T. E. B. 646 Sicat Tabernacula Pastorum. By QO. K. 647 A Type-writer’s Sonnet. By M. R. - 649 Through the Lattice. By Elinor M. Sweetman ve 662 Pigeonhole Paragraphs. By the Present Writer 264, 328, '386, 446 495, 561 Winged Words .. - ee we 317, 446.
ee un ——
NOTICE.
The many kind friends who take a personal interest in the prosperity of this Magazine can serve it best by forwarding at once their subscription of Seven Shillings for the year 1892, to the Rev. Matruew Rtessetr, S8.J., St. Francis Xavier's, Upper Gardiner-street, Dublin.
THE
IRISH MONTHLY.
JANUARY, 1891.
ee ee
“THOMAS DAVIS. By Jonn O’Haean.
HE eighteenth yearly volume of this Magazine was brought to a T close last month with a brief tribute of love and admiration to the memoryof Mr Justice O'Hagan, who died on the 12th of Novem- ber. That volume contained his last verses—‘‘ The Children’s Ballad Rosary.” Our present volume must begin with his last prose. It was written for an English review— Zhe Contemporary—as its opening sentences imply; but it is reprinted here at the suggestion of the person most concerned in it among the living, and with the consent of
the author, given a week or two before his death. * * ow *
The name of Thomas Davis has begun to be known in England as that of a young Irish patriot of a past generation, the foremost of the Young Ireland party of his day, fervent in his passion for Irish nationality, yet from his personal qualities winning the esteem of those who differed widely from his opinions. He died in his thirty- first year, in 1845—that is, three years before what is commonly reyarded as the Young Ireland era, 1848. A few years ago Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, in his historical work named “ Young Ireland,” gave a vivid portraiture of his early friend and associate, with the story of his public life, so far as that term could be applied to one who eared nothing for publicity. Sir Gavan Duffy has now published a full and most interesting biography, tracing his career throughout, and giving large extracts from his private letters, which disclose the inmost thoughts and aspirations of the man. Some months ago an admirably chosen selection from his prose works was published in the Camelot Series, edited by Mr. T. W. Rolleston. Take also the little volume of his poems brought out shortly after his death by his friend Mr. Thomas Wallis, and frequently reprinted. From these sources
Vor. xrx. No, 21. 1
2 The bush Monthly.
Fá w
we have the means of judging what he was. It is a study of interest to all who prize men of the stamp of Davis, of whatsoever: land or race. It is one of deep import to all who desire to have a real discernment of the Irish question.
The biography is in itself a remarkable phenomenon. We have an author who has held the highest political positions in Australia, and who during his long life has had the widest and most varied experience of men in both hemispheres. He now, in his old age, turns to the friend and fellow-labourer of his youth, not with admiration merely or the tenderest affection, but with all the reverential attitude of a disciple to his teacher. In Carlyle’s Life of ‘Sterling, the master looks down in a kindly but somewhat con- temptuous fashion upon his scholar. Sir Gavan Duffy can hardly permit the least breath of criticism or disparagement to mingle with his veneration. He speaks of Davis as the best man he had-ever known. And of the repute in which he is held at this hour, he says in the first page of his work: ‘‘If the educated Irishmen of to-day of all classes and parties were to name the man who came nearest their ideal of an Irish patriot, no one born in the century now drawing to a close would combine so many suffrages as Davis.”
And yet what was he? A barrister who never. pursued his pro- fession, an anonymous journalist, a writer of verses signed with a pseudonym, a man who never entered Parliament nor spoke from a platform, nor courted popularity in any way. He almost seemed born to realise the prophecy once made concerning a young man’s future. “ He has fine gifts,” it was said, ‘‘ but he has no vanity, no avarice, no ambition—he will never come to anything.” Such cynical predic- tions are too hard even upon this poor world of ours. It was by the very absence of selfish passions, by the concentration of his nature upon one unselfish aim, that Davis won during his life the devoted allegiance of a band of close friends and ardent disciples, and since his death has drawn to him the admiration of his countrymen in ever widening circles. At this day among the body of his people there is scarcely a line of his which would not be cited as a guiding light which no Irishman should gainsay. In the far too scanty literary furniture of Irish households, you are almost sure to find the verse and prose of Davis.
He was by birth and long descent a Protestant, and always adhered to that faith. His family and early surroundings were of the well-known Irish Tory type having no part in the ideals of the English Cavaliers, but full of the old hide-bound prejudices against everything Catholic and Celtic. He afterwards loved to trace two diverse currents of descent, one from the Kymri of Wales, and the other
, Thomas Davis. 3
from the Gaelic clan O'Sullivan; and he adopted the name of “The Celt”? as his literary signature. But these rivulets of his blood had little effect on the formation of his opinions. He was educated in Trinity College, at that day a hotbed of Orangeism, now happily much changed. Like Swift and Burke, he never competed for college honours, but he was an omnivorous reader, chiefly of moral and political philosophy and of history, above all Irish history. His earliest political views, formed independently, were Benthamite- Radical, a class of opinion which he came afterwards heartily to detest. His deliverer from that barren coast was not, as with many of his juniors, Carlyle, but Wordsworth. The ideals he found in Wordsworth, especially the ideal of a pure and exalted love of country, took full possession of him. This must have been early, when he was two or three and twenty, at most. Sir Gavan Duffy heard of his having derived his patriotic ideas from three young men, his seniors, in Trinity College—Francis Kearney, Thomas Wallis, and Torrens’ McCullagh (all Protestants), who reflected the lingering rays of the Protestant patriotism of 1782, and even of 1798. It may be so; but the mass of reading upon Irish subjects which Davis must have hived before 1840 would seem to show rather that his mind was working in the same direction and at the same time with theirs. In that year, at six-and-twenty, he delivered hie addrees as President of the College Historical Society, then meeting outside the walls. Sir Gavan Duffy reminds us that at that time O’Connell was trying out his experiment of alliance with the Whigs. Repeal was in a sleep like death, nor was there even a whisper to presage the storm of national feeling which in two years more was about to shake the island to its centre. From this address consider- able extracts are given in the biography, and Mr. Rolleston has printed it entire. It is remarkable for the acquisition it displays and the maturity of the views which it presents. But most remarkable of all is its patriotism. In the whirlwind of the monster meetings, in the zenith of the success of the ation, when he was the acknow- ledged head and leader of the Young Ireland phalanx, he was more buoyant, sanguine, and elated, but not more devoted to his cause, than in that ebb-tide of Irish national aspiration.
‘ST do not fear that any of you will be found among Ireland's foes. To her every energy should be consecrated. Were she prosperous, she would have many to serve her, though their hearta were cold in the cause.. But it is because her people lie down in misery and rise to suffer, it is therefore you should be more deeply devoted. Your country will, I fear, need all your devotion. She has no ' foreign friend. Beyond the limits of green Erin there is none to aid her. She may gain by the feuds of the stranger; she cannot hope for his peaceful help, be he distant, be he near; her trust is in her sons. You are Irishmen. She relies on
4 The Irish Monthly.
your devotion ; she solicits it by her present distraction and misery. No! her past distraction—her present woe. We have no more war-bills; we have a mendicant bill for Ireland. The poor- and the pest-house are full, yet the valleys of her country and the streets of her metropolis swarm with the starving. Her poet has described her :—
‘ More dear in her sorrow, her gloom and her showers, Than the rest of the world in its sunniest hours.’
And if she be miserable, if ‘homely age hath the alluring beauty took from her poor check,’ then who hath wasted it? The stranger from without, by means of the traitor within. Perchance ’tis a fanciful thing, yet in the misfortunes of Ireland, in her laurelled martyrs, in those who died ‘ persecuted men for a persecuted country,’ in the necessity she was under of bearing the palms to deck
her best to the scaffold-foot and the lost battle-field, she has seemed to be ' ghastened for some great future. I have thought I saw her spirit from her dwelling, her sorrowing place among the tombs, rising, not without melancholy, yet with a purity and brightness beyond other nations, and I thought that God had made her purpose firm and her heart just; and I know that if He had, small though she were, His angels would have charge over her, ‘lest at any time she should dash her foot against a stone.’ And I have prayed that I might live to see the day when, amid the reverence of those, once her foes, her sons would—
“Like the leaves of the shamrock unite, A partition of sects from one foot-stalk of right: Give each his full share of the earth and the sky, Nor fatten the slave where the serpent would die.’ ’’ —
When Davis sent a copy of this address to Wordsworth, the fatter, praising it in other respects, found fault with it as containing ‘too much insular patriotism.” Strange limitation of the minds of men! To the poet of the purest patriotism it seemed censurable that Davis should feel for hts country ‘as a lover or a child.”’
Another paper, written at a later period and published in the Dublin Magazine, is particularly notable at the present time. It is a study of the land system of Norway, termed ‘* Udalism and Feudalism,”’ based chiefly on the writings of Mr. Laing. The greater part of this essay is given by Mr, Rolleston. It is a forcible and well-reasoned paper in favour of the system of peasant proprietary. Half a century ago Thomas Davis demanded for Ireland a land reform which was subsequently advocated by John Stuart Mill and John Bright, and which the Governments of this duy have been strenuously endeavour- ing to carry into effect.
Sir Gavan Duffy has narrated in his “ Young Ireland ” the story . of the founding of the Nasion newspaper. It is told more circum- stantially in the present memoir. The journal was planned during a walk in the Phoonix Park by himself, Davis, and John Dillon, in the autumn of 1842. All who remember Dillon will echo what Davis
Thomas Davis. , 5
. said of him to another friend, “ It is impossible to express all that there is to love in that man.” He had not the abounding and restless energy of Davis, but he united a lofty enthusiasm with great lucidity of intellect and an unvarying candour. He seemed incapable of the least sophistry or insincerity, giving the fullest weight to arguments used against him, and replying always directly, and generally with calmness, though where his feelings as well as his convictions were enlisted, he did not fail to show it. He had succeeded Davis as President of the Oollege Historical Society, and his address was devoted to a defence of patriotism perhaps even more consistently thought out and more impressive in its language than Davis’s own. Sir Gavan Dnffy gives several passages from this address, which to many English readers may seem mere Irish rhetoric of a bygone day. They expressed the conviction of the speaker, in his inmost heart and soul, the conviction of his associates, the latent, unspoken, but deep-seated conviction of nine-tenths of his countrymen.
With the establishment of the Natson came Davis’s three years of prodigious activity, to end but with his death. His great desire was to write a history of Ireland, but this object was thrust aside by the necessities of the hour. Sir Gavan Duffy’s memoir shows us all that he did and designed ; brain, heart, and hand working together in the one cause and towards the one goal. Strange to say, a new fountain sprang forth. He had never been known to write a line of verse before the establishment of the Nation, but now, in the midst of all his other labours, he enriched that journal with a profusion of songs and ballads in a high degree vigorous and glowing, and at times full of tenderness and pathos. Amongst the poets of “the Spirit of the Nation ” he held the first rank. Amongst all his Irish contemporaries, perhaps only two could be named who surpassed him, Clarence Mangan and Sir Samuel Ferguson. His early Words- worthianism was now totally put aside. Thoughtful philosophy he deemed unsuited for the time.*
One of Davis’s favourite projects was a ballad history of Ireland—- that is, a series of poems in ballad form, giving in a vivid way the main events of Irish history, especially those of which the Irish might be justly proud. In this path, however, he himself was the chief workman. Duffy did a few ballads, such as the “ Muster of the
“In some hastily written instructions designed for a few friends making an excursion throngh parte of Ireland, he concluded by writing in large letters, “ No tea—no metaphysical poetry,” an injunction, by-the-way, very imperfectly obeyed in either case.
é
6 The Irish Monthly.
North ” and “Laurence O’Toole’s Address to his Countrymen,’’ but
the great mass of the series were from the pen of Davis alone.
__, Another project on which he was passionately bent was the revival of Irish music, the fulfilment of the idea which Moore had in large degree accomplished, the marriage of the old Irish airs with modern words to be sung by the people. In this task he had for his chief coadjutors William Elliott Hudson and John Edward Pigot.*
Poetry and music, however, were the occupation of his compara- tively leisure hours. He was full of more prosaic labours. The development of the industrial resources of Ireland, the rivival of her manufactures, her shipping interests, her land tenure, the educa- tion of her people, high and low—all these in turn occupied him, and all were ancillary to his one dominating idea, the restoration of his country to herself. For personal notoriety he cared nothing. He not only did not seek it, but deliberately avoided it. He never mounted a platform, but he worked assiduously in the Committees of the Repeal Association. All this was in addition to his weekly articles on the passing events of the hour.
Did he believe in the success of his cause? Unquestionably he believed in it. Of its ultimate triumph he never doubted. It is true that before his death, when there was an inevitable lull in the agitation, he began to doubt of its proximate advent, and to think that even another generation might have to be passed before the people were sufficiently educated and prepared. But in the height of the movement, in the tempest of the monster meetings, amid the fervour of his own associates, he undoubtedly looked forward to “a sterner ending.” His personal aspirations were embodied in his well- known lines :
‘* The tribune’s tongue and poet’s pen May sow the seed in prostrate men ; But ’tis the soldier’s sword alone Can reap the crop so bravely sown. No more I'll sing, nor idly pine, But train my soul to lead a line:
A soldier’s life’s the life for me, A soldier’s death, so Ireland's free.’’
If Davis had lived to our day, no one would have more clearly dis- cerned and denounced the madness of such an enterprise. But at
* John E. Pigot, son of the distinguished lawyer who was for many years Chief Baron of the Exchequer in Ireland, John Pigot was among the warmest and closest friends of Davis, as the correspondence given in the memoir shows. He was 8 man of great talent, and the highest purity and honour. He died in middle age, after a successful career at the bar in India.
Thomas Davis. ' | 7
that time it seemed to him far from desperate. Arms of precision had not been invented. The Celtic Irish numbered close on seven millions. The recollection was still comparatively recent of what the single county of Wexford had done in 1798. Nor did he look forward to such armed strife as arriying from set conspiracy and design, but as the inevitable outcome of the determination of the Irish on the one hand to redress the iniquity of the Union, and of the English on the other to refuse the Irish demand. i
But so far from rejecting the idea of a pacific settJement, he urged and welcomed it with all his heart. And that, not only in the form of simple’ repeal which was O’Connell’s programme, but of federalism, an arrangement to which many of the most thoughtful intellects of Ireland were then seriously inclining. The sixth and seventh chapters of Sir Gavan Duffy’s book detail the efforts made for the creation of a Federalist party standing midway between the Repealers and the Whigs. Davis himself published an anonymous letter to the Duke 8f Wellington written in the character of a Federalist, in which he expounds these ideas : |
‘* Tt is not impossible to combine an Irish Legislature for local purposes with the integrity and foreign importance of the empire. A local Parliament granted soon, and in a kindly and candid spirit, would be fairly worked, and would conciliate that large and varied body which, from wisdom, or want, or patriotism, or ambition, are intolerant of having their local laws made, and. their local offices filled, by Engliahmen. Allow them to try their hands and heads at self-government ; it will consume their passions, and, unless they are blockheads, will diminish their suffer- ings. Aid them by advice. You are an Irishman and a consummate genius—you might have been a hero. Do not lose your last opportunity. Believe me, my lord, if you and half a dozen men of business—Imperialists, Federalists, and Re- pealere—were to sit down in earnest to devise a plan for satisfying the wants and calls of Ireland for local government, while you guaranteed the integrity of the empire, you would accomplish your object without much difficulty, and disappoint the foreign foes of that empire who justly regard Ireland as an ally.”’
But it is not merely that he would have joyfully welcomed a just and pacific compromise; he was willing and even eager to accept in the meantime any legislation at the hands of an English Minister which he believed to be beneficial. A striking instance was his attitude with respect to the Queen’s Colleges. He welcomed them most zealously, as did the greater number of the Young Ireland party. Education was a crying netessity for Ireland. Her position in that respect, arising from the hateful exclusiveness of her past government, was disgraceful in the extreme. The Catholic Bishops did not accept Sir Robert Peel’s proposal, because they looked at the measure, as they were bound to do, from a religious point of view, and they deemed that the Colleges did not ‘afford sufficient security for the
8 ‘The Irish Monthly.
faith and morals of the inmates. That idea was naturally external to Davis, who on national grounds desired to see young Irishmen of different creeds educated together. It is not to the merits of the con- troversy I dosire to draw attention, but to the character of Davis. So little had he of the demagogue or self-seeker, that he stood up against O'Connell and the body of his countrymen, and confronted unpopularity amongst the people he loved, all in favour of a measure of the Englished Minister which he believed would serve Ireland. The passage of arms between him and O’Connell upon this subject is told with graphic detail by Sir Gavan Duffy. Davis became excited to the extent of shedding tears.
Of all the phenomena of the mind of Davis, none is more note- worthy than his attitude towards the ‘‘ mechanical civilisation,” as he terms it, of the nineteenth century. I have mentioned his early Ben- thamism and his revolt against it. Next to his love of Ireland, his‘ dominant feeling became a hatred of what he deemed to be the ten- dency of England towards a progress of an unspiritual and sordid typé@. In one of, his essays published by Mr. Rolleston he says :
‘¢ There was one civilisation in Ireland. We never were very eminent, to be sure, for manufactures in metal, our houses were simple, our very palaces rude, our furniture scanty, our saffron shirts not often changed, and our foreign trade small. Yet was Ireland civilised. Strange thing ! says some one whose ideas of civilisation are identical with carpets and cut-glass, fine masonry, and the steam engine ; yet ’tistrue. For there was atime when learning was endowed by the rich and honoured by the poor, and taught all over our country. Not only did thousands of natives frequent our schools and colleges, but men of every rank came here from the Continent to study under the professors and system of Ireland, and we need not go beyond the testimonies of English antiquaries, from Bede to Camden, that these schools were regarded as the first in Europe. Ireland was equally remarkable for piety. In the Pagan times it was regarded as a sanctuary of the Magian or Druid creed. From the fifth century it became equally illustrious in Christendom. Without going into the disputed question of whether the Irish Church was cr was not independent of Rome, it is certain that Italy did not send out more apostles from the fifth to the ninth centuries than did Ireland, and we find their names and achievements remembered through the Continent.
* * ¥ * * *
“ Shall a people, pious, hospitable, and brave, faithful observers of family ties, cultivators of learning, music, and poetry, be called less than civilised because mechanical arts were rude, and ‘ comforts’ despised by them P
‘* Scattered through the country in MS. are hfindreds of books wherein the laws and achievements, the genealogies and possessions, the creeds and manners and poetry of these our predecessors in Ireland are set down. Their music lives in the traditional airs of every valley.
“ Yet mechanical civilisation, more cruel than time, is trying to exterminate them, and therefore it becomes us all who do nut wish to lose the heritage of centuries, nor to feel ourselves living among nameless ruins, when we might have an ancestral
Thomas Davis. . 9
home—it becomes all who love learning, poetry, or music, or are curious of human progress, to aid in or originate a series of efforts to save all that remains of the past.”
In one of his familiar letters given in the memoir, he expresses this opinion more openly and vehemently :
‘‘ The machinery at present working for repeal could never, under circumstances like the present, achieve it ; but circumstances must change. Within ten or fifteen years England must be in peril. Assuming this much, I argue thus. Modern Angliciam—i.e., Utilitarianism, the creed of Russell and Peel, as well as of the Radicals—this thing, call it Yankeeism or Englishism, which measures prosperity by exchangeable value, measures duty by gain, and limits desire to clothes, food, and respectability,—this——— thing has come into Ireland under the Whigs, and is equally the favourite of the ‘ Peel’ Tories. It is believed in the political assemblies in our cities, preached from our pulpits (always Utilitarian or persecuting) ; it is the very Apostles ’ Creed of the professions, and threatens to corrupt the lower classes, who are still faithful and romantic. To use every literary and political engine against this seems to me the first duty of an Irish patriot who canforesee conse- quences.”’
He must not be misunderstood. He did not slight or make little of material progress if it were duly subordinated, not deified. - On the contrary, he looked eagerly towards a condition of greater com- fort and independence for the peasantry, towards the advance of Ireland in industry, in manufactures suited to her, in material well- being of every kind. His admirable paper on Sir Robert Kane’s é“ Industrial Resources of Ireland” clearly demonstrates this. It concludes thus :
‘* Why, then, are we a poor province? Dr. Kane quotes Forbes, Quetelet, &c., to prove the physical strength of our people. He might have quoted every officer who commanded them to prove their courage and endurance; nor is there much doubt expressed even by their enemies of their being quick and inventive. Their soil is productive—the rivers and harbours good—their fishing opportunities great —so is their means of making internal communications across their great central plains. We have immense water, and considerable fire power ; and, besides the minerals necessary for the arts of peace, we are better supplied than almost any country with the finer sorte of iron, charcoal and sulphur, wherewith war is now carried on. Why is it, with these means of amassing and guarding wealth, that we are so poor and paltry? Dr. Kane thinks we are so from want of industrial education. He is partly right. The remote causes were repeated foreign invasion, forfeiture, and tyrannous laws. Ignorance, disunion, self-distrust, quiek credulity, and caprice were the weaknesses engendered in us by misfortune and misgovern- ment; and they were then the allies of oppression ; for, had we been willing, we had long ago been rich and free@ Knowledge is now within our reach if we work steadily ; and strength of character will grow upon us by every month of perseverance and steadiness in politics, trade, and literature.”’
But le cour c'est lefond. What a man loves or a people love is the test of what is in him or them. To love their country, to love religion, charity, hospitality, to love poetry and art—all this is in the
10. i The Irwh Monthly.
highest degree beautiful and desirable, and these traits Davis believed that he found in the ancient, unobliterated character of his country- men. To have the heart in material wealth was the abhorred thing which he dreaded for his country more than her being steeped in penury for centuries.
Ali this is surely no more than has been preached by Wordsworth, by Ruskin, by Carlyle. It has been preached to his countrymen, in a series of poems at once highly spiritual and highly national, by the purest as well as the foremost of Ireland’s modern poets, Aubrey de Vere.
To speak of Davis as a revolutionist, in the modern sense of that word, would be grievously to misjudge him and his fellows. He sympathised no doubt with the great French Revolution as the sweep- ing away of an old system grown rotten; nor had he come te see in his brief lifetime what a mass of evil principles that Revolution bore in its bosom. He was excited, too, by the national and military virtues which it awakened, In these aspects it was to him an exalt- ing and ennobling movement. But for “the Revolution,” the blind, levelling, envious, anarchic forces which are the awful menace of our time, he could feel nothing but repugnance,
Mr. Thackeray, who knew nothing of him, once descended to a per- sonal attack upon him in the pages of Punch. He described him as & statesman such as Europe had not produced stnce Marat. Davis, as his manner was, did not reply or defend himself, and Thackeray had the good feeling to omit the article from his collected works. Davis was a revolutionist as Milton or Somers or Manzoni or Deak was, hating evil government, but loving law and an ordered social hierarchy embodied in a nation and existing for her good. In the best sense, he was Conservative. When some belated Radical took to abusing: Southey in his old age on the worn-out charge of apostacy, Davis in the columns of the Nation, though he addressed an audience who knew nothing of Southey save from his calumniators, fearlessly de- fended him. In abandoning the false and visionary notions of his youth, and devoting himself with thorough loyalty to all he deemed highest in the past of England, Southey, he maintained, had acted like a man of genius and a patriot. The mechanical civilisation which he hated, was hated by Southey also. |
For the later details of his life, and t&e history of his illness and unexpected death, the reader must be referred to Sir Gavan Duffy’s work. The story may be condensed into very brief space. He was worn with overwork. He caught a chill, which took a feverish turn. He thought the illness could be shaken off by vigorous exercise, and instead of hoarding his strength, exhausted it by taking a long solitary
Thomas Davis. 11
walk. Fever or scarlatina came upon him before he was aware of his danger, and in a week he was dead. To his own friends and party, the blow was stunning. But the height and purity of his character and aims had made him appreciated by the best men of all parties, and they united to do honour to his memory. He had ever preached in prose and verse that, as Ireland had a claim to the allegiance of every man of whatever race or creed born upon her soil, so from Irishman to Irishman all hope, all tolerance, all conciliation were due. Zhe anti-Irish Irishman he regarded as an abnormal and unnatural being, the legacy of an evil past, who could have no ex- istence in a self-contained country. His friend Mr. Wallis, who edited his poems, cited Byron’s beautiful lines on Marceau as por- traying both the man himself and the spirit in which friends and adversaries gathered round his bier :
“é Brief, brave, and glorious was his young career, His mourners were two hosts, his friends and foes ; And fitly may the stranger lingering here Pray for his gallant spirit’s bright repose ; For he was Freedom’s champion, one of those, The few in number, who had not o’erstept The charter to chastise which she bestows On such as wield her weapons : he had kept The whiteness of his soul, and thus men o’er him wept.”’
It adds keenly to the pathos of his death that he was on the threshold of the highest personal happinnes. He was about to be united to a beautiful and highly cultivated girl, his engagement with whom was the fruit of deep and mutual love.*
His most striking personal trait was what the Italians express by the word genislessa, a graciousness of nature and manner which never failed to attract ; and he kept himself true to his nature. He had the poet’s hate of hate and scorn of scorn. Sir Gavan Duffy gives one instance in which he inflicted well-merited chastisement on a literary ghoul who had defamed Thomas Campbell the poet, after his death. But on personal grounds he fell out with no one, hardly seemed to heed attacks upon himself, and went on increasing the circle of his friends until his death.
What is the final judgment to be given upon his character and career? ‘For Irishmen nothing can be added to the tribute couched
e Our Magazine claims the credit of having first revealed the sweet name of Annie Hutton, in publishing two interesting batches of ‘‘ Letters of Thomas Davis ” (IntsH Mowruty, vol. XVI., pp. 261, 335). Further information about ‘‘ the Betrothed of Thomas Davis ”’ is given at page 443 of our eighteenth volume (1890).—Ea. 7. ¥.
- ‘ .
12 The Irish Monthly.
in almost matchless language by Sir Gavan Duffy in his “ Young Ireland,” and reproduced in the present memoir :
“ Judging him now, a generation after his death, when years and communion with the world have tempered the exaggerations of youthful friendship, I can confidently say that I have not known a man eo nobly gifted as Thomas Davis. If his articles had been spoken speeches, his reputation as an orator would have rivalled Grattan’s, and the beauty and vigour of his style were never employed for mere show, as they sometimes were by Grattan ; he fired not rockets, but salvos of artillery. If his programmes and reports, which were the plans and specifications of much of the best work done in his day, had been habitually associated with his name, his practical genius would have ranked as high as O’Connell’s. Among his comrades who were poets he would have been chosen Laureate, though poetry was only his pastime. And these gifts leave his rarest qualities untold. What he was as a frieud, so tender, so helpful, so steadfast, no description will paint. His comrades had the same careless confidence in him men have in the operations of Nature, where irregularity and aberration do not exist. Like Burke and Berkeley, he inspired and controlled all who came within the range of his influence, without aiming to lead or dominate. He was singularly modest and unselfish. In a long life I have never known any man remotely resemble him in these qualities. The chief motive-power of a party and a cause, labouring for them as a man of exemplary industry labours in his calling, he not only never claimed any recognition or reward, but discouraged allusion to his services by those who knew them best. Passionate enthusiasm is apt to become prejudice, but in Davis it was controlled not ouly by a disciplined judgment, but by a fixed determination to be just. He brought to politi- cal controversy a fairness previously unexampled in Ireland. In all his writings there will not be found a single sentenoe reflecting ungenerously on any human being. He had set himself the task of building up a nation, a task not beyond his strength, had fortune been kind. Now that the transactions of that day have fallen into their natura] perspective, now that we know what has perished and what survives of its conflicting opinions, we may plainly see that, imperfectly as they knew him, the Irish race—the grown men of 1845—in the highest diapason of their passions, in the widest range of their capacity for action or endurance, were represented and embodied in Thomas Davis better than in any man then living. He had predicted a revolution ; and if fundamental change in the ideas which move and control a people be a revolution, then his prediction was already accomplished. In conflicts of opinion near at hand a prodigious change made itself manifest, traceable to teaching of which he was the chief exponent. During his brief career, scarcely exceeding three years, he had administered no office of anthority, mounted no tribune, published no books, or next to none, and marshalled no followiug ; but with the simplest agencies, in the columns of a newspaper, in casnal communication with his friends and contemporaries, he made a uame which, after a generation, is still recalled with enthusiasm or tears, and will be dear to students and patriots while there is an Irish people.” * .
But what is to be thought of him by those who are not his country- men? Is he to be dealt with as a mere enthusiast, one of the succes- sion of devoted and unselfish men who have dedicated themselves to
* “ Young Ireland,” bk. iii., chap. 10.
Thomas Davis. 13
an idea, lived in it—possibly died for it—but to whom as martyrs of lost causes mankind can afford to yield little but a sigh ? So to con- sider it would be a grave error. Davis waa in his day the spokesman and representative of one of the most vivid and enduring sentiments that ever held possession of a section of the human race, Irish love of country.
* Tolerance and fair-play, it has been often said, are the favourite virtues of the weaker party. Arrogance is the eternal temptation of the strong. Educated Irishmen could fully appreciate the magni- ficent passages of Shakespeare, the ballads of Drayton, the prose of Milton, the sonnets of Wordsworth, in which love of country and exalted zeal for her welfare are immortally bodied forth ; but what did they find on the other side ? A height of scorn and loathing which almost defied expression. It seemed as if the famous aphorism of Dr. Johnson (himself the sturdiest of patriots) was made for the patriots of Ireland alone. Her ancient kings and chieftains, her lawgivers and saints, were only mentioned to be the theme of vulgar ridicule. How often in those days, on hearing the enthusiastic words of Englishmen about their own couutry, must an Irishman have recalled the bitter words of Achilles :
“ Of mortals are there none that love their wives, Save Atreus’ sons alone ? or do not all Who boast the praise of sense and virtue love And cherish each his own.” f
Even when the old dogged John Bullism, in its contemptuous attitude towards foreigners, became mollified, and there was full sympathy for the national feelings of Italy, Hungary, Germany, the claim of Irishmen to have a country of their affections sti]] provoked asneer. Even now it is spoken of as a factitious feeling, and in great degree of modern growth, because so long as Ireland was divided into petty kingdoms or chieftaincies, no true Irish patriotism, it is said, could have existed. But this is a confusion of thought. No doubt the allegiance of the clansman was due to his own chief, that of the chief to his immediate king. Quarrels, wars, raids, bloody acts and bloody reprisals were inevitable, and were chanted in the songs of bards and told in the legends of Seannachies. These are features common to all primitive communities, and even existing in the feudal organisation of the Middle Ages.
“ In their baronial feuds and single fields, What deeds of prowess unrecorded died.’’
+ Iliad ix., Lord Derby’s translation.
14 The Irish Monthly..
But through all, and with a tenderness almost unknown elsewhere, which found its expression in terms of the greatest endearment, was the affection for the mother-isle which embraced them all, Erinn, or Banba, or Inisfail. The very books of their laws, such as the Book of Rights, defining the mutual obligations towards one another of kings and vassals, breathe of this feeling. We may recall the incident narrated by Montalembert in his Life of St. Columba. The saint first chose for the seat of his ‘missionary labours in the Hebrides, an. island from which the coast of Ireland was visible. But the sight of that beloved shore created a yearning in his own breast and that of his monks too strong to permit him to pray in peace. He therefore removed to Iona, where the view of Ireland was lost. The Irish feeling became intensified by the English conquest. The letter of Donald O'Neill to the Pope in the fourteenth century contains the same tale of wrong as that of the Chevalier Wogan to Swift in the eighteenth. The Irish poetry of the Jacobite period is all cast in one mould—a lament for the wrongs of Ireland, personified as a beautiful and unhappy women, deserted by her friends and crushed down by her enemies. Since the days of St. Columba thirteen hundred years have passed, and the same storge is as keen at this day in the breasts of the emigrant Irish in every quarter of the globe. To attribute this deep-seated, ineradicable love of country to the speeches of O'Connell, or the melodies of Moore, or the songs of Young Ireland, or the writings of such a man as Davis, is to confound the deathless plant with the dying fruit. There it is, not to be trodden out, not to be conjured away. The last is fallacious as the firat. The hope that the satisfaction of his land hunger, the absolute property in his own piece of land (however great a good it may be in itself), is to make the peasant’s heart dead to the intuitive love of country which has survived through countless generations, will end, as so many others have ended, in a confession of failure—a failure, it may be said, springing from the inveterate root of error—the assumption that Englishmen know better what Ireland wants than Irishmen do themselves.
Nor is the old enchantment wholly dead which won those who came as conquerors to feel as natives. It is true that many obstacles— diversity of religion, fear, the habit and tradition of ascendancy—have prevented the children of the last wave of conquerors becoming, like their predecessors, more Irish than the Irish themselves. Yet even upon them the spell had begun to work. In the last quarter of the eighteenth century they were ceasing to be, as Swift termed them, English settled in Ireland, and were adopting the very traditions of the natives. They set up busts of Irish kings und lawgivers. They
á
Thomas Davis. _s 16
cultivated Irish music, and wrote love-songs with sweet Irish burthens. To enter into the causes which at the parting of the ways drove them backwards and made them prefer the continuance of the phantom of their old domination to a freedom shared with a mass of their fellow-countrymen, would go far beyond the limits of this paper. A . remnant only adhered to Irish nationality in any political sense. But there was another field into which men of the hizhest talents and culture eagerly cast themselves. They devoted great talent and unsparing labour to the elucidation of ancient Ireland, to the preser- vation of her truly wonderful monuments of ancient art, of those specimens of work in the precious metals unique as they are beautiful, and now confessed to be in their kind unsurpassed ; and to the laws, customs, language, and social history of the centuries which preceded and followed the invasion down to the final conquest.
The Z7ransactions of the Royal Irish Academy, and its wonderful museum, are the fruits of these labours. For the men and the work ' Davis had the highest admiration. |
And this leads to the last consideration. Many who desire to adopt neither tone or attitude towards Ireland save what is fair and friendly, speak as follows. ‘‘ We regret,” they say, ‘‘ the con- temptuous and illiberal spirit assumed by Englishmen towards the patriotism of Ireland. But that is also passing away under the light of better knowledge and better feeling. We are beginning to see that it is right that Irishmen should hold their country dear, and that she should be the more endeared to them by her sufferings. Moreover, we are no longer blind to all that Ireland has to be proud of in the past; her band of missionaries who con- verted a great part of Europe ; her schools and scholars who were the light of a dark age; the treasures of ancient art spoken of above ; the writers, soldiers, statesmen, to whom she has given birth in later ages. All this is the natural fountain of just and laudable feelings. But why not rest in this? Look at Scotland. No more intensely patriotic people exists. And it is not so long since English feelings and expressions towards them were almost as illiberal as they continued to be towards the Irish. If England has learned not only to tolerate, but absolutely to adopt and make herself one with Scottish feeling as embodied in Burns and Scott, and other great writers of that land; and if the Scotch, on their side, are content with this, and have their strong national sentiment thus fully satisfied, while they are fused politically with England as regards Legislature and Govern- ment; why should it not be so with Ireland, at least after a little
time?” On this view itis right that some observations should be made.
16 | The Irish Monthly.
What a country instinctively desires of its Government is, beyond everything else, that it should be representative; the mirror in which her best aims, aspirations, and tendencies are reflected, as well as the hand and instrument for carrying them into effect. In a land mistress of herself, the most unpardonable of sins in a statesman is not to place his country before all. He may or may not be capable of much sentiment upon the subject, but he must act as if he possessed it. That he shall so act is ensured by his responsibility to the Legislature. Political parties, wars of ins and outs, are all subordinate to this primary condition. It is so, not only in countries absolutely independent, but also in free colonies, as Sir Gavan Duffy himself has so powerfully shown in his writings on colonial affairs. It is this necessary of life which is denied to Ireland, the want of which she feels in every pore. Among the long list of fleeting Viceroys and Secretaries, chosen by the hands of English parties for party motives, far be it from me to say that many have not been just and upright in intention; but the system is one which absolutely forbids them to make the good of Ireland their first . object. The interests of their party are necessarily paramount, and they bow before the public opinion, not of Ireland, but of Westminster and the press of England. This is so true as to be incapable of denial. To have this fundamentally reversed, to have an Irish Minister enter on his task of government, not only armed with a life- long knowledge of the country, but in a spirit of sympathy with her and devotion to her welfare—this is the passionate desire of Ireland, which she will never be at rest till she obtains. Lord Salisbury declared in one of his speeches that the really vital question was not so much the Irish Legislature as the Irish Executive. Though he meant it as an argument on the adverse side, it is completely true. But a national Executive without a national Legislature to control and guide it, is a chimera.
As for Scotland, she has solved the question, or it has been solved for her, in another fashion. Partly by the terms of her Union (a compact, not a new conquest), partly by the wise concessions of England, she has long ago practically obtained the result of being governed ab sntra. There is nothing which the Scottish people, or the great majority uf them, have desired that has not been done, almost as a matter of course, without the hateful necessity of a convulsion to extort it. No such solution is possible in the caso of Irelund. Her whole past history forbids the expectation of it. She will be contented and the friend of England on the day when she obtains the leisure and the power to devote herself to her own internal affairs. The antipathy to England will, as all
Thomas Davis. | 17
example teaches, die with the causes that produced it. Otherwise, there is no hope indeed that if may not last till the grandson of the youngest of the present generation sinks into the grave, and that grandson’s grandson, and for an indefinite future beyond.
‘When Nature cast the two islands side by side in the bosom of the Atlantic,” says Gustave de Beaumont, ‘she linked them indis- solubly together.” True, but the Union, if it is to be pregnant with aught but ruin to both, must be one of affection, not of force.
To have discerned and proclaimed these truths is the glory of the foremost statesman of our time. To descend from power, to relinquish for years the government of a mighty Empire and a personal position of undisputed authority and pre-eminence, to bear the postponement of all that his fertile brain conceived of progress and reform at home, in order that he might lay the foundation of the future peace and welfare of that Empire in a thorough reconcilement with Ireland—this is an act of greatness for which in the annals of statesmen, past and present, we might look in vain for a parallel.
Thomas Davis was prepared to be a rebel against England if she sought to repress his country by armed force. But even then he was ever found to welcome the least breath of amity. At the com- mencement of the Repeal agitation of 1843, the Zimes had one of those rare articles which at far too distant intervals have appeared in its columns, breathing a spirit of friendship and generous apprecia- tion towards the Irish. Articles had appeared at the same time in other English journals, which seemed literally steeped in gall. It was proposed to him to reprint the letter so as to intensify anti- English feeling. ‘‘No,” he said, ‘I will not do so. I would far rather republish that kindly article in the Zimes, Why should we unnecessarily augment bitterness of feeling ?”’
Such was he. Such would he be if he were living at this hour. The notion of Ireland subsisting at this day as an independent nation would be discarded by him as an impossible chimera, and the hope of being united to England through the medium of Home Rule would have no more enthusiastic adherent. . Joun O’Haaan.
Vou. xix. No, 211. 2
18 The Iviwh Monthly.
ALTAR LIGHTS.
AY altar and an altar stone Within my heart are ~et for Thee, Carven and pale, and thereupon My separate loves shall be | Candles whose lights are bright in Thee.
Draw the flames upward high and higher. Ever towards Thee, ever towards Thee, Into clear tongues of lucent fire Golden and pure to see, Steady where many winds shall be.
No earth-born vapours come to mar My lights immortal : they shall rise One day beyond the farthest star, In the Lord’s Paradise, Making a hidden altar’s eyes.
KATHARINE TYNAN.
EE EE — ee
FATHER DAMIAN. ON READING A MEMOIR OF HIM SHORTLY AFTER HIS DEATH.
AS comes a shaft of light through densest gloom, And purest breath through air which foul things taint ; As to the ear and heart speaks music faint, "Mid noise of revellers in crowded room ; As to the eye, refreshed, appears the bloom Of real flowers by those that fingers paint : So cemes, speaks, seems thy history, Priest and Saint, To me, to thousands weeping o’er thy tomb.
Thy bright faith pierces night of unbelief, And thy sweet virtue, atmosphere of ain; Thy love is like to that of Christ thy Chief, Not to the world’s, which self-love doth control; Thy gentle words, amid earth’s senseless din, Whisper of Heaven and thither draw the soul. G. T.
John ‘Boyle O Reilly. 19
RECOLLECTIONS OF JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY.
Born Dowth Castle, Co. Meath, June 28, 1844 : Died Hull, Massachusetts,
August 10, 1890.
IT is no easy task for a friend to write of his dead friend. The profound emotion which swept over America on the
announcement of the death of John Boyle O’Reilly has silenced,
the more individual tributes to his memory. Yet I must claim a brief hearing on the score of my debt of gratitude for services he rendered me in public and private, and I hope that these personal recollections may be welcome on account of the noble Irishman round whom they cling.
On first setting foot in Boston, I called at the Pilot office with one of O’Reilly’s best friends—a distinguished countryman of ours. The editor was not at work, so we followed him to Young’s restaurant (where he used to meet Emerson, Walt Whitman, Joaquin Miller, and many a lesser star). As he rose from his seat my visionary picture of the dauntless rebel faded before the reality. I knew the leading incidents of his wonderful career, as a Methodist parson, Rev. Louis Banks, has summarised them. “At thirteen a student in school at Drogheda, Ireland; at seventeen a stenographer in England; at nineteen a private soldier in the Irish Hussars; at twenty-two lying in a dungeon in Dublin, condemned to death for treason against Great Britain; at twenty- four a nameless convict in a criminal colony in Western Australia ; at twenty-five in Philadelphia without friends and without money ; at thirty a successful journalist and a promising poet in Boston; and at thirty-five the acknowledged leader of the Irish cause in America.” This crowded life had left no line on his fine Irish face. The large, arched brow was seamless, the Irish blue eyes were clear and mild, the well-shaped head was carried with dignity. In complexion he was neither dark nor fair; his features were bold, yet refined. No beard hid the oval of his face, though he wore a heavy dark moustache. His hands were small, like an artist's. He seemed of medium height, but in his close-fitting blue suit, which showed to advantage his broad shoulders and well- knit figure, he looked the hero of his own “ Moondyne.”
His easy good humour made us friends at once. Though
20 The Irish Monthly.
usually thoughtful, when he relaxed his, mind “he laughed all over,” as one of his friends said. His delicacy of thought and feeling made his manner almost feminine. Once taken into his- friendship, he made me free of his fancies and beliefs. He often made me talk when I wanted to listen, for his conversation was always a delightful surprise. Such unabashed poetry, such start- ling paradox (with a kernel of truth), such a sweet flow of dear recollections, like an Irish mountain stream, coloured by all it had passed through, with a sobbing music, and a glint of heaven in it! I showed him an old Irish harp, and he said: “I remember my mother playing the harp when I was a child.” We almost pledged ourselves to do great things for Irish music—Irish manufactures—nay, everything Irish! We planned an Insh- American magazine, of which he sketched a masterly programme on the moment—forgetting, in his eagerness, a great dream of which he was evidently fond, “the brotherly federation of the Latin races.” His fancifulness was but as the lichen on the rock of his convictions. O'Reilly, in truth, “spoke a large word in a little place,” founding the free Republic of the spirit above all the ignoble strife of a sordid city.
He gave me many curious details of his adventures in Australia, and with no trace of bitterness save against the vile system that had made him a felon. His nationality was broad and tolerant ; he could not, hate any man who loved Ireland. I need hardly say how strong was his devotion to the land that gave him freedom and a home.
He was a founder of the Papyrus Club, the Bohemian Academy of Boston, and to the last it obeyed his welcome sway. I well remember one pleasant evening I spent there by his invitation, in company with many kindly workers in the arts and sciences. I believe a few creeds and nationalities were represented ; I fear we two were the only Irish, and the only Catholics there. O’Reilly sat silent most of the time, listening with his usual quiet ‘ smile, and finally leading me into a speech. What I said is of no account, and yet I feel I must have hazily echoed O’Reilly’s old-— world dreams, for Boston’s store of last-century mementoes in the “Qld South ” church had brought me back to the children’s toys. in the Roman catacombs, and thence to this land of ours, grey with ancient memories. As the night wore on, he drew me into argument with an able architect (English of the English), whose
John Boyle O Reilly. 21
good fellowship finally expanded into appreciation of the power and beauty of the Opus Hibernicum. O’Reilly’s geniality was a force that broke down all barriers of race and creed; and I believe that some who tried to hate him for his opinions, were constrained to love him. How could they do otherwise? He had a heart for - all—a heart always young.
He brought me through the fine halls of Harvard University, dwelling on everything memorable, and describing with fire and. pathos the heroism of some of its students—whose portraits hung upon the walls—who had died in the Civil War. But his deepest feeling was moved when he had some illustration to give of a young soldier’s sense of brotherhood with the negro. Even the old Puritans, in our easy conversation, came'in for a kind word from him, for his liberality was not a mere matter of parade. He was very fond of the Harvard students, and greatly flattered to be the judge of their sports, spending many an afternoon in their gymnasium, where he seemed the youngest, and certainly the strongest and most alert, save when the redoubtable John L. Sullivan came in for a “ bout with the gloves” withhim. The love of courage and manliness was almost a passion with O’ Reilly; and it seemed but natural that a powerful physique should be shaped on a nature so brave, a soul so true.
Editors are not usually credited with the conscientious earnest- ness which O'Reilly brought to his work in the Boston Pilot. I can see him flying up the steep office stairs, with his hands deep in his pockets in the wintry weather, and calling out cheerily to his frail young secretary, Dan O’Kane. (Poor Dan! consumption lately overtook the orphan boy; and they say that his death was hastened by the news of the loss of his benefactor). Once at his desk, O'Reilly turned the key on the outside world. His journal- istic style was Keen, epigrammatic, trenchant, tender—always manly and human. He drew out much of the latent talent in the little Ireland around him, and he attracted the best of our home- writers, of popular sympathies, to strengthen and sweeten his work in the land which he daily made less strange. In spite of his hearty Irish humour, his honest concern for the Prlot’s readers made him sensitive even to a flying jest at their expense. “I am half-owner of the funds of this diocese, and responsible for half its debts,” he said laughingly, referring to his share, with Archbishop Williams, in the property of the paper.
22 The Irish Monthly. .
In his picturesque home on Breed’s Hill the task-work of the office found no place. Apart from the traces of a woman’s delicate taste in his large study, the characteristics of the man were every- wherein evidence there. A fine harvest of books, and in their midst a decorative panel—a sunset in red and gold, Celtic in bold- ness of colouring; in the corner a type-writer: portraits, auto- graphs, miniature statues and friezes from the antique, in orderly profusion. Here his friends canie to talk and listen, sometimes to work—often to receive the strong man’s help with a word in season, for poor and rich came to O’Reilly for that charity which covereth a multitude of another’s sins. In this room he wrought his poems, working far into the night; for verse did not flow easily from his pen. Speaking of a poem which I gave him, he said: “Is it possible you wrote this during your journey? I never could write on the road.” His conversation was full of interesting reminiscences of men whose sucoess is closely associated with his name—as Dr. Dwyer Joyce, so familiar to us in Ireland, whom he helped to establish in Boston, nerving that poet to his boldest flights of imagination, in “ Deirdre ” and “ Blanid.”
O’Reilly loved the arts no less than literature. I have seen him linger in undisguised delight before one fine picture in the Boston Gallery. To him was largely due the popularity of the short-lived Irish-American sculptor whose bronze statue of “ the Soldier” has been adopted by several Northern towns as the national memorial of the War. O’Reilly stood by Mulvany, the battle-painter—but I cannot catalogue the many able men, of Irish birth or blood, in whose service he spent his life. It is especially to his glory that he did not give up to party “what was meant for mankind.” How can I convey to those who never knew him a sense of the openness and largeness of his mind and heart ? Surely the man of unrestrained speech, unconscious of the Christian law, the very Red Man of poets: surely the scientist of fine intel- lectual culture, who had passed from the shallows of Puritanism into that deep which his human plummet could not sound—what touch had these in common with O’ReillyP Yet they loved him as a brother.
As for the poor, the ignorant, the helpless, these naturally turned to him. Misery swarmed from the West of Ireland ' directly to Boston. There it was penned in, as in a Ghetto. He organised it into an army of voters: he gave it voice and
John Boyle O Reilly. | 23
counsel ; he stirred its hungry intellect to rise above mere feverish greed and mere base content, for God and Ireland's sake. Ay, this man who had won for himself a right of way into the salons of refinement, a master of fence, ready to tilt with the most subtle brains in a young people, often spent his evenings in the rude homes of Irish peasants, pleading for high aims, holy duties, gifts and opportunities unused—pleading with those who saw his heart. Educate! was his great cry. Education to him meant, not a mental exercise, but a moral growth. Like a great tree, whose roots are deep in the solid earth, while its leaves sun themselves and flutter and play with every breath, his nature was planted deep in the religious instincts of his race.
“What thou wouldst highly, that wouldst thou holily,” so Shakspere, at one stroke, paints the noble ambition of the Gael. O'Reilly urged the Boston Irish to turn their growing wealth into power by giving their sons a University training, and a status in a strangely exclusive community. That he never relaxed his zeal for religious education is sadly and gloriously evidenced by the spiteful outburst of a few know-nothings, at the suggestion that his name should be honoured by some public memorial.
His private charity had hardly any limits. “I am from Ireland,” was a call that he should answer, though he knew no barriers of race. Priest or nun, working for the poor, claimed his brain as well as his purse; and, until his doctor interfered, he lectured freely for charitable purposes, bringing his little daughters round with him, “for inspiration,” he said. Any scheme for the alleviation of the hard lot of sufferers (honest or criminal), captured his heart at once. But he set his face against anything likely to injure self-respect or promote mendicancy.
O’Reilly’s ample charity of speech and act, though a constant surprise to his careless friends, was only “ ore from the mine ” to those who knew his earnest piety. Of late he frequented the sacraments with increased assiduity, as though instinctively pre- paring for the end. He helped to found the Boston Catholic Union, of which he was the first secretary, and naturally the spokesman. His Addresses to Pius 1X. and to Cardinal Gibbons are still well remembered for a lofty virile eloquence, free from idle words. A man of his social and intellectual gifts could find no rest in America. ‘“ ‘Ihe world is too much with us,” he felt ; and in the effort to apply all his forces to his work, he gradually —
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freed himself from the wasteful distractions of popularity. A deep seriousness fell upon his life with the growth of his mind. He had loved, as he has written, to shut his senses, in order to study the soul of man in the silence of the spiritual world. The enthusiasm that had carried him so lightly through many daring theories of human reform was not exactly waning, but turned to graver issues; while the unstable character of humanity wanting religion, came as a home-thrust to his heart, through the lives of many of ‘his fellows. Feeble and false the brightest flame By thoughts severe unfed ;
Book-lore ne’er served when trial came, Nor gifts where Faith was dead.
The stress of his experience in Boston began to tell upon the strong man, and he fell a victim to the American plague— insomnia. Still his courage never failed him. In the prime of life, alert and full of energy, and ever impressionable, O’Reilly brought a ripened judgment to bear on his labour of love. The careful finish of his latest writings reminds us that he inherited scholarship. He mapped out work to be done, and his plans kept growing, and to him it was a duty to lead the van of our hard- pressed little army of writers in their daily struggle for Catholic principle.
For a breathing space he was at Hull, on the lovely sea coast near Boston, in August last. In view of the place his heart saw Ireland. Even at Hull there was work to be done which a weary brain could ill do, and he tried the common remedy, a sleeping draught. On August the 10th, in the white dawn of Sunday morn- ing, his delicate wife found O'Reilly apparently asleep, in his chair, his hand beside an open book. He was insensible. All that medical aid could do was to call him back to consciousness. He pressed the hands of his wife and children, and with a few in- articulate words he passed to God.
So from “ heart-failure ” Ireland lost John Boyle O’Reilly—
“4 as many an exiled heart has died Of its own love to see again thy shore.”’
The best hearts in America have told our loss—“a loss to country, to Church, to humanity,” in the words of Cardinal Gibbons.
‘
John Boyle O'Reilly. 25
Priest and Puritan vied in praising him; even prisoners had ' tears for him who “had tears for all souls in trouble”; on his coffin lay a bunch of shamrocks, beside sprays of palm from the Boston negroes.
His memory is sweet and brave and beautiful, and it holds and will hold a place for Ireland even in the heart of Puritanism.
Speaking of his dead friend, after twenty years of affectionate intimacy, Father Fulton, 8.J., President of Boston College, says :
“The predominant feeling was one of oss: loss to his countries, loss to his creed, loss to all of us his lovers: a loss to be estimated from the excellencies and the utilities of his past. Loss to his countries—an unusual form of speech. He owned two countries; his country by birth, his country by adoption. The first he served heroically, the second loyally. . . . . Love is to be measured by sacrifice. I do not of necessity value very highly him who merely speaks or writes, prose or verse, in the cause of fatherland. One may do both*very comfortably... . This man, this boy, risked his all for Ireland. . . . Isita fancy of mine that there are who advancing in social distinction, cut themselves loose from their fellows in race and religion, lest they impede their rise? Such base and paltry feeling found no place in O’Reilly’s chivalrous heart. He understood that there was no shame, but glory rather, in being Irish and Catholic. He thoroughly identified himself with his kind, and in rising sought to raise them. Let no one misunderstand me, and take groundless offence. I am talking of merely social respects, and do not at all over-value them. And it strikes me that in all history, that record of injustices, there is not recorded a more signal injustice than that we Celts should be vilipended by the very race through whose crimes our deficiencies have come.”’
Urging that religion greatly needs lay champions, Father Fulton continues :
“Some such there are in other countries; here there are none or few. Such a champion would need talent, but more would he need orthodoxy, respect to legitimate authority ; he should give example in observing the ordinances of religion ; his life should be a deduction from her spirit. Such was O'Reilly. . . . Those who knew him noticed how increasing years enriched his character, and imparted to him readiness to forgive, reluctance to. pain,
NEE. Na me mi EERE IE
26 The Irish Monthly.
charity of interpretation. He was approximating to Christ, for such is our Exemplar.” .
Surely there is something inspiriting in the grief of a whole people—and such a people !—beside the grave of our Irish exile. Lake the strain of the Dead March, there is triumph in the sound, whence the mourner must realise the victory of accomplished duties, the glory that a man can win, even from the world, by singleness of purpose. From all our hearts the prayer goes up, God rest him !
Grorce Nosiz PLUNEETT.
e THE MEMORY OF ‘“SLIEVEGULLION.”
ANOTHER of the brave Young Ireland band, And he the last but one, has passed away. Brida and Erin well may weep, and say :
No sweeter minstrel e’er took harp in hand,
Nor nobler champion ever made a stand Against misrule, than he who lies to-day Beneath Glasnevin’s consecrated clay,
Amid the prayers and tears of his loved land.
SLIEVEGULLION held a foremost place among . Such bards as ‘‘ Desmond,” ‘‘ Clarence,” and “The Celt,” * Who've won for Brida everlasting fame. i For you, dear Land!” in every clime is sung— It makes the hearts of Erin's children melt, And, as they sing, they bless O’ Haaan’s name.
T. O'R.
* These were the signatures in Zhe Nation of Denis Florence MacCarthy, James Clarence Mangan, and ‘lhomas Davis, as that of John O’Hagan was ““ Slieve- glulion.’’ Brida was the Celtic goddess of poetry
FRITZ.
I.
() UPSIDE the great block of “ Model Dwellings” the rain
poured and poured and poured in the forsaken street, and the wind came wailing and sobbing by, so that the ruddy gleams which the street-lamps threw across the wet pavements wavered as they fell. In the small sitting room of one of the topmost flats the firelight flickered over the walls and suftened the hard outlines of the scanty furniture with a radiaut edging. It threw into sombre relief the figure of a man who sat doubled up dejectedly, in front of the hearth, shuddering convulsively from time to time. His head was laid against a queer fluffy bundle which he held strained to him as if he feared someone was going to snatch it away. It was all he had left in the world, that soft, little bundle — Fritz. . .
By and by he lifted up his face, a care-worn, middle-aged face, and peered with short-sighted brown eyes at the downy, little, fair head of the baby. But tiny Fritz slept on, all unconscious of the bitterness that was flooding his father’s spirit.
And it was a cruel blow which had befallen poor Ritter. He had toiled so long and so patiently to make a home for the bright- haired orphan girl whom he had loved during nearly half her hietime. And uow he had lost her after their one short, sweet year of happiness together. She had been devoted to him and to their little home. She had tried to enter into all her husband’s tastes and striven wistfully to understand his music, and knitted contentedly through the concerts to which he used to take her. She had done her best to prevent her fragile, sunny face from showing the relief she felt when he said he was afraid she was unequal to the fatigue of any more concert-going. And Ritter, on his part, had never told his wife of the many musical treats he gave up to stay at home with her.
And then the baby came, and she had lain in a quiet ecstacy and watched him day after day. But her strength never seemed to come back to her. Though she got up and sat by the fire with the child in her lap, she was not able to go to church when he was baptised Friedrich, after his German grandfather, or even to hold him for very long at a time.
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‘The bright little wife of the board-school teacher who lived downstairs was very kind, and used often to come and sit with the invalid and help to wash and dress Fritz. One day when the doctor was going away after what he called “ a complimentary visit to the baby,” he asked at what hour Mr. Ritter was usually in. Something in his voice made the board-school teacher’s wife follow him when he left the room, and she came back with her blue eyes dim. ‘No stamina,” the doctor said, “and no rallying power.”
So the young mother just faded quietly away, and on this dreary afternoon her husband had laid ber in the chill, beautifully kept cemetery, and had come back to his lonely rooms in a sort of stupor of grief and despair. The board-school teacher’s wife had tidied the room, and directed the operations of the slipshod char- woman, and got tea ready, and fed little Fritz, crying all the time like the sympathetic, sweet-natured soul she was. When poor Ritter stumbled wearily in, she prepared to lay the sleeping baby in his cradle. But the father held out his arms for the child with so hungry a yearning in his eyes that the good Samaritan was quite overpowered. And she rushed down to her husband and her sturdy boy, in such a flood of tears and with such incoherent quer-es as to what they would do if Jack was only two months old and she was dead, that the poor board-school teacher was quite bewildered and could not think of a suitable answer to make.
From that day forward Fritz was his father’s supreme joy. He spent his early babyhood with the aunt of the board-school teacher’s wife, a motherly being who lived in the next street, and was glad to add to her slender means. very day, both going te and coming from the obscure office where he earned his humble pittance, Hitter called to see his son. And as soon as Fritz was able to toddle, his father took him home with him each evening and learned to look after the child in a tender, albeit “ mannish ” way, that quite excited the ladies in the Dwellings. “I suppose it’s ’arpin’ continual at that there old fiddle as makes ’im that ’e. ain’t so clumsy as other men, God ’elp ’em,” said the board-school teacher’s wife’s aunt, who, I grieve to say, mismanaged her native language and was untouched by the Higher Culture.
When he grew a little bigger, Fritz went every morning to a kindergarten with the board-school teacher’s Jack, and played downstairs with his small school-fellow till Ritter came home in the
' Frits. . | | 29
evenings. Then followed the happiest time in the whole day for Fritz, when he had “Daddy ” all to himself. In warm weather he went with Daddy for a walk ; in cold weather he saton Daddy’s knee by the fire. And Daddy never was cross with him, and never seemed to get tired of reading to him, and playing with him, and telling him stories, and answering his innumerable questions. And when the glorious bedtime romp was over and the candle was put out and he was tucked up in bed, Daddy always left the door open till he was quite asleep, so that the last thing he saw was a band of light from the sitting-room lamp slanting along the wall at his feet.
There came a memorable evening when Fritz was seven years old, on which Ritter, returning from his office, was surprised ,to find neither of the little boys waiting for him on the stairs. The board-school teacher’s wife explained with a very long face that they had both transgressed mightily. Jack had been whipped and put to bed, and Fritz was in bed, too, awaiting chastisement. This she strongly advised his father to administer for the sake of law and order. Ritter ascended the stairs with a heavy heart. When he went into the bedroom, Fritz was sitting on the pillow with his rumpled, fair head held very much aloft, and his sensitive little face set and colourless. “TI ain’t a bit afraid,” he said defiantly. é You can lick me if you like. I don’t care.” Poor Ritter was cruelly torn, but justice and discipline carried the day.
Fritz took the slight castigation, which to him seemed so very awful, in silente ; but a strange tightening came about his childish soul. “ Daddy evidently didn’t love him any more or he wouldn't hurt him, so after this he would be as naughty as ever he liked.” But then such a strange thing happened that Fritz never forgot it. His father gathered him up in his arms and carried him in to the fire; and he held him closer than he had ever held him before, and he said in a queer shaky voice: “ Do you know, Fritz, if you ever oblige Daddy to punish you like that again, I think it will break his heart.” And Fritz hid his face against Daddy’s sleeve and burst out crying. And oh! wonder of wonders, Daddy, yes, . great grown-up Daddy, cried too. That night, after Fritz was asleep, Ritter forgot, for the first time, to shut the doors before he took down his Violin. He played very well for an almost self- taught amateur, and the episode which had just occurred lent a fresh fire to his performance. Suddenly he became conscious of a
4 30 The Irish Monthly.
little white figure standing before him tremulous with excitement, and of a pair of shining eyes fixed upon his face. With a sort of fearful joy he went on playing. Could it be possible that the child had inherited his father’s love of music after all? And then Fritz seized him by the knees. “ Oh, Daddy, Daddy,” he. said with passionate eagerness, “ please, please let me do that too.”
II.
So Ritter began teaching little Fritz music, and the child devoted himself to his new pursuit with loving earnestness. All the money that his father could scrape together by pinching and saving, .working hard, and living hard, was put aside with the mother’s little portion towards giving Fritz a musical education. As soon as he was old enough he entered the academy and studied hard there, winning prize after prize. At the students’ concerts the peculiarly delicate, pure notes, which the clever-faced, slim lad seemed to spirit from the strings of his violin, drew upon him the notice of critics; and his ‘father in the front row had several - intensely blissful moments when one and another would prophesy
in his hearing “ a future for that little Ritter.”
Ritter the elder, however, had formed the grand project of sending his son to Germany that the genius which Fritz un- doubtedly possessed might be developed in the best way ; and when the boy was seventeen the scheme became feasible. It was a terrible wrench to both to part for such a long time. Ritter apparently never faltered, but Fritz was almost tempted to relin- guigh his cherished dream when at the last moment he saw his father’s face drawn and his hands twitching nervously with the agony he could not hide.
He wrote to his father, with unfailing regularity, bright, clever letters ; and, as time went on, the reports of his progress became more and more brilliant. His father lived in his successes, and struggled valiantly in the face of poverty and increasing years to send him money. As far as his musical education was concerned, however, Fritz was soon independent of pecuniary assistance; and as for living, he denied himself in every possible way. He used to think of and long for the time when he should be able to make a home for his father, who would have no uncongenial work to do in those future happy days, but as much music as he wanted, and everything his heart desired; and Fritz would earn it all.
Fritz. 3l
At last the long separation was nearly over. In the London squares the lilacs and laburnums and pink and white hawthorns were in blossom, and baskets of spring flowers made the dingy streets gay. When the leaves began to titrn and the berries to ripen in golden October, Fritz was coming home.
When Ritter arrived at his office on a bright May morning, his chief sent for him and told him, not unkindly, that he had ceased to require his services. He was getting rather past his work, and @ younger and more enterprising man was coming in his place. Poor Ritter felt quite stunned by the news. He had worked in that dark little office for so many, many years, and now where was he to turn for employment at his age and with his old-fashioned methods? In outward appearance he was little altered. His hair © was somewhat thinner and greyer ; his tall figure somewhat more stooped; his brown eyes rather dimmer—that was all. He deter- mined he would not tell Fritz of his misfortune ; if might unsettle the lad. Besides, he had a little money left, and perhaps after all he would get something to do before October.
So he strove heroically to find employment; but week after week went by, and his search was unrewarded. Day by day, as he gradually lost hope, the eternal fruitless answering of advertise- ments became more keenly painful. Day by day he sat down with less appetite to his meagre dinner. Day by day the terrible anxiety grew and grew, and the nameless dread pressed more and more heavily in upon his soul.
And yet there was a bright speck upon the dark horizon. Fritz was coming, and each of the wretched days brought him a little closer. It was this one ray of certain happiness that alone kept Ritter frum succumbing to the despair that threatened to over- whelm him in his utter weariness of mind and body.
At last the eve of Fritz’s arrival came. Poor Ritter almost forgot his troubles; and, when the overpowering recollection of them rushed back upon him, it was mingled with the thought: é To-morrow Fritz will be here, and together we shall somehow weather the storm.”
The postman ran whistling up the steps, and put a letter in the letter-box. The envelope was addressed in a strange handwriting. Ritter tore it open in a panic—what if it should be anything about Fritz! Butno. He had to read the letter twice before he could grasp the contents. However, there was no mistake: it was from
32 The Irish Monthly.
a gentleman whose advertisement for some one to keep his accounts and write his business letters Ritter had answered, and it requested him to call on the writer in the course of the next afternoon.
The morrow came blue and bright with a keen October crisp- ness in the air. Ritter spent the early part of the day in small preparations for Fritz. He went to and fro with slow feet that were strangely tired, trying to supplement the exertions of the charwoman who sniffed contemptuously under her inevitable crape bonnet as she scrubbed. He ordered a little supper from the eating-house across the way, for though he was near the end of his resources he could not let anything mar Fritz’s first evening at home. And several times during the long, clear morning he wandered into the bedroom, just for the pleasure of seeing the little bed in the corner where Fritz had always slept, standing ready to receive its owner again.
At three o’clock he went out. When he reached his destination in the West End, he was shown into a luxurious library where a dilettante aristocratio-looking man plied him with innumerable questions. Ritter answered all his queries with dignified patience. But an uncontrollable wistfulness in his whole attitude betrayed the anxiety with which he awaited the final decision of his inter- locutor. It chanced that the latter looked up in the middle of a selfish mental calculation and caught the troubled expression in Ritter’s brown eyes; and with one of the few generous im- pulses he had ever known, he said: “ Well, well, I daresay we shall suit each other, and we had better not quarrel about the money. You may call round to-morrow, Mr. Ritter.”
Oh! the relief of having found something to do. Ritter felt as if he had got into harbour after having tossed all night on a stormy sea.
When the heavy hall door closed behind him and he started on his homeward journey, he became conscious, for the first time, that he had eaten nothing all day. Well, it did not matter now, he and Fritz would have supper together by and by. Mechanically he threaded his way through the crowded streets. The roar of the traffic fell unheeded on his ears, for his thoughts were far away. He was listening to the glorious music of a full orchestra. All about him the rich strains throbbed and swelled, rising “and falling An rhythmic cadences. And clear and high through it all sounded the pure, passionate notes of the first violin—Fritz, his Fritz!
| Mona Mind.” 88 The way home seemed endless, and his steps grew slower and : - slower, as the fictitious strength born of relief ebbed from him; but at last he reached the Dwellings and toiled wearily up the stairs. He would lie on his bed a little while; it would never do to be tired when Fritz came. The clean, bare room was all flooded full of golden sunset light. It was pleasant, Ritter dimly felt, to lie there in a sort of dreamy languor, always with his shortsighted eyes turned towards the little bed in the corner. And still that exquisite music thrilled and throbbed, and soared sobbing up and up; and ever it grew more subtly sweet, but fainter, and fainter, and fainter, till it vibrated no more through the peaceful radianco of his dream. . . .
w
Up the stairs, three steps at a time, dashed Frits, the same earnest-faced, slim Fritz as of old. He opened the door—how well he knew the trick of the latch—and flung down his slender luggage. “ Father!” he called, “Father!” But there was no answer.
He ran impatiently into the bedroom, and then a smile dawned upon his face. The idea of his dear old Dad being fast asleep like that at such a moment! He walked gently to the bed. “Daddy,” he said aloud in the old childish fashion; and then he stooped down in a shame-faced, shy way, and laid his hand upon Ritter’s long fingers. Alas, poor Fritz! In that supreme moment of horror and anguish, he realised that his father lay before him in the gathering twilight—dead.
Frances WYNNE.
‘“MONTH’S MIND.”
TOT by the month be fis remembrance measured ! . Through the meek years that she must try to live
On his mere memory, it shall be treasured As sweetest solace pitying Heaven can give.
For memory is hope to true believer, Since each lone hour brings parted friends more nigh.
Thou, gentle Death! wilt with a smile receive her: To go to him and God is not to die.
December 12th, 1890. Vou. xix, No, 211
av
34 The Irwh Monthiy
AN IRISH CHIEF BARON OF THE LAST CENTURY.
HERE are volumes devoted to the history of the Irish Lord Chancellors and of the English Lord Chancellors; but the Chief Barons in neither country have found an historian: Are there any Law Magazines that furnish biographical sketches of such legal personages? The person who occupied, about the year 1760, the high office now filled by Chief Baron Palles was an Englishman, Edward Willes. His descendant and representative in our day has placed in our hands a manuscript volume written by him, entitled “ Thoughts on Different Subjects.” Before making use of its contents let us give some particulars about the author, which we owe to the kindness of the same friend. |
Edward Willes was born in 1702 at Newbold Comyn, near Leamington, in the parish of Leamington Priors—a property which had long been in the possession of his family. He chose the profes- sion of the law, perhaps influenced partly by the example of his distinguished relative, Sir John Willes, Lord Chief Justice of the ‘Common Pleas in England. We may transfer to our pages the facts which our MS. authority mentions about this second cousin of our Irish Chief Baron. He was born in 1685 at Bishops’ Itchington, the eldest of the two sons of Dr. Willes of that parish, who was a younger son of Peter Willes, of Newbold Comyn. He received his early education at the Free Grammar School at Lichfield (too soon to come across a little boy called Sam Johnson), and he afterwards entered Trinity College, Oxford, where he graduated as B.A. in 1704, M.A.in 1707; and then, passing to All Souls’ College, he became B.C.L. in 1710, and D.C.L. in 1715. Further our manuscript does not follow him: so we must go back to Edward, son of Edward Willes, of New- bold Comyn.
His kinsman’s influence would not have advanced him much in his profession if he had not made himself a sound and accomplished lawyer. The first legal office that he held was that of Recorder of Coventry. He was also Attorney-General for the Duchy of Lan-
caster. After some years he was appointed King’s Sergeant-at-law, and finally in 1757 he was raised to the dignity of Lord Chief Baron of the Irish Court of Exchequer, and one of His Majesty’s Privy Councillors in Ireland. He does not seem to have filled the office long, for he had already retired on a life-pension when he died at Newbold Comyn in 1768. He was buried in the church of Leaming- ton Priors, where a monument with a long Latin inscription preserves
=,
An Irish Chief Baron of the Last Century. 30
his memory—as far as memories can be preserved by monuments and Latin inscriptions. His son, the Rev. Edward Willes, wasa man of much learning and a bility and a keen wit, one of the few who could hold his own against the renowned Dr. Parr in scholarship and argu- ment. He was, we believe, the grandfather of the late Mr. William Willes, of Newbold Comyn, who married in 1878 Alice, daughter of Sir William H. Cope, Bart., of Bramshill Park, Hampshire.
We venture to go a little beyond our brief in observing that the Right Honourable Edward Willes in 1760 would have been a good deal astonished if he could have foreseen that both his successor in the Irish Chief Baronry and his successor at Newbold Oomyn would be Catholics in the year 1891.
Chief Baron Willes is represented as having been ‘ possessed of great benevolence of disposition and suavity of manners, with the heart and principles of a Christian.” These dispositions are shown in his manuscript volume of ‘‘ Thoughts on Different Subjects,” which lies before us. It is a moderate quarto of rather coarse paper with a very plain binding; and, though the volume is not thick and the Chief Baron left the alternate pages blank, his ‘‘ Thoughts” stop far short of the middle page, and all the rest has remained blank for over a century and a half.
“é Take back the virgin page, . White and unwritten still ; Some thoughts more pure and sage This page must fill.’’
Most people leave many such plans, small or great, unfulfilled behind them when they die. One of the beatitudes of the just man is that “the Lord hath fulfilled his labours ’’—complevit labores tllius.
“Thoughts pure and sage,” if not very novel or profound, fill Chief Baron Willes’s pages, as far as he went. Contrary to the usual practice, it is the odd pages that are left blank; and nothing is written till “Edw. Willes, 30 April, 1760, Dublin,” appears on the fourth page. The first essay is ‘‘On the Clergy’s manner of reading the publick service.” It begins thus :—
“ It has frequently giveu me great offence to cbserve the careless, negligent, and I may say irreverend (ste) manner some of our clergy read the publick service at church. The Vicar or Curate patters it over as though it was a Burthen and a heavy one, too, that is imposed upon him. He reads without any visible devotion in himself, and in such a manner as by no means to raise any devotion in his Hearers. And when he hears the Clerk say Amen to the last prayer, he shuts up the book with as much seeming satisfaction as a poor, weary day-labourer lays down his spade when he hears the clock strike six; and seems to say: ‘There! Thank God, 'tis over.’ ”’
36 The Irish Monthly.
- And so on through half a dozen pages of judicious fault-finding, which, however, shows a religious spirit.
The next essay consists of ‘‘ Thoughts on hearing the minute guns firing in the Phoenix Park on the evening that his late Majesty was to be interred, 11th November, 1760.” As the worthy Chief Baron makes this the occasion of a very personal and practical meditation, we shall conclude this sketch by giving it at full length for the edifi- cation perchance of some of the present occupants of the Irish judicial
bench. % * %
The regulated sound, how solemn! The occasion adds to the solemnity. Each loud burst strikes seriousness to my soul. The good man who is blessed with firmness of mind may possibly smile at the approach of death to himself, though some, perhaps equally good, who are not endowed with the same fortitude, may shrink aghast and tremble at his summons. The difference of behaviour may perhaps arise more from the constitution of the body than the virtue and integrity of the soul. Nay, it frequently happens that the same. man shall be capable of meeting death this hour with cheerfulness whose frail and languid spirit shall tremble even but at the apprehension of an approaching dissolution the next.
But whatever may be the behaviour of any man when death knocks at his own door and leaves him a summons, yet there is no thinking man, no Christian -at least, who sees the solemn procession of a funeral and hears the awful toll of the ‘bell, but feels in himself a serious turn of mind, even though it is the corpse of a stranger whose face he never saw, or of a beggar; for still it is the corpse of a brother man, and in this respect the saying of the philosopher® may be applicable: nthil humans alienum est. What has happened to him must one day befall myself. Am I prepared for the adventure? Am I ready to give up the account of my stewardship ?
How much nearer must it affect one when, instead of a stranger or a, beggar, the brazen instruments announce the funeral of the indul- gent Father of our country !—when the slow language of the cannon deliberately proclaims that the Emperor of Terrors has seized our King, and is now conveying him to the darksome dungeon of the grave! Seized our King? If that monarch, on whose life the happi- ness and prosperity of the nations seemed to depend, is now no more, at least with regard to the affairs of this world,—what littleness does it convey to my ideas as to my own insignificancy, who was entrusted with only a small branch of his power, the administration of his justice in one province of his dominions. If his power could not
* The gocd Judge misquotes and miscalls ‘'erence.—Ed. J. Af.
An Irish Chief Baron of the Last Century. ‘37
screen him from death at a time when his life was so critically valuable to the world in general, how may I fear the sudden call of the Messenger of Terror at my small cabin!* And what answer can I give as to my conduct with regard to the administration of the pro- vince allotted to my care? Answer to me, my soul, sincerely: for when that account is to be made up, as it must be soon, all subter- fuges are vain. Have [ with impartiality administered justice? Have | taken any man’s ox or his ass, or bribe to blind the eyes of justice? My soul of this acquits me. Have I not wished that A or B might succeed in his case, and has it not biassed and perverted my judgment? Thou hast wished that A or B might succeed in his case; but, as [am to give in my verdict upon a more serious consideration than an oath —to wit,-thine an my own eternal happiness—I mean if thou hudst been guilty of perverting thy judgment wilfully by those favourable wishes. 1 should have thought they had been equally criminal as a bribe, and that for thy future happiness they ought not only to have been repented of by way of contrition, but also to have required satisfaction to have been made for them. But of wilful per- version of justice by tho-e favourable wishes I acquit thee. How far they may have biassed thy judgment really to think that right which was wroug, as conscience is nut able to give posstsve evidence on either side but only as to belief in thy favour, 1 hope thou mayest sign the account with the usual mercantile expression, “human errors excepted.” .
but, what avails my publick conduct being in the main right, when my conscience brings to my remembrance innumerable privgte sins deliberately and wilfuily committed ?—not only the sina of my youth, but sins committed in the strength of my age, in the vigour of my understanding, and even in the decline of life, when grey hairs, which ought to cover wisdom, have been and are a witness of my wickedness andfolly. . . . ‘Lhy omniscience, alone, O God, can judge of the true contrition of the heart, can know the firm sincerity of the resolutions of amendment of life. Permit me, therefore, O Supreme Being, to pour out, like water which runneth apace, the inundation of my ltrangressions before Thee. Aud as the confession of my. sins even to Thee, O Lord, is useful only by the number of them to increase my contrition—tor Thou, O God, knowest them all already, and many more to be imputed to me which my frail memory has forgot— grant me the effect of that confession, such an humble and contrite spirit that will be pleasing und acceptable to Thee, and such
* His small cabin was probably a stately five-story mansion in Henrietta-street —lesa fashionable now than it was 130 years ago
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firmness of resolution of amendment that I may with humble con- fidence rely on Thy gracious pardon and forgiveness, not for the sake of the confession or firm resolutions of amendment, any otherwise than as Thou hast declared them the means of applying to myself the infinite and all-sufficient merits of thy Son our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ—merits all-sufficient to make atonement for the sins of the whole world. To Whom, with Thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory, world without end. Amen.
LIFE’S PILGRIMAGE.
LE: weary life, speed on!
See how friends quit our slowly-moving band. The best are onward gone,
They left the long-held hand,
And started singly for the far-off land.
Remember how they went,
Departing from us when we least had thought. Death beckoned—well content
They passed away. They sought
God’s will alone ; save this, they cared for nought.
Mourn not, though they were young—
The sisters, brothers of thy childhood’s life: ‘Mourn not, though prattling tongue
Had called thee mother. Wife,
Mourn not the husband saved from toil and strife.
Mourn not, ye little ones,
Her who made kind your father’s care-worn face ; Nor him, ye stately sons,
Who trained you for life’s race—
All soon will reach their blissful resting place.
Yes, grieve not for your loss,
Bear bravely this addition to your load : "Tis but another cross,
Wherewith to climb the road; And they—await you in the Blest Abode.
Tis far from earth to heaven— But heaven to earth is very, very near, And countless helps are given Throughout each weary year, Till we, in turn, the weleome summons hear.
( 89.)
IRISH YOUTH AND HIGH IDEALS.
_[Very few of the essays that have appeared in this Magazine , seem to have been read with keener interest than Father Sheehan’s “Two Civilizations,” at page 293 of our last volume. A lecture deli- vered at the outset of his career has fallen into our hands, which appears to us to deserve a wider audience than his native town of Mallow can have afforded ten years ago. We omit a few short passages at the beginning, in the middle, and towards the end.— Ep. J. i. |
I.
As an artist requires a model for his picture or statue, and as a musician is helpless without a key-note, so a preacher, when he assumes for the time the ré/ of lecturer, finds it difficult to be close or consecutive in his reasoning, unless he can lean on that familiar aid and adjunct of all his discourses—a text. In casting around for a text for this address, I thought I could not do better than consult the pages of one who has written more strangely wise and more strangely foolish things than any man of this generation— one who has been alternately hailed asa prophet, and denounced as a pedant and a cheat, but one who has exercised, and continues to exercise, a more powerful influence on the young minds of this generation than any other writer and thinker—I mean Thomas Carlyle, the Philosopher of Chelsea.
In one of his most popular essays, in which he insists on the nobleness and sacredness of work, he lays it down that the primary condition of all success is a knowledge of the work each one of us has to do in this world. “ Know thy work and do it,” he says, is the latest message that has come to us from the “ Voices and Sages,” the men that have thought and spoken and written for the well-being of mankind. And again: “To make one spot of God's world a little brighter, better, and happier, here is work for a g And I have chosen these two extracts because I believe that the first contains the healthiest and safest’ motto for each individual member of this Society ; and because the second is a perfect em- bodiment of the ideas that suggested the formation of this Society, and of the principles that will actuate its founders and helpers in a
40. The Irish Monthly.
steady and uniform perseverance in the great work they have undertaken.
That nothing in Nature is stagnant—that everything is capable of and demands development—and that education is second only to Nature in its effects—these are truths that require no proof, for they are almost axiomatic. They govern the world of matter, and still more, the world of mind. Nature never rests; and its glories and splendours, that make pale with wonder the observer of refinement and sensibility, are not the work of a moment, but the result of slow growth and development, carried out in obedience to secret but imperative laws. Those great, shining worlds, that rest in the Dome of Immensity, apparently so silent and still, have been moulded out of nebulous and other matter, have been subjected to the action of fire, have been and still are the theatres of the mightiest upheavals and revolutions. Stars have grown into space, have revolved in their orbits, and have been broken into fragments, and these in turn have resolved themselves into gases, and these in turn have formed in the hands of the Almighty Creator the material from which new and more beautiful worlds have arisen. If the law of development and perpetual change and progress did not exist, this mighty universe, instead of being, as it is, a stately, majestic, harmonious work, beautiful in its obedience to the unseen powers, would be a vast chaotic mass of matter in collision with matter, and worlds hurled upon worlds; and this earth of ours would become in time a mere slag—a cinder drifting dangerously through space, instead of fulfilling the vision of the poet, who sees—
Its growing mass, Pelted with star-dust, stuned with meteor-balls, Heat like a hammered anvil, till at last Man and his works and all that stirred itself Of its own motion, in the fiery glow Turns to a flaming vapour, and our orb Shines a new sun for worlds that shall be born.
And so with our own earth. It seems so peaceful with its pleasant green fields and shining seas, that it is difficult to believe that day after day earth and water are changing places, the mountains are descending to the plains, and the seas are rising above their level, and a few centuries will behold the ships of merchants sailing over what are now busy and pupulous cities, and golden corn waving where now in impenetrable darkness the deep-sea monsters are
Lrish Youth and High Ideas. 4]
hiding in the mammoth forests of the ocean. Nature never rests. Nature demands disturbance. It will grow a foul jungle of weeds if let alone. It is only when its breast is torn open by the pick- axe of the miner or the plough of the husbandman that it yields rich ores, or the richer grain that is needed for the sustenance of men. In aword, Nature is one vast laboratory, ever dissolving and destroying, but ever, too, combining and creating.
If this be true of the material world, if masses inert of themselves are moulded into form and invested with secret, mechanical ,power, if even a dull brown clod, when Nature’s treatment is afforded it, becomes a centre of fertility, teeming with life and strength and sweetness, shall we not say that the same great laws hold for us in the development of the mighty faculties with which we are endowed ? Shall it be said that man’s mind alone is barren and fruitless, or fertile only in things that are evil? Have you never seriously considered the power, the strength, the swiftness, the far-reaching dominion, the compre- hensive sympathies, the only less than infinite attributes, that belong to the mind of man? It is the one thing that is really terrible in created nature, because whilst striving to master all nature’s secrets its own workings remain the most impenetrable secret of all. That mass of grey pulp that is hidden under our foreheads is the mightiest of natural agencies—it has forces more than electric in invincible strength and unimaginable swiftness. Look at the tenacity of man’s memory. Not an idea, not am im- pression or experience is ever obliterated from it. Faces are photographed on. the mind, and they never die. Impressions are stamped upon it, and it never loses them. They may seem to be crushed out in a medley of succeeding thoughts; but no! the per- fume of a flower, the echo of a song of our early days, even the very lights and shades of a landscape, will bring back to our minds thoughts and sensations long buried and forgotten. For the mind folds its pictures as you would fold a map or a panorama; touch the secret spring or unloose the secret cord, and memory unfolds them undimmed and unfaded by time. And that other great God-given faculty, the intellect, is yet more wonderful. With the quickness of lightning it grasps an idea or a fact, and holds it, and turns it over, and studies even unconsciously and runs through a train of reasoning, and compares one fact with another, and deduces from that comparison some great truth that
42 The Iruh Monthly.
was hidden away in the bosom of Nature. It is thus we have become acquainted with what are called the “ Wonders of Nature,” it is thus that the great Heavens, glittering with galaxies of stars, have become an open scroll to the many; it is thus that granite rocks, and beds of gravel, and boulders of flint, are so many books in which the geologist can read the ages of their formations, and trace the effects of deluges and earthquakes ; and it is thus that the student of chemical science can resolve all things, except his own mind, into their original elements, and create new substances at his own will.
Like the watchers of old upon the mountains of Chaldma, in some remote and lonely observatory our student-of astronomy sits. He is far away from the earth, and he works when sleep is on the eyes of men and all things are silent. And what is his work? He is pursuing a truly sublime vocation. He is watching the stars that look down upon him kindly, he is studying their construction and trying to bring into system their apparently erratic motions. He knows every mountain and fissure and ravine in the moon as intimately as the farmer knows the ridges and furrows of his fields. He sees the seasons come and go upon the planets, as you and I see them come and go here. He sees where the sun shines and where the snows fall and gather on these far off-worlds. And all the burning questions that agitate the minds of the millions below him, and all the passions that fret the heart of man are as nothing to him,—
He is as old as Egypt to himself, Brother to them that squared the pyramids ;
By the same stars he watches, and reads that page Where every letter is a glittering world.
A. lonely, desolate, solitary life! but does it not fill us with legiti- mate pride to think that it is a mind like our own that has spanned the wide abysses of space and wrested their latest secret from the stars? Isaac Newton saw an apple fall in his garden, and in that simple fact his great intellect discerned the great law, up to that time unknown, that holds the great worlds of this Universe together. A young boy sat and saw the steam hissing and gurg- ling and raising the lid of a kettle. It was a small thing, but what was the message that small thing conveyed to the great mind that beheld it? Look around the world, and see every country under heaven covered with a network of railways, every railway
Irish Youth and High Ideals. 43
laden with locomotives dragging men and merchandise after them quicker than the wind by the same power that stirred the lid of the kettle; and see the Ocean, hitherto man’s greatest enemy, now completely conquered, and ¢overed with convoys and fleets that sweep with the most perfect security over its bosom. What has thus revolutionized Nature? "What has conquered space so far, and made man perfectly independent of those forces of which he had been so much afraid? A simple circumstance—but it was grasped by a mighty mind !
This moment outside New York, in a laboratory that would suggest to a poetic mind those things Dante saw in his Vision of Hell, amid roaring furnaces, and horrid electric batteries, and miles of wiring that stretch round and round his apartments, and chain cables that would hold the Great Eastern, and mountains of jars full of chemicels, in darkness and solitude and smoke, there is a student who of late years has startled the world by new applica- tions of scientific truth. Nature has revealed some of her most wonderful secrets to him. The world, it is true, was aware of the existence of that unseen but awful agent, subtle as a spirit, that is diffused through all things, called electricity. But Edison is the first that has made electricity the study of his life, and that has _seen how widely utilised it may be, and how universally applied.
And therefore he is threatening to set aside all the accessories of our boasted civilisation. The newspaper reporter will very soon take his place with the transcriber of the Middle Ages, fer the phonograph takes down human speech accurately word for word, and gives it back again. And he even threatens to supersede the newspaper itself. Gentlemen of the London Clubs last year sat at their firesides and distinctly heard the debates in the House of Commons; and a concert given in the Crystal Palace, London, was heard and appreciated hundreds of miles away in Birmingham.
Here again is a proof of the magio of the human mind. But we must remember that all these miracles of science are the result of the development of the intellectual faculties—that development being the result of hard labour and much research. “ Know thy work and do it,” says Carlyle. And men like Newton and Edison understand the truth of that maxim. Newton, as his biographer tells us,on one occasion forgot that he had eaten his dinner; and Mr. Edison was married last year, and forgot all about it three hours afterwards, so absorbed was he in his studies.
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The thoughtful philosopher of old dreamed of these victories over nature: we have seen them. What was a thousand years ago a fancy and a chimera, came by degrees into the regions of pro- bability, and thence into the regions of fact. Napoleon and Hannibal boasted that they had crossed the Alps; we Nineteenth- century people, have cut right through them. We have labelled and ticketed nearly every star in the firmament. We have constructed new telescopes, and by their aid discovered new stars, in reality new suns, the centres of other systems immeasurably greater than our own. Our ocean steamers cross and recross the Atlantic at fabulous speed. The world is girded with coils of wire, along which the electric spark is for ever flashing, communicating intelli- gence instantaneously to dwellers under far distant skies. We have opened canals, and let seas mingle with seas, and oceans pour their waters into oceans. Nay, even so rapid is the march of science, so marvellous the activity of man’s mind in our age, that when thirty years ago the Poet Laureate
Dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonders that would be.
Saw the heavens filled with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales,
Heard the heavens filled with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew Of the nations’ airy navies, battling in the central blue,
he was scoffed at as a visionary. But that vision was fulfilled in the Franco-Prussian war, when balloons were sent up from the
.German army on one side, and from the battlements of Paris on
the other, and both armies watched with interest the conflict of their navies in the air.
Looking through all these victories over Nature gained by the indomitable energy of those silent but best benefactors of their | race—the students of the garret and the closet-—he who runs may read the lesson I am teaching you to-night ; the power of man’s mind when carefully educated and inured to constant labour and study, and can understand the enthusiasm of the poet who speaks of
Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new, That which they have done but earnest of the things they mean to do
Trish Youth and High Ideals., 45
II.
I have now shown you that Nature needs development, and that man’s mind, when educated, is master of Nature. You will bear with me for a moment, while Í explain to you the still more extraordinary power that man has over his fellowman, when either the Divine gift of genius is given him, or the want of that gift is supplied by judicious and uniform studies. And lest it should be tedious if I confined myself altogether to abstract truths, I shall show you what I mean by three examples—of a preacher, an artist, and a poet, and take these examples from one city and one particular-period of time. Towards the end of the fifteenth cen- tury, a strange sight was witnessed in Florence, the intellectual capital of Italy. In the grey dawn of the morning for weeks in the spring time, around a pulpit in one of the largest churches in that city, was to be seen clothed in the garb of penitence and mourning a vast crowd of people, the majority of whom belonged to the better and higher classes. They had ashes on their heads, and their feet were bare, and they held in their hands unbleached candles, such as are used in Masses for the dead, and they prayed, not in the conventional fashion, but with moans and sighs and tears that would touch any heart. They were listening to the words of a Dominican Friar, one who for the moment too had put aside the conventional sermon, and thundered forth words of mighty truth with all the passion of an ancient prophet. You will say—not so wonderful after all! But when I tell you that before that monk appeared these people were the most sceptical, luxurious, licentious people in Europe. that they spent their days and nights in revelry, that their books of devotion were the Pagan classics, that their houses were covered with statues of gods and goddesses that they almost worshipped, that they spared no money to procure relics of Pagan times, and that they considered themselves the most advanced, refined, sesthetic people in Europe, you will agree with me in thinking that if ever the empire of a great mind over lesser minds was exhibited, it was here. But Savonarola went farther. He made that proud and sensitive people strip their halls and corridors of their fairest ornaments. He made the Florentine sacans bring their books and statues and pictures to the public square of the city. He made the Florentine ladies bring their lutes and guitars, and all the accessories of the Oriental magnifi-
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cence in which they lived. He piled all these treasures in the centre of the square, covered the pyre with gunpowder, burned it without remorse, and in its smoke beheld the ghost of & false art- worship—in reality Pagan worship—depart.
A few years after Savonarola had crushed the Paganism of Florence, a poor artizan entered that city. A huge block of marble, belonging to the City Fathers, but rejected by them as worthless, was lying outside the walls. After much trouble this wandering artist obtained possession of it and built a shed over it. Why? Because he believed that an image, an idea of his own mind, was embedded in that rock, and he was determined to find it. He went to work, and so fierce was his energy, that he with chisel and hammer cut away as much material as three labourers in a day. At night he put a candle in his cap, and worked into the small hours of the morning. At last he found his idea, and left it without a word to the City Fathers. They took it and called it the.wonder of their own age, and to this day, standing on the gates of their city, it is the pride and glory of the Florentines. It is the famous statue of the youthful David, in the act of smiting the Philistine giant, and that poor artist wis Michael Angelo! He went straight from Florence to Rome, built himself a scaffold in the Sistine Chapel, and from the top of that scaffold, stretched at full length day by day for three years, he painted those wonderful frescoes that are still the first attraction in the Eternal City.
Michael Angelo was a genius—one of these rare minds for whom ” nature strikes a special mould; but he understood the philosophy of education and of work. Even at the age of ninety, the age of second childhood to most men, he was found brush in hand before a picture of the “ Dead Christ,” and whilst thus engaged he turned his face to the wall and died.
About two centuries before Michael Angelo appeared, a fierce political fight took place in Florence. It arose out of one of those hereditary feuds that were so common among ancient states, but which are unheard of in these days of broader ideas and higher civilisation. But one, then unknown to his people, was driven by the dominant faction from the city, and like all proud minds he found refuge in solitude, and forgot ‘the schoolboy rage ” and vindictiveness of his countrymen in the vision that his great mind conjured up, and which he has framed in verse to charm and fascinate, and terrify the world. His biographer tells us that he
Trish Youth and High Ideals. 47
grew “lean from mighty labour,” and there cannot be a doubt that this great work of his created a profound impression on his own mind, for we know that to the end of his life he was silent, solitary, and sad. This was Dante, the greatest of all poets after Shakespeare—Dante, forgotten and neglected by his countrymen even after death, but now worshipped by them with all the fervour of Italian enthusiasm. For five centuries his “ Divina Commedia” has been acknowledged as the great national classic. Its strong poetic expressions have passed into the homely but graphic language of the people, his pictures of heaven have been made the favourite subjects of painting and sculpture, and his awful descrip- tions of hell, terrible in their realism, have been utilised by poets and essayists so far that they would have lost their awful signifi- cance if the majesty of genius did not make them ever fresh and original, And his fame has passed into other countries. There is scarcely any important work issued from the press at the present day in which allusion is not made to Dante’s poem. Heillustrates oratory, poetry, and fiction; and that weird vision of his will
carry his name side by side with that of William Shakespeare to:
the minds of all future generations, when lesser poets shall have passed for ever from the memories and traditions of men. Mr. Lowell, one of the first of American litterateurs, speaking the other day to a society like our own in London, said, that no matter how extensive the range of our reading may be, we know nothing of poetry until we have studied and mastered that vision of Dante. Here is fame! Here is mind power! The petty despots and tyrants of that day, the heads of the faction that ex- pelled him from their city, are long since forgotten—their ashes we Blown about the desert dust, Or buricd in the iron hills,
while the vision seen by their victim is the one object before the eyes of the cultured thinkers of an age that believes that Guelph and Ghibelline alike were barbarians in their brute power and ignorance. If ever the immortality of genius was proven, it was here—Dante speaks to the men of the nineteenth century, who venerate and worship him, as he spoke to the men of the fourteenth century, who made him an outcast and a beggar; and Ftrense la bella, his own beautiful but ungrateful city, knows that when its own fame has departed as the home of all that is choice and rare
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in art, it will still be remembered in the annals of literature as the cradle of Italy’s greatest poet. Its wild threat, long since bitterly repented of, remains fulfilled: “ Daute will not return living or dead.” A stately cenotaph is the eternal reminder to Florence that the dust of their poet is enshrined amongst strangers at Ravenna. .
I could multiply examples indefinitely. I could show that the mind of man has even more power over the will of nations than the wills of individuals. I could appeal to United Germany as a proof of the influence of poets and philosophers, not only over their own generation, but even over the future destinies of their -countries, for it was the poems and philosophy of Goethe and Schiller that changed the whole current of thought in the German Universities, and through their students permeated the masses of the people, and created the ambition, now realised, of being a united people, and the first military power im the world. For we ‘must remember that the Germans are not only the best soldiers, but also the best students, and there is scarcely a private soldier in the German forces that does not know more of military science than the best trained officer in the English army.
Again, cast your eyes across the Atlantic and see the greatest wonder of modern times,—a state, composed of men of all nationalities, grown in thirty years to be the first power in the world—first in manufactures—first in arts—first in the enterprise of its people—every day widening its empire, and promising to be, before the dawn of another century, the exact counterpart of the old Roman empire in dominion, and wealth, and intelligence, but infinitely superior in the broad freedom and humanity of the ideas that prevail amongst its people and are reflected from the people on the Government. What is the cause of all this? What, but liberty of thought freely and wholesomely developed ? America is the living proof of the truth of the first axiom in political science : “ Freedom of thought is the first element of civilisation.”
And taking an example from our own country, if at the present day there is a stronger feeling of patriotism and nationality amongst us than at any former period in our history, is it not to be attributed to our superior education, to the great minds that have thought and spoken for us, and to the glorious voices that have poured their songs for freedom into the hearts of the people? Beranger kept alive in France the spirit of devotion to the Napoleonic dynasty
Irish Youth and High Ideals, .. 49
years after its first great founder had perished ; and it is not toomuch to say that the poets and orators of “48, Thomas Davis, Charles Gavan Duffy, Clarence Mangan, Thomas Francis Meagher, Speranza, and the rest, had quite as much do in keeping alive, with renewed vigour and vitality, the spirit of Irish nationality. Ina word, we must change that old, fast-rooted idea that we learned long ago in Political Geography, that there are five great powers in Europe—great in their armies and naviese—great because prepared to butcher one anotheratamoment’s notice. The world is beginning to have clearer ideas on these matters—more truthful ideas of silent agencies that are at work, and whose work is every day becoming more visible because more successful. The five great powers, not of Europe but of the world, now are—the memory of man, the will of man, and the intellect of man, and the voice and the pen as their agents and exponents.
It is not necessary to put the reverse of the picture before you. Nature’s laws are not to be violated. Nature retaliates whenever it is abused or neglected. If man neglects the cultivation of fields, soon he will have a foul jungle of weeds breeding pestilence ; and if man neglects the cultivation of his mind, very soon it will become the receptecle of everything that is coarse and evil, and if you need proof of this, look around the asylums, jails, reformatories and penitentiaries of the world! What has filled them? Ignorance. What has made society expel their inmates, and put them under restraint, as dangerous to its well-being and order? Ignorance. Ask the governors, chaplains, and other officials, what is the cause of the moral insanity that forces criminals to set their faces against their fellowmen, and violate every law with the certainty of being summarily punished? Ignorance, they will answer, and neglect of early education. . Ask the political economist of the day and the men who have studied sanitary science, why diseases are propagated, and future generations punished for the neglect or cnime of one man? They will tell you it is ignorance. For next to the great primal curse, the one evil that haunts our race is the neglect of these means which are given us to withdraw ourselves from that curse, or change it to a blessing.
What is trie of individuals is also true of whole nations. Wherever the masses of the people are allowed to remain in ignorance, wherever the Arts are without favour or patronage, wherever Science is shunned and enterprise undeveloped, there is
Vou. xm. No. 211 4
50 The Irish Monthly.
slowness, backwardness, discontent and revolution, And the most powerful weapon at all times in the hands of the despot has been the enforced ignorance of the people. Whenever it became neces- sary to stamp out the spirit of a nation, the tyrant has stifled the voices of its patriots in prison, has checked the freedom of the Press, and has taken away from the rising generation the means of education. So it was in Ireland. Because she was independent, _ because she repudiated any connexion, religious or political, with England, because she aspired after her own freedom, her moral and intellectual teachers were persecuted, the priest and school- master were proscribed, and the “oldest, the most acute, subtle, and speculative race in the world’’* were reduced by the operation of merciless laws to a state that would have bordered on barbarism were it not for the high principle and the unconquerable spirit of the people. Dungeons, gibbets and racks are nothing. Men can always despise them. But what hope is there when the voice of a nation is stifled and the mind of a nation paralysed ?
II.
I have dwelt a long time on this matter, because I wish to impress these great truths upon your minds. It is easy to perceive their application. Here is your work—here is your duty—your duty to yourselves, and to the two great communities to which you belong—the Catholic Church and the Irish people. You see now that if you do not develop your faculties by study and reflection, you are violating the fundamental laws of Nature. You can see too that by obeying those laws, you are securing yourselves from unwholesome thoughts and evil passions, and filling your minds with everything that is pure and high and noble. Educate your- selves, and I promise you the reward that comes from all labour— the consciousness that you have done your duty, and the intense satisfaction of acquiring knowledge. When an architect has erected a stately church, does he not feel a glow of satisfaction in thinking that it was his mind conceived the idea and his hands executed it; and that men in after times admiring its even pro- portions and stately dimensions will say, “this is. the work of a great and a thoughtful mind?” When the farmer, after the labour and hardships of the spring, sees his work fructifying in
* Cardinal Newman.
Irish Youth and. High Ideals. 51
autumn harvests of green crops and golden wheat, has he not the satisfacton of knowing, not only that it will increase his wealth, but that it is his work and Nature’s work combined? So with a student ; and you will understand what I mean if ever you have waded through a difficult problem in science, or if after many painful efforts you can strike off some piece of music on flute or violin or piano. Knowledge is power; but knowledge also is pleasure—the keenest and highest and best of pleasures. I have often thought that I would sacrifice a great deal to be able to sit at that beautiful organ in our own church, and thunder along the aisles the glorious symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven.
Seek after knowledge therefore. Take up some one subject, scientific or literary, and master it. Form your tastes. . Acquire a love of whatever is beautiful in poetry, or science, or art, or literature, and you will have in your possession a talisman against all physical and mental pain. Many a dark, tedious, and lonely hour will be lightened and made happy by good books. When Charles Dickens was writing the Pickwick Papers, one poor invalid amongst many, bed-ridden and afflicted with an incurable disease, wrote to him again and again to expedite thg issue of his tale, “ because,” said he, “when following the career of Pickwick, or laughing at the witticisms of Sam Weller, I never feel pain.” Charles Dickens’ little volume was worth more to him than all the prescriptions of these necessary evils—called Doctors. Acquire then a taste for literature. I mean for high-class literature; I do not mean the gutter literature of that unclean, obscene Babylon, TLondon—acquire a taste for literature—and you have a charm against everything evil. The troubles, vexations, and dissappoint- ments, that are incident to our condition here can be defied, because forgotten, by going out from your own minds for a while into the new world that the philosopher or the scientist, the historian, or the novelist will show you. And insensibly you will become better and wiser men. A stone is dropped into the water, and in a moment it is hidden away and unseen. But far above on the surface there is circle after circle widening and widening until they strike on the shore. So with the acquisition of new ideas. They pass away and are forgotten, but they always leave an impression behind them that grows wider and deeper and more deep. For every new idea is a new growth. Read and read, and every moment as you read, even for pleasure, your mind is develop-
-
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' ing and expdnding and becoming illuminated, until by degrees
you see yourselves becoming wiser, more thoughtful, truer and better men, with greater confidence in yourselves and trusted more largely by others.
It must not be lost sight of either that no one can be so com- pletely isolated from his fellowmen as to be able to establish a republic in his own mind so independent that he can be heedless of the shame or glory that reflects upon others from his actions. Now it is our pride and happiness that we belong to the most ancient and perfect organisation that exists in this world at present ; that we are, to use the familiar but striking language of Macaulay, members of a Church “ that saw the commencement of all the governments and all the ecclesiastical establishments that exist in the world, and is destined to see the end of them all—that was great and respected before the Saxon set foot in Britain and before the Frank had crossed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch, and idols were worshipped in the temple of Mecca.” From that Church we have received innumerable bless- ings, and it behoves us to pay back a filial debt of gratitude by making ourselves Such worthy members of it, that our intelligence and advancement even in secular knowledge shall be accepted as a refutation of the ancient calumny that the Catholic Church is the © enemy of human progress. It is assuredly a far-fetched accusation to attribute to the mother of arts, the custodian of all ancient literature, the patroness of the sciences, a spirit of hostility to the ad- vancement of human interests. But the charge is made, and we must refute it—refute if by our knowledge of the religion we profess, and even by our knowledge of all those subjects that are considered essential to a liberal education. For when men of different creeds meet, they do not care to launch at once into religious controversy, but measure one another by conversation on all those branches of knowledge that are supposed to be included in the curriculum of the studies even of self-educated men. And then they slide gradually into the one subject that has always a supreme interest for the thoughtful—the subject of the human soul and its destinies, and all the mysteries that circle round the one great central question. And this leads me to speak with sorrow of the neglect of the study of Catholic theology that is go common amongst us. Theology is justly called the queen of all the sciences, partly because of its sacred subjects, and partly because it is so intimately
Trish Youth and High Ideals. 53
connected with all other sciences. Now there is an idea prevalent amongst many, that theology is only for priests, that laymen have no need of it, and thus it happens that, though most Catholios have clear ideas of the principles, doctrines, and discipline of the Church, very few have that detatled knowledge that comes from ' judicious, well-regulated and sustained study. This should not be. Catholics should take a pleasure in studying those subjects that have had such an attraction for the greatest minds. And to take a utilitarian view of the matter, we must remember that we are by compulsion a migratory race, that it is not given to all to die in sight of the “fair hills of holy Ireland,” but that hundreds and thousands are compelled to go amongst the stranger and to be subjected to the critical glance of freethinkers, who identify every Irishman with Rome and Catholicity. Is it not well that we should show them that our religion is not a superstition, and that our love for it is not founded on ignorance; that if we have been denied the blessings of education for seven centuries, we had amongst us the great civilising agent of the world—the Catholic Church ; that she supplied what our rulers denied; and that at any moment we are prepared to enter the lists ¢ven against trained controversialists and take our stand on the eternal principles of truth and justice to prove the teaching of the Church to be-in all things consistent with the eternal verities of God? This is what most of our fellow-countrymen have done in the large populous centres of America and England. But many, too, from want of education, have betrayed themselves and their country and prevari- cated, because finding themselves helpless before ridicule they were made ashamed of the religion which they were unable to defend. Again, we owe a duty to the grand old race from which we have sprung, of whose history, dark and melancholy though it be, we are so proud, and of whose future we have such great and well- founded hopes. It is a subject which it is difficult for any Inshman to approach without emotion. When we consider what our race has suffered, and why it has suffered,—the ferocity with which its enemies sought to destroy it, and its unflinching adhesion through the bitterest trials to the great principles of nationality and religion, we cannot help thinking that sooner or later the world at large will do it justice, and that the impartial historian of the future will have for his brightest page the record of the sufferings of our people for the highest and holiest principles that can govern the mind and
4. The Irwh Monthly.
stir the heart of man. Side by side with this fidelity to principle, the distinguishing characteristic of our race has always been a thirst for knowledge—a love for learning. It was so in times of old when the halls of Bangor and Lismore were thronged with students from all parts of the Contiment, and Ireland held up, undimmed and unextinguished, the lamp of learning that had flickered and died out in Europe. It was so even under the penal laws, which pro- soribed learning even more rigidly than religion, and books were studied where the Mass was read, under the friendly shade of the rock, or far out on the bleak and unfrequented moor. And it is so now when all disabilities being removed, our people are free at last, to indulge the national passion for knowledge. I do not believe that any race of men in the world could have made such progress in learning as the Irish in the fifty years of their freedom. Ina period of time that would be required by any vther nation to shake themselves free from the habits and instincts of serfdom, the Irish people have sprung into all the privileges, and all the acquired tastes and attrihutes of freemen. Even within the last ten years the ambition of the people has run far ahead of their resources. The learning and ajomplishments that ten years ago were supposed to be out of the reach of the multitude are now considered utterly inadequate to the wants of the multitude. Students are now familiar with subjects that were formerly the exclusive property of the . professor. The demand is far beyond the supply. The ory of the dying Goéthe for “ More light ! more light !” is now the cry of the Irish people,—more light to understand themselves, their rights, their wrongs, and their power,—more light
to cleave a path to right Through the mouldering dust of ages,
more light till at last Ireland resumes her old privilege of enlight- ening the world, and, holding up the beacon lights of faith and. knowledge, takes her rightful place amongst the nations of the earth in the vanguard of human progress.
P. A. SHEEHAN.
( 55 )
NOTES ON NEW BOOKS.
1. The large number of books awaiting notice on our table may be ©
artly due to the Christmas season; but most of them are very far indeed from being properly classed as Christmas books. Almost the only one that is not grave or religious is the one that describes itself with a characteristic want of reticence on the title-page as ‘‘ Poteen Punch, strong, hot, and sweet, made and mixed by ‘Crom-a-Boo’: being a succession of Irish after-dinner stories of love-making, fun, and fighting, some of which have already appeared in various Christ- mas Numbers of Unsted Ireland” (Dublin: M. H. Gill and Son). A teetotal critic and law-abiding citizen cannot be expected to be particu- larly well disposed towards punch and (still worse) poteen punch ; but many members of the human race are rather partial towards those decoctions, and many others prefer in fiction the rollicking, the sensational, and the short. .
2. The most important books of this season, as far as Catholic literature is concerned, are ‘‘ Peter’s Rock in Mohammed’s Flood,’’ by Thomas W. Allies, and ‘‘The Life of Blessed John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, and Martyr under Henry VIII.,” by the Rev. T. E. Bridgett, of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. It is scarcely necessary to say that these works come from the firm of Burns and Qates; and it is still less necessary to add that they are produced with theggest paper and type and the most suitable binding. Mr.+Allies’ volume, though distinct in itself, is in reality the seventh volume of his great work, “The Formation of Christendom.” He, therefore, puts in front of the present volume an analysis of the contents of the six preceding volumes. The period covered by this splendid octavo extends from the pontificate of St. Gregory the Great to that of St. Leo III. The history of the Church was then, more completely than in later times, the history of the civilised world; and only the widest range of accurate historical knowledge could have qualified Mr. Allies for the huge task he has adequately fulfilled. His style is admirably adapted to the judicial functions of an historian. Of course the book ends with an index, but its ten close pages are only packed with references to all the persons whose doings are recorded in these learned pages. Mr. Allies has won a high place among Church historians; and in Germany, the favoured land of erudition, he is esteemed one of the foremost English writers on historical subjects.
3. We have said before, and we say again, that te no other living writer except one—and the one exception is Father Coleridge—is Catholic literature so deeply indebted as to the Redemptorist, Father Bridgett. The nine important works enumerated by the Publishers on the last page of his newest publication—‘‘ The History of the Holy Eucharist in Great Britain,” ‘‘Our Lady's Dowry,” “ The Discipline of Drink,” “The Ritual of the New Testament,” etc.—are only the chief fruits of his great and solid learning, his indefatigable research, and his fine literary skill. He is another illustration of the saying that the busiest men have most leisure, for side by side with this
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v
literary activity has gone on his large share in the missionary labours and the domestic government of his Congregation. In many respects his new work, ‘‘ Life of Blessed John Fisher,” is the most original, the most important, and the most interesting of all his writings. No one can read the preface without feeling that Bishop Fisher's biographer is in a very peculiar degree qualified for his office and without being eager to study the result of labours undertaken with such qualifications and in such a spirit. It will be found that Father Bridgett has given us what may be called an historical biography admirable in all its parts, entitling him to the gratitude especially of all who belong to the Church of Blessed John Fisher. Why is it not mentioned on the titlepage that this is a second edition? There are two or three illustrations, the frontispiece being a reproduction by the autotype process of Holbein’s skefch of the holy Bishop, made eight years before his martyrdom, and now preserved in the British useum.
_ 4. We may slip in here by stealth an amiable piece of criticism from the Dublin Evening Masi of December 10th, the last sentence of which was evidently suggested by the first of our book-notices in December, announcing Miss Frances Wynne’s ‘ Whisper!”
In Tue Inrsg Monruty “ A Striking Contrast ’’ is concluded, and proved a most interesting story. ‘‘ An Australian’s Notes at Wiesbaden,’’ by Susan Gavan Duffy, will be read with interest. The Editor contributes a short biographical sketch of the late Bishop of Dromore, and ‘‘ A Word in Memory ” of the late ndge O’Hagan. The poetry includes verses ‘‘ To the Children ’’ which appear over the familiar initials G. N. P., and a beautiful poem by Dora Sigerson, entitled “ Little White Rose.” she latter is full of melody and pathos, and but for the pressure upon our space*would be q@goted in full as a sample of the poetry te be
ound in the pages of this admirable magazine, of which the current number com- pletes the yearly volume. In glancing at the table of contents during the past twelve months we find the familiar names of Rosa Mulholland, and Katharine aan, and others, such as Montagu Griffin, Rose Kavanagh, and Frances
ynne, which are daily becoming better known. ‘* Whisper! ’’ a volume of verse by the last-named, has not yet reached us, but if Miss Wynne will imitate
Odyaeous and resolutely close her ears to flattery, she may do work of an even more enduring natare than such we have seen, whic 8 that ensure it length of days.
5. Does the following estimate of Miss Wynne’s Poems, which is given in The Irish Times of Decem ber 16th, come under this warning against injudicious flattery ?
é Whisper !”’ is the title of a little volume of poems by’an Irish author, Miss Frances Wynne, which has just been published| by Messrs. Kegan,,Paul and Co. The poems are full of dainty conceit, and are phrased with great delicacy. The authoress is evidently a student of nature,fand has derived her‘impressions in the best of ail schools. ere is considerable originality of style and thought, and her pages may be read by all with profit. There could be no prettier Christmas present than this little book. Its fancies are elegant, and its teaching is; good.
FEBRUARY, 18ot.
AN UNKNOWN HERO.
By M. W. Brew, Author of ‘* The Burtons of Dunroe,’’ ‘‘ Chronicles of Castle Cloyne,” ete.
“<< 'T'EÉ world knows nothing of its greatest men.” So says Sir
Henry Taylor, and his words have become olassic. How- ever, like most of those sayings, that because of their terseness, cleverness of adaptation, or felicity of expression, have become stock quotations, it has two sides to it. Itis not altogether true, nor is it altogether false. The world does know something of its greatest men, and the outcome of that. knowledge, or rather its inevitable consequence, is what is popularly understood as hero- worship. But a very small percentage of human beings can be capable of doing great things or thinking great thoughts, and patting these thoughts into words that will not soon be allowed to die; the great majority who in themselves are incapable of heroic actions, and have not to any wide extent the faculty of expression, can still recognise their value, and are willing to account to them in a greater or lesser degree the praise and honour that they deserve. This recognition may endure for many generations or only for a short time, or it may not be given at all until the one whose heart would have been gladdened and whose life would have been made the brighter for it has passed away to that mysterious country where the plaudits of this world, be they ever so lond, can waken no echo.
But every medal has its reverse, and the saying above quoted has two sides to it—one false and the other true. Many men and women, too, have lived upon this earth who from some cause or
Vou. xix. No. 212, 5 ii
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other were worthy of being remembered; but the things they did or the songs they sang were never recorded, and their very names are forgotten, or were never known atall. In one of the most exquisite poems in the English language Gray speaks of the “mute, inglorious Milton,” and the “Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.” This is inevitable, and in the natural order of all that is earthly and human; and it is right that it should be so. If every man was to be a hero or a great thinker, there would be then no rank and file in the great army of the world to do the rough, coarse work. It would be a case of all officers and no soldiers. There would be no hewers of wood or drawers of water, and the ordinary business of the world might come to a full stop.
These reflections are suggested to me by the recollection of a circumstance that occurred within my own knowledge while I was yet very young. But even then its pathos moved me very deeply, and the glaring injustice of which it was a striking example was so impressed on my mind that I have never forgotten it. It was also an example of such sublime heroism and self-devotion that it could not fail to commend itself to any mind possessed of the least ardour or imagination ; and no matter what view might be taken of it, it could be, contrasted, and not unfavourably, with many a great deed of ancient or modern times.
When very young, I was an ardent student of history, but no page in all its annals had so great a fascination for me as that of ancient Greece and Rome. To read of “the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome” had for me all the attraction of romance. There was an unfailing charm in the stern fortitude of the Roman, the cultured refinement of the more polished Greek, and the lofty, unselfish patriotism of both. The grand deeds of those ancient people excited my imagination to such a pitch that after some time I began to think, with the inconsiderate enthusiasm of youth, that the men and women of modern times had sadly degenerated, and could in no degree be put in comparison with those who lived before the Christian era.
I was expressing myself somewhat after this foolish fashion to my father one evening while he and I were taking a country walk.
“I suppose you think that all virtue died out of the world when the Greeks and Romans were conquered by the barbarians,” he said with an amused smile.
. An Unknown Hero. 59
“é I won't go so far as that,” I answered, “but you must allow that we moderns are much behind them in greatness of soul and self-sacrificing patriotism.”
‘‘Rubbish!” he exclaimed contemptuously. “I shall not allow anything of the sort. Who can tell whether any of the fine stories that have been related of the ancients be true or false, or whether any of the actors of the dramas ever had any existence at all? A great part of these stories in which you are such an im- plicit believer are very apocryphal indeed. Take Livy, for instance; he is considered by the ablest critics of modern times to have written, for the most part, pure romance; that his stories are all myths, and that the people described in them were merely the creatures of his own lively imagination. And many more of the classic historians were of the same stamp, though none of them drew the long bow to the same extent as he.”
“Then you don’t admit the truth of ancient history,” I cried, amazed by his scepticism in matters in which I was a firm believer.
“You jump too quickly at conclusions, like the very young and inexperienced person you are. I believe in about half of it, and if we separate the grain of truth from the mass of chaff which chokes it up, believing in half is not doing badly.”
é Then you don’t believe at all in patriotism or public virtue? ”
“é You are going too fast again. I do believe in both one and the other, but I also believe that they are not confined to any age or country. Human nature, at least among civilised people, is pretty much the same in every place and time. There are quite as many examples of heroism in modern as in ancient times, but with this difference, that they are better authenticated, and, of course, more to be relied on. Why should not the Christian era breed heroes as well as the old Pagan time? Christianity is the very essence of self-sacrifice, for it was the doctrine taught by its Divine Founder both by precept and example, and it is the back- bone of all great and heroic deeds.”
This last argument was unanswerable, so I was silent. I was too young and too ignorant to argue with him any farther; but, for all that, I kept to my own opinion, and he knew that I did, though he said no more. However, before very long he had au opportunity of giving me a very forcible and practical lesson on the subject that was worth a thousand arguments, and he was not slow to avail himself of it.
60 The Irish Monthly.
A. few days after this conversation my father called me one Morning after breakfast, and said :
é“ I expect a person here fo-day on business whom I wish you should see and take particular notice of. When he is gone away I shall tell you who and what he is, and the reason I have for wishing you should see him. Come to my study at twelve o’clock, and bring a book with you so that if may not appear to him as if you were watching him.”
Accordingly, at twelve o’clock punctually, I went to his study, where I found him very busy at his writing desk. As I was well aware that while so engaged he had a great objection to being disturbed in any way, I went silently to a seat near the window, but though I had brought a book, as I had been told, I could not read. Though not a naturally curious person at any time of my life, I confess that I was extremely curious then. I wondered what manner of man this person for whom we waited could be, what were his antecedents and what was his position in life.
But my speculations soon came to an end, for I had not been in the room more than a quarter of an hour when the servant came in to say that a person was in the hall wanting to see “the masther,” and almost at her heels came the visitor himself. And as he entered my father looked at me in a very significant manner.
“This is evidently the person I am to be introduced to,” I said to myself, but there was no introduction nor any need of it.
é Sit down, Jack,” said my father to the new comer. “This letter you wish I should write for you will take some time, and you have walked a long way thig morning.”
He went on with his writing, and I tried to find out from the man’s appearance and manner why it was that I was to “take particular notice of him;” but I could not see anything in him different from scores of others that I saw in the streets of the town on every market day. I was fairly puzzled and was sure there must be a mistake somewhere. This man was one of the most wretched looking beings I had ever seen. He crouched down into the chair behind the door that my father had pointed out, slinking into the shadow the picture of humility and self-abasement that was only too painfully real. Here he employed himself while _ waiting for the letter in twisting and crushing between his dirty
hands a discoloured, battered old ‘‘ caubeen,”’ that by no stretch of the imagination could by possibility be called a hat. I pretended
An Unknown Hero. i 61
to read, but I need not have made any pretence at all, íor he never looked at me, and I question if he was aware that I was in the room at all. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor, never raising them but when my father spoke to him on the subject of the letter. The more I looked at him the more did I wonder why it was that I had been told to take his measure.
He was a tall man, but a good deal stooped in the shoulders, as if bowed down by severe and long-continued toil, and so thin and worn that he might have been the model for a painter as the Genius of Famine. His eyes were painfully prominent as were also his cheek bones, and his face had a wistful, hungry look in it that was more painful still. His clothes, that even when new must have been made of the very poorest materials, were now almost in tatters, and I could see that under the old worn out brogues there were no stockings at all. His face looked as if it had not: been either washed or shaved for many days, being. covered with a perfect stubble of coarse beard, on which the white hairs far outnumbered the black ones, and his thin hair hung round his head in tangled, neglected locks. The man’s whole appearance showed the most abject poverty, and he had the forlorn, hopeless expression and manner of one who had nothing to live for and to whom Fate had done its very worst. He was, indeed, a most miserable looking creature, and as I looked at him my whole soul was filled with pity for a human being so sunk in poverty and degradation.
After a time the letter was finished, but before giving it to him my father told him to go downstairs to the kitchen and get some- thing to eat there before going away. The face of the poor man brightened up at the prospect of food, and he followed the servant to the kitchen with many expressions of thankfulness, such as “Long life to you, sir! May the Lord lave you long over your family ! ”
é Was that the person you desired me to take particular notice of P? ” I said, when he had slunk out of the room. “ Why, he is nothing better than a beggar.”
“ He is a very poor man, indeed,” replied my father, “ as poor as he can well be, but he is no beggar—at least he has never either asked for alms or received any, but works hard for the bit he eats. It is not always, however, he can get the work to do, for he is old now and past his labour, and people will not employ such as he when they can get younger and stronger men. When he can get
—_— Film
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work now and again, he does it willingly, and when he does not he simply starves. He takes food from me or any one else that will invite him to do so, but in Ireland, I need hardly tell you, that is not considered beggary at all. An Irish peasant will take a meal from another as freely and willingly as it is offered, and neither party calls it charity. He would be greatly hurt if he were called a beggar, and no one who is willing to support himself by the labour of his hands can be justly called that.”
“ But, father, why did you direct my attention to him in such a special manner P ”
“ Because I wished to show you a real hero. There is no gild- ing about poor Jack Hanyeen, that you saw for yourself; he is all ' genuine metal. That poor creature would not be what he is to- day if he could have brought himself to act in opposition to his conscience ; .but for conscience sake he gave up house and home, and what, for a man of his class, was comfort and independence. You talk of the ancient Greeks and Romans! Not one of them ever exhibited more exalted patriotism or more noble self-sacrifice for what he thought was his duty than did this poor man, who is so abject and lowly, in truth the very poorest of the poor.”
This glowing preface to the story of Jack Hanyeen still more excited my curiosity. My father immediately related it to me, and it is as follows: |
Once upon a time he had been a well-to-do man for one of his class, had a comfortable little cabin, a potatoe garden, and as much land as enabled him to keep a cow. Of course, “the gintleman that paid. the rent ” was not absent from the establishment, and what was wanting on his part Jack made up by working for the neighbouring farmers in busy seasons, such as spring time and harvest. He was a sober, hard-working man, glad to earn a day’s wages when he could, and as his wife was sober and industrious also, between them they managed to keep the wolf from the door and meet the agent with the rent on every gale-day with tolerable punctuality. Sometimes bad times came on them as well as their neighbours in the shape of defective harvests, sickness, and all the other troubles that meet the poor at every turn, but on the whole they got on pretty well and were contented with their lot.
Al this was before that memorable era in Irish history when what was called the Catholic Emancipation Act was passed. Up to that time the old penal laws, cruel, grinding, barbarous, stood
An Unknown Hero. 63
upon the statute-book of the United Kingdom, and though the worst of them had so far fallen into abeyance that they were practically a dead letter, yet enough still remained to make the yoke most galling to the Catholics, who had suffered so much and were still suffering for conscience sake. But at last a time came when they could make an effort for freedom, civil and religious, in a constitutional and peaceful manner, and they availed themselves of it with the utmost eagerness and enthusiasm. In the year 1828 there was a vacancy in the representation of Clare county, and O'Connell, the champion of Catholicity and the representative of all Catholic feeling and Catholic thought, offered himself a candi- date for the suffrages of the electors, fully determined on taking that opportunity of trying conclusions with the existing Govern- ment, that was Tory up to the hilt.
Then came the tug of war. On one side high-handed authority, made bold and defiant by the custom of ages, and on the other a desperate struggle to win at any cost the rights of religion and citizenship. The landlords, who to a man were all Tories of the old type, were banded together against “the man of the people,” and spared neither exertion nor money in order to ensure his defeat. But they reckoned without their host. The gréat mass of the middle and lower classes, backed up by their clergy, stood behind their favourite, and neither fair words nor fierce threats could succeed in breaking through that impenetrable phalanx. They were neither to be bought over or intimidated, burning as they were with the sense of unmerited inferiority and cruel and long-continued wrong. Their chosen candidate was of their own . nation and creed, and labouring with themselves under the same disabilities, and having the faculty of expression that was denied to them ; he should be their mouthpiece and be sent in triumph to the British Parliament to tell there the story of their sufferings and their wrongs.
At that time the great mass of the electors of Clare was com- posed of what was called “forty shilling freeholders,” men who occupied the lowest position in life, who were very poor, although it could not be.said that they were actual paupers. They were almost all of them tenants-at-will, altogether dependent on the good will of the landlords, and consequently liable to be dispos- sessed from their small holdings at very short notice.
One of this class was poor Jack Hanyeen. He had, unfortu-
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nately for him, a vote, being a forty shilling freeholder, and as soon as U’Connell’s address to the electors appeared in the news- papers and on the doors of every Catholic church in the county, the landlord’s bailiff came upon the scene and directed Jack, as a matter of course, to be prepared to vote for Mr. Fitzgerald, the Tory candidate. There was no option given to him, or for that matter to any one who was a tenant at will; if they did not go with their landlords they should be prepared to quit the land. Jack knew well that this was no idle threat, but one that would be enforced with all the power of the law to the bitter end. He scratched his head and said nothing, and the bailiff, never thinking that the poor serf could soon dream of rebellion where his all on earth was at stake, went on his way.
On the following Sunday Jack went as usual to hear Mass at the parish chapel. When Mass was over the parish priest, who was the celebrant, having first laid aside his vestments, turned round to his flock and addressed them in Irish, the language that they could best understand. His harangue—for it was not a sermon nor intended to be one—was eloquent, forcible and im- passioned. He reminded them of what it was that their landlords required of them in the coming struggle for civil and religious liberty, and did not disguise from them the terrible punishment that awaited them in case of their disobedience. But he added that they owed a solemn duty to their God, to their conscience, and to their country, that was above ail and beyond all worldly considerations. He told them now was the time to break asunder the last link of the galling chain that had crushed their forefathers to the earth and reduced them to the lowest depths of misery and degradation; that the eyes of the whole civilised world were turned on them to see how they would behave at this supreme juncture, and that every man who went over to the enemy would be branded as a renegade and a traitor; that his name and that of his children would be held in horror to the end of time. All this and a great deal more to the same purpose, spoken in the expressive and passionate idiom of the Irish language, was listened to with the most profound attention and appeared to have made a great im- pression on all who had heard it.
In the evening when Jack and his wife were sitting by the fire in their little cabin, he suddenly announced, to her great dismay, that he had made up his mind to “ folly the priest and vote for Dan.”
An Unknown Hero. 65.
“ Oh, blessed saints! did you take lave ov your seven sinsis, honest man ? ” exclaimed the good woman, aghast at this awful declaration. ‘Don’t you know that if you go agin your landlord, "us ruinated we'll be, root and branch? We'll be thrun out on the high-road, and then what’s to become ov yourself and meself an’ our little childher? I ax you that, Jack Hanyeen.”
“Snre ’tis betther to go agin the landlord than agin God,” answered Jack.
é Arrah, man alive, put them cracked notions out ov your head an’ let me hear no more ov ’em. It wouldn't, shuit me be no manner ov manes to start out on the world at this time ov me life wid a bag on me back. An’ now I tell you this for good an’ all.”
Jack making no reply to this she gave up the battle, at least in appearance, and throwing her apron over her head she rocked her- self to and fro after the manner of the Irish peasant women when greatly excited or grieved. Then she burst out in the passionate wail of the “ keen,” loud, shrill and piercing.
“ Whisht, Mary, whisht, now asthore gedl,” cried poor Jack, into whose soul that terrible cry had struck terror. ‘Sure I was only funnin’ just to knock a rise out ov you, sorra another thing. There’s no harm done, no harm in life. Fake ’em sure I mane to go wid my landlord, what else? Take it asy, can’t you? An’ now, era gai, stop cryin’ an’ get up an’ see about the supper, for I’m mortial hungry. When the praties gets any way ould, they takes a dale ov bilin’ before they’re rightly done.”
The poor woman, reassured by his manner, dried her tears and set about preparing the simple supper of her family, simple enough, for it consisted only of potatoes and skimmed milk. She was quite sure she had won the victory, and sent the dreaded evic- tion far into the region of impossible events. That her husband should voluntarily chose beggary for himself and his family when he could remain on his “little spot ov ground” and comfortable eabin—for to her who knew no other home it was comfortable— just by “ wan word out ov his mouth”’ was, in her opinion, sheer lunacy. So she dismissed the whole matter from her mind and thought no more about it. Religion and patriotism were abstract questions to this poor, ignorant peasant woman, whereas the cabin and the potatoe garden and the grass of the cow were all real and substantial advantages, the value of which she knew and fully
appreciated.
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At the time appointed for the election Jack Hanyeen—and many another like him, forty shilling freeholders—was marched off by the agent to the county town of Ennis to vote, as a matter of course, for Mr. Fitzgerald, the conservative candidate. These men were brought up to the polling booths in gangs, like cattle, to record their votes. As it happened Jack Hanyeen’s batch was the very first, and Jack himself the first man of it who was led up by the agent, who made sure of him as well as of his fellow-serfs. As he came forward he saw his parish priest right in front looking at him with a countenance in which anxiety, command and entreaty were all combined. ‘“‘ Jack, do not sell your God for thirty pieces of silver as Judas did,” he whispered in Irish. That faint, low whisper was scarcely more than a breath, but it fully answered all the purpose for which it was intended. It solved Jack’s last lingering doubt, steadied the wavering balance of his mind, and with a proud triumphant expression on his face, such as a martyr might wear when passing on to the stake, he recorded his vote for “ Counsellor O’Connell! ”
There is nothing so contagious as example, particularly when any of the elements of enthusiasm are joined to it. Everyone present well knew what a fearful cost that man should pay who did not vote with his landlord, but that did not deter the other freeholders who stood behind Jack. It was the very thing to fire the excitable, ardent Celtic temperament, and amid the loud and and prolonged cheering of the great mass of people that filled the body of the court-house, they all, without even one dissenting voice, voted for “the Counsellor.” The example given by these men decided the issue of the great Clare election of 1828; all the other forty shilling freeholders voted as the first batch had done, and Mr. O’Connell, “ the man of the people,” was returned by the largest majority that was ever registered in that county either before or since that time.
Poor Jack’s offence was too great and its consequences too disastrous to the Tory cause to admit of forgiveness. He was the first who had defied his landlord, and given the example of rebel- hon, an example that was followed only too promptly and well. His landlord kept his word to the letter, and very soon the wretched man, being merely a tenant at will, was ejected from his little holding, and he and his family flung upon the world to starve, for it came to that. His cow and pig were sold to pay
An Unknown Hero. 67
what arrears of rent remained due, and nothing was left that he could call his own but his furniture, which being of the very poorest kind, was of little or no value. Then began a new and hard life for poor Jack, that of a day labourer, living with his family huddled together in onc small room in a dirty baok lane in the nearest town. His wages were precarious and scanty, his fare most miserable, and his clothing nothing but rags.
‘The great Clare election has been long ago a thing of the past,” said my father when he had concluded this history, “ and how the poor man has contrived to keep soul and body together since then God only knows. It could not be said thut he lived as much as that he starved. His wife and all his children, with the excep- tion of one son, died miserably one after another. This surviving son contrived to go to America some time ago, and within this last ‘week a letter came from him to me enclosing a cheque for a little money for his father. It was only a pound, but I daresay it was all the poor fellow could spare out of his hard earnings, and to Jack it is a mine of wealth, being the first pound he was master of since the day, now many long years ago, on which he voted for “ the Counsellor.” I need hardly fell you that as soon as I got the letter I took no time in sending for him, and the poor fellow could hardly believe in his good fortune when I told him that I had a pound for him. The letter that you saw me write was one to his son acknowledging the receipt of the pound.
“Now I think I have shown you that in this poor, ignorant peasant we have an example of the purest patriotism and self- sacrifice. What Greek or Roman could do any more for fatherland than he did? What martyr could offer up a more heroic sacrifice for the love of his God? The sufferings of the martyrs were over in a few hours, or at most days; but his martyrdom has lasted for many long years, and will last until he dies. Just picture it to yourself; by his own voluntary act in accordance with what he thought was his duty to his God and country, he gave up house and home and all that made life dear, and faced with his family, not merely want but actual starvation. And so far from regretting what he did, he says when spoken to on the subject that if it was to be done over again he would act in the same way, and thank God for having given him sufficient grace not to have imitated the treason of Judas!
“* Nor was poor Jack Hanyeen singular in his sublime unselfish-
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ness. All the forty shilling freeholders, with very few exceptions, were ejected from their small holdings becayse they voted, not as _ their landlords dictated, but for conscience sake. The way in which those poor peasants were crushed was not only a monstrous injustice but a public scandal as well. Such a thing could never happen again, for soon after the great election the forty shillmg freeholders were disfranchised.”
It is a long time now since I heard the story of poor Jack Hanyeen, but though very young at the time it made such a deep impression on me that I never forgot it. And I see now with the eyes of memory as clearly asI once did with those of the body the unfortunate man crouching behind the door of the study in that . day that is so far back in the past. Can I ever forget him or the miserable appearance he presented, hopeless, forlorn, starved look- ing, a mass of dirty rags! Then, to my eyes, he seemed anything but a hero or a patriot, and yet he was both, formed of the truest metal and in the noblest mould. Of course, he has been long dead, for that is many years ago and he was an old man then, but I am sure that in that place where men’s actions are weighed, not in the balance of this world but in the scales of the sanctuary, poor Jack Hanyeen has come to the end of all his troubles. Anyway, I would sooner take his chance at the other side of the dark river than that of the man who flung himself and his family penniless. on the world because he acted for conscience sake.
* * *- *
This incident of a famous period of Irish history is in all its circumstances and details strictly true, and is related here without being in the least exaggerated or idealised. The plain, unvarnished. tale is pathetic and interesting enough to require no aid from foreign colouring or many words.
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MY MOTHER!
I. (Birthday, June 17, 1890.) My Mother! bright the mid-June roses peer To greet this day of days of all the year; The birds are trilling in each leafy glade, The azure skies with sheeniest clouds arrayed, And Nature doth her loveliest vesture wear.
Loved ones around thee meet from far and near; But I their spirits’ echo only hear, Forever hid in my sweet cloister's shade, My Mother"!
We backward glance along thy loved career Bent ever upward to the heavenly sphere:
The Virtues, as a guard, around thee stayed, Christ’s holy teachings act and motive swayed ; Age crowns thee now to us and Heaven more dear,
My Mother !
II In Memoriam. (July 18, 1890.) My Mother! faded in the dust lie low The roses sweet I sang a month ago ; A lone bird calls this long, long summer night— God’s stars look down with mournful, pitying light ; Fair Nature wears her darksome veil of woe.
Bend loving watchers o’er thy bed of snow— Count each low breath, each pulse-throb faint and slow— Now kiss the last tear from thy yanished sight, My Mother!
But like an arrow shot from heavenly bow, Thy spirit swift the seraph’s road doth know ; Thy Virtues, friends eternal, speed thy flight, Whom Jesus’ Precious Blood hath robed in white; Joy is in Heaven—our tears on earth o’erflow, - My Mother !
Georgetown, D.C. . 8. M.P.
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ON CONCENTRATION. By tHe PRESENT WRITER.
[* many other matters besides the sovereign affair of our eternal
salvation, we may be liable to the reproach which Our Blessed Lord addressed to Martha, when He rebuked her lovingly for being troubled about many things, whereas only one thing is necessary. In everything connected with the development of our minds, and the perfection of our souls, our danger lies in having our faculties scattered and dispersed.
For other reasons besides the reasons that influenced him, we- might well echo the wish once expressed by the eloquent Apostle of the Sacred Heart, Father Claude Colombiére, whom some of us may live to pray to as Blessed Claudius, for many in France are. urging forward his beatification. In certain notes that this holy man took during his thirty days’ retreat in that orisis of a Jesuit’s life which is called “the tertianship,” he wrote these words: “ In the ardent desire which God gives me to love Him alone and to preserve my heart free from all attachment to creatures, perpetual imprisonment upon some false accusation would seem to me an incomparable blessing; and I do not think, by God’s grace, I should ever grow weary of it.”
The point which Father Colombiére aims at is detachment ; but I have sometimes made a similar supposition, or conceived a similar desire, as a help to concentration in study. To be thus im- prisoned for some romantic, or at least reputable, cause—like Silvio Pellico of Le Mie Prigwnt, but with greater privileges than he—and to have as companions of our captivity two or three really good and great books, and an unstinted supply of pens, ink, and paper, or the means of pursuing some special study (but I should like also to stipulate for the prison fare of a first-class misdemean- ant): such enforced concentration would be a great boon for many persons who cannot be trusted to be their own jailers. There are _ many who in the enjoyment of perfect freedom can impose on themselves, of their free will, sufficient restrictions of this character:
On Concentration. 71
but there are many others who cannot, and for whom it would be a blessing to be subjected to a little wholesome restraint and com- pulsion.
The danger of having our attention scattered over too many things is immensely increased by the present state of literature and of things in general. It is much greater now at the end of the nineteenth century than it was at the beginning of it. Yet even ‘Lord Byron, in one of his clever letters, objects energetically to the habitual reading of the periodical literature of his day on the ground that it presented the superficies of too many subjects at once to the mind. What would he say now? And what would he think of the bewildering scamper through the magazines of Ill countries to which Mr. Stead treats us in The Review of Reviews ?
We are cautioned against this dispersion and dissipation of the powers of the mind by the old leonine hexameter :—
Pluribus intensus minor est ad singula sensus.
“ The feeling, the energy, that is stretched over many objects, becomes necessarily less and less with regard to each.” ‘The one prudence of life,” says Emerson, “is concentration.”
Another embodiment of the same principle is the famous saying, Timeo hominem unius libri. Thisis generally understood as a compliment to the one-book gentleman, but it may very naturally be taken also in an unfavourable sense. We may fear such a man as too powerful an opponent, or we may fear him as too weak an ally. The phrase might signify that the person whose range of reading is very narrow is likely to be very narrow also in his ideas and views. “TI fear such a man, for he is likely to be narrow- minded and ignorant, and (worse still) ignorant of his ignorance.’’
But I suppose this saying is rather to be taken as advocating concentration in study, and denouncing that dissipated reading upon which many persons pride themselves as if it were industry, whereas it is only a subtle form of sloth. “ I fear the man of one book ”’; because the single-book man is more likely to be master of that book, and so far master of the subject it treats of, than if he had indulged his curiosity in looking over many tomes.
This is the age of specialists. “Jack of all trades was master of none.” To gain eminence in anything, a man must almost entirely confine himself to that thing. Universal geniuses are no
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longer believed in. When Brougham was Lord Chancellor, and the supposed head of all the lawyers of the country, Sugden said it was a pity he did not know a little law, for then he would know a little of everything. Not to know a little about every- thing, but to know a great deal about one thing, is nowadays more commonly the ambition of those who desire to excel in the learned professions and in other departments of labour. The capabilities of the most gifted natures are very limited; and, if they are to . have fair play, there must be self-restraint, self-sacrifice, limitation, concentration.
LAND! LAND! ( Rondeau.)
Y dying hour, how near art thou ? Or near or far, my head I bow Before God’s ordinance supreme ; But ah, how priceless then will seem Each moment rashly squandered now !
Teach me, for thou canst teach me, how These fleeting instants to endow With worth that may the past redeem, My dying hour !
My barque, that late with buoyant prow The sunny waves did gaily plough, Now through the sunset’s fading gleam Drifts dimly shoreward in a dream. I feel the land-breeze on my brow, My dying hour !
ART AS A PROFESSION AND AS A BRANCH OF EDUCATION.*
T is somewhat unfortunate that the distribution of prizes at our schools takes place at this period of the year. The severity of the weather, the discomforts of travel, and the near approach of Christmas, make it inconvenient for those residing at a distance to come amongst us and give us the benefit of their wider experiences in art. Last year, although we were not favoured with the presence of Mr. Walter Crane, we received from him the interesting paper f for which, on your part, I had to thank him, and this year we hoped that Lord Powerscourt, Sir Thomas Jones, President of our Irish Academy, or Sir John Pope Hennessy, would have delivered to you their views on art. But absence in England prevented Lord Powerscourt from paying us a second visit, when I believe he would have interested us as much as he formerly did, when he gave us his admirable resumé of the state of modern art, the characteristics of the several schools, and the special excellences of their most distinguished members. Sir Thomas Jones was precluded by other engagements from visiting us, and Sir John Pope Hennessy is now engaged in another sphere where the rhetorical are of more avail than the plastic arts, but where the arts of design are not altogether excluded: and, while thus engaged, though he may spread a palette of rose tints while painting his friends, I am sure that he will not charge his pencil with too much lamp-black when he is executing the portraits of even his deadliest foes. And thus it has come te pass that at the last moment I have been called in to play the part of an Emergencyman, and on the part of the Com- mittee to say a few words to you on the objects we all have in view, to wish you God-speed, and to hope for you an industrious anda happy new year.
I say industrious and, therefore, happy new year. For in no other pursuit in the world is the necessary work so delightful to the student as in the sphere of art. When he works, he is also, if he really loves art, enjoying the greatest pleasure within his reach. It is really a labour of love, in which the love lightens and sweetens the toil. Think of the working day of some young husbandman, who tills his own land to gain comfort and comparative wealth for his wito and
e This paper gives the substance of an address to the students in the Crawford school of Art, Cork, at the distribution of prizes, Ohristmas, 1890. t It may be found at page 83 of the 18th volume of this Magazine.
Vou. sis. No 212.
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child. Every seed that sprouts, every sprout that waxes strong and green, every fruit of the harvest, is a pleasure to him, for he knows that they all will bring some brightness and solace to those whom he loves best. With something of the samo feeling the young artist watches the work as it grows beneath his hand, with the hope that to others beside himself it may bring pleasure and interest, and that the time may come ere long when the result of his toil may be a staff of support to him and his. Without hope what should we be? This is the stimulus that makes us all urge onward, and although the hopes may remain unfulfilled, they give pleasure while they last, and sustain that persistent labour without which success is impossible. You are, therefore, all to be congratulated on being engaged in studies which form in themselves a pleasure, instead of being employed in work, which is only of value for its results, and not during its progress.
Now, there is one form of hope which is called ambition. One of its forms, the love of praise, has been called by a great authority “the last infirmity of noble minds ;” but why should he call that an — ‘infirmity ” which he himself tells us teaches the “ pure spirit to rise?” Surely that is not an infirmity which nerves the pinion for a higher flight, and strengthens the wing to carry it more swiftly over a broader expanse. Why, it is the very opposite of an ‘‘ infirmity,” it is a source of strength like that fabled “ Fontaine de Jouvence,” from which whosoever drank, to him was given the boon of eternal youth. Now, this form of the virtue Hope, misnamed the vice of ambition, is what to my mind we sadly need in Ireland. Some fancy that the Irish are conceited, and “Irish impudence” has been dragged by ‘‘apt alliteration’s artful aid” almost into a proverb. But in the course of a long life, and some knowledge of the men of other lands, my firm conviction is that this charge against us is utterly unfounded. I have seen amongst the sons of other countries so much unabashed impudence often successful, such gross over-estimates of their own powers, first made by themselves and then believed in by others through the very insistance of self-assertion, that I blush for my countrymen’s low estimate of their own capacity. Perhaps there is something in the relaxing influence of our svft southern climate which unstrings our nerves and relaxes our muscles, and there certainly is much in the history of our country where the iron hand of the law stood between the student and the task, the husbandman and the harvest in every field of labour; but, undoubtedly, there is amongst us a want of that ambition which spurs on our Scotch cousins to dare and to do so much.
For years I have sung the same song. ‘‘ Want of ambition, want
Art as a Profession and as a Branch of Education. 75
of perseverance : ” this has been my parrot cry. The second is, in a great measure, a consequence of the first, for where a fixed ambition reigns, there surely that perseverance, which will enable us “ to scorn delights and live laborious days,” becumes its most active minister.
Some one has made a happy antithesis between the professions of medicine and law. The student of the first reading the laws of God in anatomy, botany, chemistry, physiology, has ever before his eyes objects of surpassing interest, combined into a complete and harmonious whole, each part of which is interdependent upon and is the supplement of the others. On the other hand, the student of law has to study what are called the laws of man, but which in fact are not laws at all, but a collection of complex, separated, independent compromises with, or contradictions of truth, old contrivances of elaborate tyranny twisted and tangled by generations of lawyers and enshrined by countless volumes of statutes, reports, and abridgments. Our honest reason is galled to find two things standing on the same level treated as if they stood one infinitely above the other, and nearly all the principles of equality outraged. The study of law is repellent, as that of medicine is attractive. But when the students attain their professions, the scene is utterly changed; the physician practises his art in private, subject to the ignorant criticisms that are often suggested by the jealousies of his colleagues (but not his comrades), in a profession which has a high hereditary place among the envious. ‘* Medscorum et mendicorum maxima est nvidia,” says the old saw. On the other hand, the lawyer practises his art in public, and when suc- cessful gains the meed of applause at the moment, and later the guerdon of increased practice and higher position as a reward for labours which, instead of being a pain, have been a delight to him. Heaven knows he deserves some reward for his irksome studies from Fleta and Bracton to Coke upon Littleton, and from Blackstone to the study of contingent remainders. ‘‘Did you ever,” said a literary man to a lawyer, “read the Sorrows of Werter?” ‘ No,” replied the lawyer, “but I read Gilbert on Distresses.”
Now, how different from both the lawyer’s and physician’s stands the career of the artist! It is not alone the study but the pursuit of art that makes for the successful artist that career a life-long pleasure. First when he copies, then when he creates, as the work progresses and grows more and more like the example he imitates, and more and more fully expresses the picture he has formed in his own mind and transfers to the canvas or the marble. Of every step towards the goal it may truly be said “ His footfall is on flowers.”
Mark ! I have said the esccossful artist. I know that amongst my audience are many who study art only as an accomplishment, as an
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elegant branch of knowledge, as a decoration; and not as a staff of — life, And in so doing they are doing well. Like literature, it opens to their view new realms of thought ; it brings to light many a beauty that is unseen by untutored eyes; it tells where to look for the inner meaning of the great masters ; it unveils hidden relations of form and colour that blend themselves into beauty, and the discipline of the eye as well as that of the hand confers new pleasures on those who have had some teaching. I congratulate myself upon the fact that since my early boyhood artists have been amongst my companions, my friends, for they have opened my eyes to much that otherwise would have been unheeded. How many a trick of colour in the evening sky, how many a beautiful line lurking on the margin of lake and river, how many a dainty toss of some young flowret’s bell, or some young beauty’s head, how often the staid gravity of a russet oak, or the airy grace of a birch tree toying with the wind, or the honest roughness of an old Scotch fir, or the springtime freshness of the young larch, dangling its green pennons in the air; how many a thing of beauty, from the broad mirror of a lake to the dancing bubbles of some little runnel in the woods, would have escaped my . notice had not my artist friends taught me to seek for beauty, where, otherwise, I would have found a blank. They, indeed, have taught me to seek companionship ‘in the pathless woods,” to “ find society
where none intrudes,” or as the greatest poet says, these friends of mine trained me to
Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything :
And therefore I say to you who study art only as a part of education, and not as a means of livelihood, ‘‘ You have acted wisely. You have provided for yourself a treasure-house that can never be plundered, a library that can never be exhausted, sermons (incredible as it may appear) that are never tedious, and a deeper and a keener insight into that spirit of good which dominates the universe.”
I now turn to those of you for whom art is in some form to be more than an accomplishment or a branch of education. I speak to those who expect to find in it a bread-winner. And here I am sorry to say that I must speak with more reserve. I may even come close to the margin of that dismal science, Political Economy, but as we are still in Advent it will be seasonable to perform some penitential acts before we meet the cheerful blaze of the yule-tide log. What can political economy have to do with art? Alas! the eternal laws of supply