Volume 21 — CHAPTER VII. THE SEARCH RENEWED. (continued 3)

Here it occurs to reply to a remark that I have seen made, which unless it be founded, as is not impossible, on some very faulty version of the Roman Chant, seems to betray some little inexperience. After having admitted a superiority of the Gregorian melodies for hymns written in the classical metre, the writer proceeds to say: “But, on the other hand, let us take any one of the hymns of the church, in which, though the words are Latin, the classical quantities are wholly disregarded, while the verse proceeds in the measured beat of modern poetry, and the lines are all in rhyme, and let us make an effort to sing it to an unmutilated Gregorian Chant. What an absurd effect is the result! The ear is distracted between two principles of rhythm and versification. The structure of the poetry forces us, whether we will or no, to mark the divisions of the song in accordance with its beat and its rhyme; while the unmeasured, unmarked cadences of the music refuse to yield any willing obedience, and produce no melodious effect, except at an entire sacrifice of the principles on which they were framed. A wretched, hybrid, unmeaning series of sounds is the result, neither recitative nor song, neither classic nor rhyming, neither Gregorian nor modern, but wholly barbarous.”

Now, if the writer of this passage be here speaking of the adapting of melodies to words for which they were not composed, he is himself to blame for a result of which he is the sole cause. Dress a city alderman in the uniform of an officer of marines, and send him afloat on duty, if you will, but do not lay it to his charge if the result is neither very civic nor very nautical. But if the writer in question really means his words to apply to the melodies to which these hymns are set in the Roman Chant-books, he is confronted by the fact that, among these, and they are now but few, chiefly in the Feast of Corpus Christi, are found the gems of Gregorian melody. Who is there that has heard the Ave verum and the Adoro te, and the other hymns of S. Thomas on the Blessed Sacrament, sung to their original melodies, without feeling their exquisite rhythm and expressiveness? Again, the Gregorian melody of the Dies iræ, in the Requiem Mass, has Châteaubriand’s express commendation as among the most masterly adaptations of music to words. Lastly, the touching and most plaintive melody of the Stabat Mater, which brings tears into the eyes of all who hear and sing it.

If space permitted, it would be no very difficult task to multiply such proofs and examples as these of an inherent popularity, both in the general character or effect, and in the particular parts of the Ritual Chant. But I think enough has been adduced to indicate that the popularity is one that is co-extensive with mankind, that it finds an echo in the human heart of every age, nation, or state of life. Of course, God, who gave the ecclesiastical song to work a work of mercy among the people, contemplates it as capable of popularity; and I think we have evidence that this part of the divine idea is really fulfilled by the Ritual chant. And, without prejudging the result, I would wait to see whether indications of a similar popularity can be found for the works of art with which I have been engaged in comparing it. However, I think this is impossible; and for this reason: Things come to be popular by being often repeated; and suitableness for perpetual repetition is the test of popularity. But if I am not mistaken, the perpetual production of novelties, which appear and then disappear, is a first and indeed indispensable principle in the mode of dealing with these works of art.

SECURITY AGAINST ABUSE.

All things human are certainly liable to abuse and degeneracy, yet all are very far from being on a par with each other in this respect. In all human undertakings, order, discipline, and system are the divinely-appointed securities against abuse. Now, the Ritual Chant, as all who are acquainted with it know, is, like the ceremonial of the church, a perfect system. It has two large folio volumes of music, embracing the whole annual range of canonical offices, and a body of rules prescribing even the minutiæ of their celebration. On the other hand, the modern art has no such system, no such rules. Its use is, in practice, altogether subject to the dominion of individual taste. The choir-master who likes Haydn’s music, takes Haydn; another, who likes Mozart, takes Mozart; another, who takes a trip on the continent, comes back with the newest French, German, or Italian novelties. I am not here insisting on the singularly small portion of the liturgy that is set to compositions of modern art, but on the entire absence of all system in the use of the pieces themselves, on the complete subjection of the whole thing to individual caprice and taste.

It is quite true that the Bride of Christ is encompassed with variety (circumdata varietate). But the church is also the kingdom of the God of order; and I apprehend that between the varietate characteristic of such a kingdom, and the variety actually introduced into Catholic worship by the unrestrained dominion of individual taste in music, there is the widest possible difference.

The obvious exposure of modern music to the easiest inroads of every kind of abuse, in consequence of this absence of system, has been felt by its best-disposed advocates; and an able writer has maintained the notion, that the compulsory use of the organ alone, to the exclusion of all orchestral instruments, especially the violin, would be an all-sufficient safeguard. But it is not very easy to see upon what principle orchestral instruments are to be excluded, when the whole thing is built on the principle of the supremacy of individual taste; and even could they be excluded, it would still remain to be seen whether the organ itself were really the impeccable instrument it is represented.

Let us hear a witness in the Established Church, where, according to this writer, its dominion has been so unexceptionable. In the Ecclesiastic for July, 1846, the following remarks occur: “How intolerable to such saints (Ambrose and Gregory) would have been the attempt to give effect, as it is called, to the Psalms, by the organist’s skilful management of the stops. What would they have thought of the mimic roll of the water-floods, and the crash of the thunder, and the hail rattling on the ground, the lions roaring after their prey down in the bass, and the birds singing among the branches, represented by a twittering among the small pipes? From a heathen poet these gentry might learn a lesson of reverence—Virgil seems to make it a point of natural piety not to counterfeit the thunder of the Highest—

A real thunderstorm interrupting one of these mimic tempests on the organ, makes one feel the profaneness of the imitation.”

Now, it is fair to ask, if the organ is to be the guardian of the sobriety and gravity of modern art, who is to keep the organ in order?

There were great abuses in the use of modern art at the Council of Trent. Yet the fathers of the council declined altogether to forbid its use. They tacitly allowed its continuance, as it had come into existence, and could not be removed without serious evils. And with regard to the favorable light in which its use was viewed by some of the bishops of that council, and by some other men of authority who have since spoken in its commendation, it should be borne in mind that all such commendation has had annexed to it the condition, provided that such music be grave and decent, that the meaning of the divine words be not disguised in it, and that it possess nothing in common with the theatre (Benedict XIV., Encyclical Letter). Of which conditions the subsequent history of the use of modern music in the church is, to say the least, a very inadequate fulfilment, as the ensuing testimony will show.

Bishop Lindanus, quoted in the same Encyclical Letter on the subject of church music, says: “I know that I have often been in churches where I have listened most attentively to learn what it was that was being sung, without being able to understand one single word.”

Salvator Rosa, the celebrated painter of the XVIIth century, gives the following account of the church music of his day—the middle of the century:

“An effeminate and lascivious music is the only thing that people at all care for. The race of musicians eats up all before it, and princes do not scruple to lay burdens on their subjects to glut them according to their desires. The churches are made to serve as nests for these owls. The Psalms become blasphemies in passing through the mouths of these wretches; and no scandal can equal that of the Mass and Vespers, barked, brayed, and roared by such fellows. The air is so filled with their bellowings that the church resembles Noah’s ark. At one time it is a Miserere sung to a chaconne (a sort of polka of that day); at another, some other part of the Office adapted to music in the style of a farce.” (Quoted in M. Danjou’s Revue de Musique, 3d year, page 119.)

Again, Abbot Gerbert, in 1750, complains so deeply of the degradation of the church music of his day as to say, in the preface to his learned work De Musica Sacra, that the evil had grown to so great a pitch that, unless God in his mercy applied the remedy, which he had daily besought him to do, all was over (actum est) with the decorum and solemnity of the Catholic worship.

Yet this result ought really not to be a matter of surprise; for how can it be expected that the majesty and solemnity of worship should long survive when its music is left to the control of individual tastes?

Musicians, therefore, when they plead for modern music, must plead for it as it exists in an ideal form in their own minds; and the advocate for the use of the Ritual Chant objects to it, not as it might be if every organist and company of singers were other Davids and the sons of Asaph, but for being what he hears it to be with his own ears wherever he goes; for being what he knows it to have been, and still to be, from the testimony of writers and travellers; and, lastly, from what he foresees it will be to the end of time. The one has before his mind’s eye the harmonies of heaven and the choirs of angels, and hopes to attain to these with the elements of earth. A vision of glory flits before him, and, forgetting that the earth is peopled by sinners, he thinks it may at once be grasped. The other remembers the sad reality of what it is; he thinks of the churches in which he has been present, where he has heard the sounds of the theatre—the fiddle, the horn, and the kettle-drum; where he has heard the song of dancing-girls rather than of worshippers, and choruses rather of idolaters than of men believing in the mysteries at which they were present.

Or, in the more humble words of an English poet—

And I would ask, considering the endlessly varying caprices of the human mind, how any thing else except confusion and disorder is to be expected from the principle of the supremacy of individual taste; and if music in the Christian Church is to be regarded as called to fulfil the intention of a God of order, in what way it is expected that this end will ever be realized, where the safeguards of a fixed order and system are discarded, and individual discretion enthroned in their stead?

LAST POINT OF THE COMPARISON.

Catholicity of the Ecclesiastical Song, or its Companionship of the Catholic Doctrines over the whole Globe.

This last point of the comparison, though far from the least weighty, to those who will fairly consider it, may happily be much more shortly stated. The Prophet Malachi predicted that, from the rising of the sun to its setting, God’s name should be great among the Gentiles, and a “pure offering” (munda oblatio) should be offered to him; a prediction fulfilled by the fact of the Christian missionaries having carried the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass over the globe. If, then, there be a song which has ever been the faithful companion of this Holy Sacrifice, wherever it has been conveyed; that has ever been present with it when solemnly offered; which has survived the passing away of generations; has undergone no change, but is now what it was of old; is the same to the priests of one nation which it is to those of another—if such a song there be, it will hardly be disputed that such is an accredited and authentic song of the Christian kingdom. Yet such is the Ritual Chant, which, at least in its well-known parts, has literally overspread the whole globe. A French traveller in Russia, finding there the Ecclesiastical Chant, and that the Greek Church had preserved it equally with the Latin, speaks of it as a part of the “Dogme Catholique”—these church traditions of song seeming to him as great a bondage as the church traditions of faith. (See a very well written paper in the Ecclesiastic for July, 1846, a magazine conducted by clergy of the Established Church.)

If, then, the advocate for modern music be unable to point to any such fact as this for his art—if he be compelled to acknowledge that it is necessarily confined to people either of European origin or education; that it is no song for the Caffre of Africa, the Tartar of Asia, the savage of Australia, the Red Indian of North America, the Esquimaux, the Paraguay Indian—nothing but the luxury of the European; there can be little room to doubt that, on this last particular also, the Ritual Chant is the only adequate fulfilment of the divine idea.

DR. DRAPER.

In consequence of the eulogy passed by Prof. Tyndall on Dr. Draper’s book, which is entitled a History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, we inquired with some curiosity for this work, and have since examined it. It is evident that Prof. Tyndall himself is largely indebted to it, as he states; but a more flimsy and superficial attempt to trace the history of philosophy we have never met with. It seems that this gentleman, Dr. Draper, is a professor of chemistry and physiology at New York. His object, as he informs us, in this compilation, was to arrange the evidence of the intellectual history of Europe on physiological principles. The style is feeble and incorrect, and the analysis of the Greek philosophy positively ludicrous. As, however, it might be inferred from Prof. Tyndall’s address that Dr. Draper was, like himself, a disciple and admirer of Democritus, we will give the American philosopher the benefit of citing his own appreciation of the atomic theory. After stating that the theory of chemistry, as it now exists, essentially includes the views of Democritus (a point on which we bow to his authority), he proceeds thus, if we may be permitted slightly to abridge a very clumsy sentence:

“A system thus based on secure mathematical considerations, and taking as its starting-point a vacuum and atoms—the former actionless and passionless, which recognizes in compound bodies specific arrangements of atoms to one another; which can rise to the conception that even a single atom may constitute a world—such a system may commend itself to our attention for its results, but surely not to our approval, when we find it carrying us to the conclusion that the soul is only a finely-constituted form fitted into a grosser frame; that even to reason itself there is an impossibility of all certainty; that the final result of human inquiry is the absolute demonstration that man is incapable of knowledge; that the world is an illusive phantasm; and that there is no God.”

Such is the sentence passed upon Democritus and the atomic theory by Dr. Draper, on whom Prof. Tyndall assures us that he relies implicitly as an authority in the history of philosophy. Dr. Draper’s account of the philosophical opinions and writings of Cicero is in the highest degree inaccurate. But enough; we have done with him, and we advise Prof. Tyndall to seek a better guide. Suppose, for example, he were to read the dialogue of Velleius and Cotta in the first book of the De Natura Deorum.[153]—Edinburgh Review.

DANIEL O’CONNELL.

Man seeks in nature a hidden sympathy with himself. The quickened beatings of his heart, the restless currents of his mind, make for themselves a reflex image in the forces of the sea and sky. For ever, the white crests of the breakers rolling in from the western ocean curl up and lash themselves against the rocks on the coast of Kerry. For ever, in the gray dusk, the waves, advancing and retreating, moan out a sad and hollow sound. In sorrow and in gladness their monotone is the same. Yet it well might be that the Irish peasant, in the year 1775, gathering kelp for his patch of land from the shallow coves where the sea broke in over his naked feet, felt, without thinking too closely about it, that nature, chill, leaden, and stern, mirrored there his own lot. The sudden gleams of blue sky through the drifting clouds reflected a buoyant humor that no sufferings could quite subdue.

George III. had reigned fifteen years. Dull, bigoted, cruel; striving in a blind way to be honest, but his blood tainted with the stains of centuries of intolerance, he was now the living type of Protestant fanaticism. In Europe, the old order of things existed without break or fissure. In America, the first heavings of the volcano were plainly felt. The King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland existed in name. The Irish Parliament sat in College Green to register the degrees of the English Privy Council. But what a Parliament! Four millions of Catholics without a representative. The broken Treaty of Limerick might still be spoken of among the traditions of the Irish peasantry, but its guaranties had sunk more completely out of the mind of the English and Irish legislatures than the statutes of Gloucester. The Penal Code was in full legal effect. Burke had described it a few years before with the calmness of concentrated passion as “well-digested and well-disposed in all its parts; a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.” Yet even Burke hardly gave credit enough to the magnificent qualities of the race which was able to survive this code. It failed in its object. It did not succeed in extirpating them. It never could degrade them, for they yielded neither to its blandishments nor its terrors.

But though holding fast the faith with such power as if God’s arm specially supported them therein for providential ends, English Protestant domination had broken down and crushed this once proud race to the very earth, in all material ways. The Israelites sweated not more hopelessly in the Egyptian sands. In some respects the lot of the Irish was worse. Their task-masters were an intruding race; they were aliens in their own land. The face of the country in many places still bore mute witness to Cromwell’s pathway of blood and fire. Then the scriptural image had been reversed, and the Irish had been hewn down like the Canaanites of old. The noonday horrors of Drogheda and Wexford had left a scar in the national memory which time has not yet effaced. Murder, lust, and rapine, under the guise of religious fanaticism, had made this people throw up its hands despairingly to heaven, as if hell itself had been thrown open, and its demons issued forth to scourge the land. The XVIIIth century had opened under changed, but it could hardly be said better auspices. The fury of destruction had ceased, but had been succeeded by the ingenious devices of legislative hatred and tyranny. The sword of Cromwell, dripping with the blood of men, women, and children, had given place to the gibbet of William of Orange. The lawless murderer was followed by the judicial torturer and jailer. The successors of William III. trod faithfully in his footsteps. The parliaments of Anne, of George I., of George II. heaped new fetters on the Irish papist. What wonder that a lethargy like death settled down upon the native race? The national idea was almost lost. It wavered and flickered like an expiring flame, yet was not quite extinguished. In caves and barns, by stealth, and at uncertain times, the Irish priest poured out a little oil from his scanty cruse which kept alive in the heart of his countrymen the memory of his religion and his national history. The “iron fangs” of the code relaxed a little during the first years of the reign of George III. Its victim lay stretched supine. More truly even than on a later occasion the words of Henry Grattan might have been applied to the condition of the country. Ireland “lay helpless and motionless as if in the tomb.” But though politically dead, the vitality of the race was inexhaustible, unconquerable. Population increased. There was little or no emigration except among the Protestant linen weavers of the north. The amazing fertility of the soil, spite of legislative drawbacks, made food plentiful. An English traveller, Arthur Young, in 1776, found the Irish peasantry quiet, apathetic, content to till their wretched holdings, at the mercy of their landlords, without complaint so long as they could keep a shelter over their heads, and had potatoes enough to eat. Political ambition or aspirations, the hope or even desire of shaking off their chains and asserting their rights as freemen, did not seem to exist among them. Thus far the oppression of centuries had done its work. Some efforts at enfranchisement had been made by the Norman Catholic aristocracy and the few old families of pure Irish blood who still held their estates, or portions of them, by sufferance; but the words of Swift continued true of the mass of the native race—not from want of natural capacity or manhood—far from it; but from the effect of this grinding oppression of centuries, and the systematic uprooting of all organization among them by English policy. They were “altogether as inconsiderable,” said the author of Drapier’s Letters, “as the women and children, … without leaders, without discipline, … little better than hewers of wood and drawers of water, and out of all capacity of doing any mischief if they were ever so well inclined.” Swift went further and declared them devoid of “natural courage.” But this was the libel of the Protestant Dean, not the belief of the Irish patriot. The title of the land, with a few unimportant exceptions, had passed completely out of the native race. Under the law none could be purchased. Education was forbidden. Yet such was the ardor of the inherited love of learning which had once distinguished the island, that Arthur Young found everywhere schools under the hedges, or, as he himself says, often in the ditches.

The breath of liberty was beginning to stir among the Protestants of the north, and the Volunteer movement was soon to lead the way to the short-lived recognition of the legislative independence of Ireland which terminated with the Union. But among the mass of the Catholic Irish peasantry no corresponding feeling as to their political rights was manifested, or was even in any degree possible. Arms were forbidden them. Terrible as the appellation sounds applied to that chivalrous race which had won a deserved renown on so many battlefields of Europe, at home they, were, in all outward respects, helots. The risings which sometimes took place were seldom or never political. They were solely agrarian. The infamous tithe-proctor roused a spasmodic, bloody resistance, which ended with the removal of the special cause exciting it, never extending to any effective organization against the political slavery under which they lay torpid. The Whiteboys and Hearts of Steel were not the material, nor were their aims and programmes the policy, out of which could spring such a revolution as was contemporaneously taking place in the American colonies. The mass of the people looked on in hopeless indifference at the outbreaks of those secret societies, or in some instances voluntarily combined against their indiscriminate violence. The native Irish bore their misery alone, without friends or sympathy except from France; and the interference of this power, by means of some feeble and unsuccessful landings in Ireland, served only to irritate England and tighten the chains of her captive. The mighty lever of moral support which is now wielded by the united voice of her sons in every quarter of the globe did not exist. In some counties, such as Kerry, where the native language was chiefly spoken, and the Milesian Irish largely predominated, the harsh hand of the law was never stretched out but to seize upon the substance or the life of the people. The memory of liberty could scarcely be said to exist in the hearts of this ancient race. That gift which the Greek fable had declared to have remained at the bottom of Pandora’s box when all else escaped, seemed to have taken wing from Ireland. Hope had fled.

In that age, under those skies, Daniel O’Connell was born.

One hundred years have passed. Rises now the Genius of the Irish race in America to celebrate the centennial anniversary of that glorious birth, to invoke in tones that peal across the waves—the memory of that illustrious and beloved name. A majestic, youthful presence, daughter of Erin, robed in white and with a garland of green upon her brow, comes with her sisters to lay a wreath upon the tomb of the Liberator of his country. Non omnis moriar, wrote the Latin poet:

Conquerors and statesmen have repeated his words. But neither the glories of war nor the triumphs of politics have won for any a surer immortality than O’Connell’s. His fortunes waning at the close, his blighted hopes, the broken column of his labors, have only endeared his memory the more to his countrymen. Time has terminated discussion or softened its asperity. Nothing is remembered but his love and his labors for Ireland. From Montreal to New Orleans, from the first shore on which the Irish exile set his foot, across the continent to the Pacific Coast, over an expanse of country so vast that the parent isle would form but an oasis in its central desert—myriad voices repeat his name, proclaiming in various forms of words, but with one meaning, this eternal truth, that freedom beaten to the earth will rise again. If in spirit the heroic figure of the great Tribune could top once more the Hill of Tara, what a spectacle would spread out before his eye unobscured by its earthly veil! A mightier multitude would listen to his strong and mellow voice. The descendants of the men into whose bruised and downcast hearts he first breathed the hope and the ardor of liberty have built up a greater Ireland in America. Sharing in the glories and faithful to the traditions of American freedom—yielding to none in the duties of citizenship—they have yet carried with them, and handed down to their sons, that love of the mother country which seems ever to burn with a brighter flame in man’s heart in enforced or unmerited exile. Irish-American generals have equalled or eclipsed the fame of those distinguished soldiers whose exploits in the service of foreign powers are household words in the military history of the race.

Citizens and soldiers unite to commemorate the birth of the man whose single arm struck off the fetters that had bound their fathers for nearly three hundred years.

If we turn to Ireland itself, we shall find the change which has been accomplished in those one hundred years in some respects more profound and startling than the corresponding advance in the fortunes of the Irish in America. The latter has been the regular and graduated result of causes working in ascertained channels; the former has all the character of a moral revolution. Ireland has not, it is true, gained that political independence with which her sons in these United States started. But over the far longer road before her to reach that goal her stride has been vast and, if we consider the growth of nations, rapid. To appreciate the transformation in the character and position of the Irish peasant we must recall what he was in 1775. Catholic emancipation was a wrench to the religious and social traditions of the English nation, and at the same time a dead-lift to the moral status of the Irish, to which no parallel will be found in history. Repeal failed from causes which we can now easily discern, but which were hidden from O’Connell by his proximity to the Union. But no Coercion Bills can conceal the fact that the strength of Ireland is growing in a ratio greater than her bonds. The tendency of modern European politics, and, willingly or unwillingly, of English legislation itself, and the increasing material prosperity of Ireland, are adverse to them, and continuously wearing them away. Her national spirit is indomitable. The hour may be distant, but it is inevitable, when they will fall from around her, and she will step forth in all the majesty of freedom.

What, then, is the place O’Connell holds in the national development of his race during those one hundred years? What are the achievements, greater than all defeats, which demand from his countrymen a recognition that no centennial celebration of his memory can too honorably offer.

In any view of modern Irish history it is essential to a clear understanding of its motives that we should distinguish the character and position of the three great races occupying the island. It is not enough to divide the people into Saxon and Celt. The native Irish race, the blended result of the successive ancient colonizations of the island, remained essentially distinct from the Catholic Norman Irish even after the Reformation. The intermarriages and adoption of Irish customs, which had early given to the descendants of Strongbow’s followers the title “Hibernicis Hiberniores,” had still left them a higher caste. They retained a not inconsiderable portion of their great estates through all the civil wars. The Penal Code never fell upon them with the rigor and leaden weight that paralyzed the native Irish. Their wealth purchased immunity. Although formally ostracized from political life, their influence as landowners secured them consideration. The observance of the duties enjoined by their religion was connived at. In other cases they were powerful enough to make it respected.

Far different was the case of the Milesian Irish. Their history had been a series of heroic struggles, ending in what appeared to be irretrievable disaster. Before the process of consolidation, which was simultaneously going on all over Europe, and which would have welded the various septs and kingdoms into one nation, could be completed, the Norman invasion under Strongbow had introduced a new and more furious element of strife. The Reformation only changed their masters, but changed them for the worse. Hitherto they had been serfs. They now became helots. The glorious deeds of arms of the O’Neals and other chieftains, which more than once threatened to drive the English into the sea, delayed but could not finally avert the complete triumph of combined craft and superior resources. Projects for the extirpation of the native race were freely mooted. Famine, the sword, and the gallows at one time seemed almost to promise it. The same price was set on the priest’s and the wolf’s head. A non-Catholic writer, Lecky, gives this summary of the Penal Code as it existed when O’Connell was born:

“By this code the Roman Catholics were absolutely excluded from the Parliament, from the magistracy, from the corporations, from the bench, and from the bar. They could not vote at parliamentary elections or at vestries. They could not act as constables, or sheriffs, or jurymen, or serve in the army or navy, or become solicitors, or even hold the position of gamekeeper or watchman. Schools were established to bring up their children as Protestants; and if they refused to avail themselves of these, they were deliberately consigned to hopeless ignorance, being excluded from the university, and debarred under crushing penalties from acting as schoolmasters, as ushers, or as private tutors, or from sending their children abroad to obtain the instruction they were refused at home. They could not marry Protestants; and if such a marriage were celebrated, it was annulled by law, and the priest who officiated might be hung. They could not buy land, or inherit or receive it as a gift from Protestants, or hold life annuities, or leases for more than thirty-one years, or any lease on such terms that the profit of the land exceeded one third of the rent. If any Catholic leaseholder so increased his profits that they exceeded this proportion, and did not immediately make a corresponding increase in his payments, any Protestant who gave the information could enter into possession of his farm. If any Catholic had secretly purchased his old forfeited estate, or any other land, any Protestant who informed against him might become the proprietor. The few Catholic landholders who remained were deprived of the right which all other classes possessed, of bequeathing their lands as they pleased. If their sons continued Catholic, it was divided equally between them. If, however, the eldest son consented to apostatize, the estate was settled upon him, the father from that hour becoming only a life-tenant, and losing all power of selling, mortgaging, or otherwise disposing of it. If the wife of a Catholic abandoned the religion of her husband, she was immediately free from his control, and the chancellor was empowered to assign her a certain proportion of her husband’s property. If any child, however young, professed itself a Protestant, it was at once taken from its father’s care, and the chancellor could oblige the father to declare upon oath the value of his property, both real and personal, and could assign for the present maintenance and future portion of the converted child such proportion of that property as the court might decree. No Catholic could be guardian either to his own children or those of any other person; and therefore a Catholic who died while his children were minors, had the bitterness of reflecting upon his deathbed that they must pass into the care of Protestants. An annuity of from twenty to forty pounds was provided as a bribe for every priest who would become a Protestant. To convert a Protestant to Catholicism was a capital offence. In every walk of life the Catholic was pursued by persecution or restriction. Except in the linen trade, he could not have more than two apprentices. He could not possess a horse of more than the value of five pounds, and any Protestant upon giving him five pounds could take his horse. He was compelled to pay double to the militia. He was forbidden, except under particular conditions, to live in Galway or Limerick. In case of a war with a Catholic power, the Catholics were obliged to reimburse the damage done by the enemy’s privateers. The legislature, it is true, did not venture absolutely to suppress their worship, but it existed only by a doubtful connivance, stigmatized as if it were a species of licensed prostitution, and subject to conditions which, if they had been enforced, would have rendered its continuance impossible. An old law which prohibited it, and another which enjoined attendance at the Anglican worship, remained unrepealed, and might at any time be revived; and the former was in fact enforced during the Scotch rebellion of 1715. The parish priests, who alone were allowed to officiate, were compelled to be registered, and were forbidden to keep curates, or officiate anywhere except in their own parishes. The chapels might not have bells or steeples. No crosses might be publicly erected. Pilgrimages to the holy wells were forbidden. Not only all monks and friars, but also all Catholic archbishops, bishops, deacons, and other dignitaries, were ordered by a certain day to leave the country, and, if after that date they were found in Ireland, they were liable to be first imprisoned and then banished; and if after that banishment they returned to discharge their duties in their dioceses, they were liable to the punishment of death. To facilitate the discovery of offences against the code, two justices of the peace might at any time compel any Catholic of eighteen years of age to declare when and where he last heard Mass, what persons were present, and who officiated; and if he refused to give evidence they might imprison him for twelve months, or until he paid a fine of twenty pounds. Any one who harbored ecclesiastics from beyond the seas was subject to fines which for the third offence amounted to the confiscation of all his goods. A graduated scale of rewards was offered for the discovery of Catholic bishops, priests, and schoolmasters; and a resolution of the House of Commons pronounced the prosecuting and informing against papists ‘an honorable service to the government.’”[154]

This is a dark picture. Yet it is drawn by an unwilling hand. Instances might be accumulated where the severity of the law was outstripped by the barbarity of its execution. Important relief bills were passed in 1777 and 1793. But they provided only for the removal of some of the civil and political disabilities of the Catholics. The badge of religious degradation remained untouched. The heaviest fetters of that iron code still trailed after the limbs of the Irish Catholic. It is the glory of O’Connell that he finally snapped them in twain, and trampled them for ever in the dust. Englishman, Norman, and Milesian—the British colonist who clung to a proscribed faith in every quarter of the globe—shared in the results of that herculean labor.

But it is the special claim of O’Connell to the eternal gratitude of that native Irish race to which he belonged, that he, first of all, after that bondage of centuries, taught them to lift up their heads to the level of freemen. Had his work stopped at Emancipation, had his claim to fame and a place in the national memory been included solely in the noble title of Liberator, enough had been done by one man for humanity and his own renown. But in the course of that long struggle a greater and further-reaching consequence was involved. A transformation took place in the character of the native Irish, the full results of which are not yet visible. In their journey through the desert, in their marchings and counter-marchings, their victories and transient defeats, as they neared the borders of the promised land towards which he led them, a change wonderful, but not without parallel, became visible in their spirit and their hopes. Insensibly and by slow degrees the political torpor of centuries yielded to a new and living warmth. A generation sprang up which had flung aside the isolation and submissive hopelessness of 1775, yet was capable of a greater and more sustained effort than the frenzy of despair which prompted ’98. Under the ardor of O’Connell’s burning words, a full understanding of the functions of self-government permeated a race which had hitherto seemed to exist by the sufferance of its masters. He not only liberated his countrymen from religious bondage, he organized them into a nation. He gave them the first impact of self-government since the Invasion. And that impact is never again likely to be lost.

Daniel O’Connell did not, like some other great popular leaders, spring directly from the midst of the people whose passions he swayed and whose actions moved obedient to his will. His family belonged to the old Irish gentry. He had the advantages of that collegiate course in France which was the only way then open to Catholics of the upper classes to afford their sons a liberal education. Yet his family was allied closely enough to the people to make him share in all their feelings, sympathies, and sufferings. The author whom we have already quoted, with that curious blindness, the result of unconscious prejudice, which makes most non-Catholic writers, however otherwise acute, miss the true threads of Irish history, and insult the national sensibility at the very moment they think themselves the most liberal, sets down as a defect in O’Connell what was in reality the secret of his power. “With the great qualities,” he says, “of O’Connell there were mingled great defects, which I have not attempted to conceal, and which are of a kind peculiarly repulsive to a refined and lofty nature. His character was essentially that of a Celtic peasant.”

Yes, this was at once his glory and his strength. O’Connell’s personal traits of character reflected faithfully, on a heroic scale, the national features of his race. Not the coarseness nor scurrility ascribed to it by the stage buffoon or the unsympathetic publicist, but the powerful yet subtle understanding which has won for Irishmen in every age the highest distinction in the field and in the schools, the large, warm heart, easily swayed by generous impulses, the humor closely allied to tears which is the secret of the most popular oratory. It is this thorough identification with the national spirit, with the religion which the persecution of centuries had made inseparable from it, that makes O’Connell without equal or second among the great men who nobly contended for their country’s freedom at the end of the last and beginning of the present century. He stands alone, gifted with a power to which neither the highest intellect nor the most brilliant oratory could otherwise obtain. He swayed the force of the nation he had welded into shape. It was this tremendous lever—obedient, one might almost say without figure of speech, to his single arm—that enabled him to wrest Catholic Emancipation from the combined determined opposition of the King, Parliament, and people of England.

For forty years Henry Grattan labored with chivalrous devotion in the service of Ireland. His eloquence has a charm, a poetical inspiration, a classical finish O’Connell’s never equalled. It thrilled the Irish Parliament like the sound of a trumpet, and held spell-bound the hostile English House of Commons. His patriotism was as unselfish, his zeal, in a certain sense, as ardent as O’Connell’s. Yet what did Grattan ultimately accomplish? What was the end of all these noble gifts and labors? Having, as he said, “watched by the cradle” of the constitutional independence of the Irish Parliament, he lived to “follow its hearse”; and when he died in 1820, Catholic Emancipation, the cause of which had been committed to his hands, became more hopelessly distant than ever. His was individual genius, individual energy, of a very high, if not the highest, type. But it needed something more to win in such a cause. Classical eloquence was thrown away in such a struggle. The concentrated strength of national enthusiasm, careless of form, animated only by a single giant purpose, was demanded. Grattan, though such a man as Irishmen of every creed might well be proud of, was, unfortunately for his success in the attainment of great national aims, neither a Catholic nor identified with the “Celtic peasant.” He lacked the fundamental force bred of the soil. O’Connell, on the other hand, might truly be likened to that fabled giant of antiquity, Antæus, who gained a tenfold strength each time he was flung upon his mother earth. Well might he declare, when reproached on one occasion for the violence of his language, “If I did not use the sledge-hammer, I could never crush our enemies.” It was a war of extremities. It was an epoch surcharged with the elements of moral explosions, when men’s passions were roused to the highest pitch. Those who read now the measured language of Disraeli in Parliament will pause in astonishment when they turn back to the frenzied raving with which he replied on a memorable occasion to the terrible invective of O’Connell. In such an era of violence, of anarchic strife, Grattan’s “winged words” fell harmless, but O’Connell’s “sledge-hammer,” wielded with the arm of Thor, thundered its most effective blows.

Another great Irishman had passed off the stage while the young Dublin law student, Daniel O’Connell, was still only dreaming of the liberation of his country. Edmund Burke—revered and illustrious name!—had rounded off the labors of his long and honorable life in the cause of oppressed humanity, wherever found, by some strenuous and well-directed efforts for the relief of his Catholic fellow-countrymen. Yet he too failed, or at best gained but an indifferent success. The principles he enunciated are imperishable; his arguments will be preserved for ever among the grandest vindications of religious liberty in the English tongue. But in that age they fell upon deaf ears. He too wanted that element of success which comes from identity of race, religion, feelings, opinions, sympathies. To that native Irish race which must ever determine the destinies of Ireland he was a stranger. What a satire upon humanity to expect that men in their position—bondsmen, systematically, and under legal penalties, deprived of all education, of every means of information—could appreciate the teachings of a political philosopher, living in what they regarded, with good cause, as a foreign or even hostile country. It was well if they knew of his existence. He was no leader for them. Nor did Burke ever affect to act with them, but rather for them, upon the convictions of the higher English and Irish classes. Hence it is that O’Connell is to be regarded as the purely national type of leader; by means of action exercising a more powerful influence on human affairs through the wide-spread Irish race than Burke by means of thought.

It will thus be seen that we place O’Connell on a high plane—above, and different from, that of mere orators, or statesmen administering established affairs, however great. He is to be ranked with the nation-builders of all ages. This was the verdict of most contemporary European observers, of Montalembert, of Ventura, and other exponents of continental public opinion. To the English mind he was, and probably will always be, a demagogue, pure and simple. But so no doubt was Themistocles to the Persians. O’Connell stormed too many English prejudices—stormed them with a violence which to his opponents seemed extravagant and unendurable, but without which he could never have gained his end—to be forgiven. The judgment of his countrymen, however—the supreme arbiter for him—is already maturing to a decision in his favor which will place him in a niche in the hall of Irish heroes above all others, and side by side with that old king whose memory recalls the ancient glories and victories of Ireland.

But what of his defeats?—of the failure of Repeal? This is not a panegyric on O’Connell, but a sincere examination of his place in Irish history. In many instances, and above all on the question of Repeal, he miscalculated his forces and the strength of the forces opposed to him. Like the greatest men of action in every age, his movements were directed by the circumstances and exigencies of the occasion, by experience, by the shifting currents of events, by his ability to create those currents, or to turn them to his own purpose. The cast-iron rules of policy which political philosophers formulate in their closets may be singularly inappropriate for the uses of popular leaders. In 1829, under the banner of Moral Force, with the nation arrayed behind him, he had wrested Emancipation from the king and ministry. It was an immense triumph. His temperament was sanguine—an element of weakness, but also of strength. In the hopeless state in which he found Ireland, only a character of the most enthusiastic kind would have ventured on the crusade he opened. In 1843, he thought he could repeat his victory on the question of Repeal. But in 1829 Peel and Wellington yielded, not to moral force, which, so far as Ireland is concerned, is a term unknown in English politics, but to the armed figure of rebellion standing behind it. They were not prepared for the contest. In 1843, the English ministry were ready to crush opposition with an overwhelming military force. If they did not invite rebellion, as in ’98, they were equally ready to ride roughshod over Ireland. The circumstances of the contest had also changed. Catholic Emancipation attacked the religious prejudices of England; Repeal threatened its existence as a nation. It could grant the one, and still maintain its hatred of Popery; it could not yield the other without setting up a legislature with rival interests in politics and trade. The instinct of self-preservation was evoked. No argument will ever convince the average Englishman that in restoring a separate, independent Parliament to Ireland, he is not laying the foundation of a hostile state. The result in 1843 was inevitable. As soon as a sufficient military force was concentrated, remonstrance or negotiation ceased. England simply drew her sword and flung it into the scale. O’Connell and his associates were thrown into prison, and the guns of the Pigeon-House Fort were trained on the road to Clontarf.

In the varied history of the human race few spectacles have ever been presented of equal moral grandeur to those immense peaceful open-air meetings which gathered to hear the great tribune. No greater testimony was ever given of a nation’s confidence and love. Competent judges put down the number who assembled at the Hill of Tara at half a million of people. Yet to the unbiassed observer there is something almost as pathetic in the helplessness of this great multitude—hoping to wrest their independence from England without arms—as grand in the mighty surge of its numbers. It was the confederacy of the sheep against the wolves. O’Connell’s failure shows vividly how narrow is the plank upon which the popular leader walks between an immortal triumph and a prison cell. It reveals the tremendous power residing in an organized government, capable only of resistance by a people in arms and inured to the use of arms. That was a monster meeting of a different kind held on Bunker Hill one hundred years ago, and commemorated this year by these United States.

We are neither impeaching here the wisdom of the course pursued by O’Connell in 1843, nor advising armed rebellion against England at the present day. We discuss simply the historical aspects of the question in the light of the experience of other nations. Nothing can be more hazardous, however, or often absolutely fallacious, than broad generalizations from the history of other countries as capable of determining a particular line of policy for any given state. In nothing else did O’Connell show a higher wisdom as a leader of the Irish people than in rejecting those specious appeals to the success of arms in America, made by the more ardent patriots in 1845-46.

The circumstances of the two countries were radically different. The Americans exhausted every kind of “moral force” at their disposal, and their revolution, when it finally came to blows, was not aggressive but defensive; the policy of England made it incumbent on Ireland to strike the first blow in a contest which she would quickly have found herself unable to sustain. The Americans had a boundless territory; the Irish a narrow island, capable of being pierced from shore to shore by English troops in three weeks. The Americans were trained to arms by a war of one hundred years with the French and Indians, in which they were drilled and fought side by side with English regiments; the Irish—the native Catholic Irish, the people for whom O’Connell was responsible before God and mankind—could not keep a pike since the Treaty of Limerick. An Irish rebellion, therefore, would have meant simply a massacre; and O’Connell, in choosing the wiser course of present submission to superior force, merited as much, although in defeat, the gratitude of his countrymen as he did in his triumph in the cause of Emancipation. For it will have been gathered from what we have already said that we regard O’Connell’s greatest achievement in the service of his country—its political organization, the education of its sons in the knowledge of the rights and duties of freemen—as going on with equal step as well with the unsuccessful agitation for Repeal as with the triumphant struggle for Emancipation. His defeats carried with them the germs of victory. The most ardent lover of his country can scarce escape an uneasy feeling when he reads in the annals of Ireland that story, reiterated with painful monotony, page after page, of the harryings, the devastations, the ceaseless intestine wars, which mark its early history. It would seem sometimes as if the ancient learning of Ireland which produced those numerous and minute chronicles, served only the purpose of a reproach to the island which fostered it. Other nations had struggled through this transition period—common to the whole of Europe—and finally consolidated themselves into peaceful and harmonious states. But it was the misfortune of Ireland that this opportunity of domestic organization was snatched from her by a foreign invasion ending in a domination of which the cardinal principle was to “divide and conquer.” English writers satirize the civil discord of the Irish race, forgetful that from the time of Henry II. to that of George III. it was the steady, and as it then seemed intelligent, policy of successive English statesmen to foster wars between the rival chieftains and clans, to employ them against one another, and in every way to break down any incipient attempt at union, which must have been dangerous, if not fatal, to English power. No man had arisen among the Irish race till O’Connell’s time who neutralized that policy. He showed that they were capable of organization and self-government in a patriotic common cause. In those immense meetings which marked his progress, where men of every county united in one vast brotherhood, he proved, first, that the Irish people loved domestic peace and co-operation as much as any other race; and, secondly, that under happy auspices they possessed a wonderful capacity for order and self control. Even hostile observers concur in expressing as much admiration for the undisturbed peacefulness of those assemblages of from a quarter to half a million of people, as amazement at their vastness, unprecedented in history. They were the foundation of the political education of Ireland.

In another country, and a more remote age, another man of kindred, kingly spirit and organizing power, with whom O’Connell is not unworthy to be compared, had built up his vast empire by like national meetings, not less than by force of arms. In the great national meetings of the Franks, the Champs de Mai, Charlemagne gave the first impress of government to Europe, torn to pieces after the fall of the Roman Empire. O’Connell, another “king of men”—such as the Homeric legend sings of—emulated his labors on a less extended scale in Ireland. But the empire of Charlemagne fell to pieces with his death. Chaos reigned again. O’Connell’s work was more homogeneous, and promises to be more enduring. We are only entering upon the dawn of a more hopeful Irish history.

When we seek a comparison of individual action, in the history of England, with O’Connell’s, we are struck at once with the grand but sorrowful isolation of his position. Fortunate the country which has never needed a liberator! Happy the kingdom whose greatest revolution meant only a change of dynasty, a stronger leaven of republicanism, and surer guarantees against religious toleration! The growth of constitutional government in England has been comparatively steady and uniform. Never—since the amalgamation of races following the Norman invasion—subjected to the terrible consequences of conquest and occupation by a race alien in language, religion, and national prejudices, her political and religious struggles have been wrought out to an issue among her own population. Whenever her civil liberty or parliamentary privileges were threatened, sturdy champions were not wanting among her own sons. Her Pyms, Hampdens, and Eliots find their counterparts in the Grattans and Floods of Ireland. But the deliverer of a crushed and hopeless people, the inspired guide who led them out of bondage and defied their taskmasters, is a figure happily absent in English history.

The imagination naturally turns with vivid interest to great deeds of arms. The pomp and panoply of war, the heroic daring of the headlong charge, the valor, disdainful of death, that awaits with constancy an overwhelming foe—these are incentives to action, in presence of which the labors and even triumphs of peaceful agitation appear tame and slow. And the Irish are a people strongly susceptible to those influences. They are a warlike race. Wherever the tide of battle turns against great odds, where the smoke is thickest, and the carnage deadliest, there will be found some Irish name upholding the traditions of his country’s fame. O’Connell had therefore no easy task in restraining within peaceful limits the immense agitation he had evoked. And in estimating his place in history the same considerations place him at a disadvantage compared with those great warriors, the glitter of whose victories is identified with the warlike glories of their country. The “Bridge of Lodi,” the “Sun of Austerlitz”—these are talismanic words which then rang in people’s ears with startling sequence? Yet if we compare O’Connell’s labors and their results with those of the great soldier whose career had closed while the former was only beginning his peaceful struggle with England, there is no reason to shrink from the verdict. Emancipation was worth many Marengos. The rôle of the Liberator may fairly be set off against that of the Conqueror. The civic crown of green and gold placed on O’Connell’s head on the Rath of Mullaghmast, in the presence of 400,000 men, was an emblem of true sovereignty greater in many ways than that iron crown which Napoleon lifted with his own ambitious hands from the altar at Milan. One was rust-eaten, it might be said, with the blood and tears of unknown thousands; the other was invested with the halo of peace, which the attainment of religious liberty and education in the rights of freemen had introduced into a million humble homes. The career of both Napoleon and O’Connell ended in defeat. But how conflicting the emotions of each as he gazed for the last time on the shores of his country! One, preoccupied by the shattering of his gigantic ambition, and the assertion of petty details of etiquette in the midst of the ruin around him; the other, oblivious of self, weighed down by the doom of famine impending over his country—his last words a solemn and pathetic appeal for its protection. In the hour of adversity, stripped of the adventitious circumstances of power, O’Connell stands forth a figure of greater moral grandeur. Of the victories of Napoleon nothing remains but their name, and the terrible retribution that has followed them. The influence of O’Connell’s unselfish labors in the cause of religious freedom has a future practically endless; and after a season of adversity and apparent forgetfulness, his political maxims and principles are again reviving in Ireland in the constitutional agitation for Home Rule. Not in the demand itself, stopping short as it does of Repeal, but in the means by which alone its advocacy may be made successful.

It is a curious instance of the ebb and flow of historical movements that O’Connell was at one time prepared to take up, under the name of “Federalism,” the present demand for “Home Rule.” Ultimately, as is well known, he was forced to abandon it by the mutiny of his followers, who would be satisfied with nothing less than simple “Repeal.” And this reluctance to adopt a middle course was natural enough at the time. In 1840-45 the Irish people were still too close to the Union; the infamous history of that measure and the burning eloquence of Grattan and Plunkett in denouncing it were too strongly impressed upon the national memory, to allow any hope of success to a leader who would promise less than its total erasure from the statute book. Too many were still living—like O’Connell himself—who could remember the brief yet glorious history of Irish legislative independence, to give up the belief that it was yet possible to see an Irish parliament sitting in College Green. Experience, and the statesmanship which does not aim at the unattainable, have shown the practical superiority of the lesser demand as a political programme at the present day. But this does not impugn the wisdom of the Repeal agitation. The true course of a people in its national affairs is necessarily learned slowly. There is no ready-made chart in politics; and were any offered, Burke’s satire upon geometrical demonstrations in state affairs would be conclusive against it. Experience, even the experience of failure, is the only trustworthy guide; and successive agitations, though varying in their object, keep alive the cause in the national memory.

Though the best and truest friends of Ireland, including that venerable hierarchy which has steadily seconded every rational movement for justice and equal rights, have never hesitated to give their support to O’Connell’s policy of moral force, there have not been wanting from the first restless spirits who have made it their bitterest reproach against him, that he was unwilling to fling away the scabbard and plunge the country into rebellion. It would be unjust to speak of all these men as influenced by unworthy motives. Some of them breathed, and still breathe, the purest aspirations of patriotism. But it was a mistaken patriotism, influenced by examples which might indeed make martyrs, but which would never lift one chain from the neck of their country. They might make good soldiers, but were poor leaders. Ireland was not then, and is not now, in a position to gain anything by a policy of violence.

But there are others, inflamed not with a love of Ireland, but with a spirit of hostility to all governments, who would plunge their country into bloodshed in hope of themselves floating to the top. These men are infected with the spirit of the Commune. They are revolutionists—not in the sense in which Washington or Hampden or O’Connell were revolutionists—leaders of great movements for the liberties of peoples—but socialists, whose single incentive is the envy and hatred of all superior authority. Most of all, they desire to supplant the Irish priesthood as the guides of the people. A sorry exchange, from the well-tried friends, proved by the exacting ordeal of a thousand years, to men of no responsibility—mere political gamblers—whose highest motive is ambition, but a lower and more common one, the love of easy-gotten money from confiding people. These conspirators are the promoters of the secret societies against which O’Connell warned the Irish people. But unfortunately they too often find that generous-hearted race—embittered by the recollection of centuries of oppression—willing to give ear to their delusive promises. Indifferent to their own future, these men rejoice in anarchy. Some of them are no doubt poltroons, who would fly as soon as they had led their dupes into danger. But it would be false to deny them all the attributes of courage. Others would die bravely enough behind a barricade. But their wars are essentially wars of the barricades. If defeated they would perish recklessly, having nothing at stake to make life valuable—absolutely indifferent to the slaughter, to the burned homes, to the widows and orphans of the unfortunate people who had submitted to their fatal guidance. If successful, their next attack would be upon the Catholic Church. But success under such leadership is a delusion wilder than the most exaggerated dream of fiction. They have no conception of a national revolution higher than a conspiracy. The elevated principles, the far-sighted calculations of a Washington, an Adams, or a Franklin, which almost assured success from the start, are an unknown language to them. Blind hatred, even of an existing tyranny, is a poor basis upon which to sustain a long and exhausting war. And no one, with the history of the American Revolution before him, can doubt what the character of an armed struggle with England for the independence of Ireland would be.

The same spirit of patriotism, therefore, that urged Washington to throw his sword into the scale in the contest with Great Britain, animated O’Connell with a contrary purpose in the case of Ireland. Yet not less is the latter deserving of the title of “Father of his Country.” Success has crowned the American patriot with a more splendid fame. But when we weigh the individual exertions of each in his gigantic struggle with the great empire opposed to him, and consider the incalculable advantages which a boundless territory and an intervening ocean afforded to the American leader, the Irish liberator will not suffer from the comparison. Washington was surrounded and sustained by a group of great men who would seem to have been providentially raised up at that momentous epoch to lay the foundations of the noble structure of American liberty. O’Connell, standing alone, an Atlas supporting the fortunes of six millions of Irish Catholics on his shoulders, is a figure unexampled in history. His herculean labors recall the fables of antiquity. In the whole parliamentary history of England we read of no other example of one man facing and trampling over the utmost hostility of that proud and powerful assembly—the English House of Commons.

Yet though the pre-eminence of O’Connell makes him appear almost a solitary figure in the records of that day, it would be unjust, in a notice of him, to pass over the assistance he received from the brilliant rhetoric and astute intellect of Richard Lalor Sheil. Though holding a subordinate place to that of the great Agitator, and accused of lukewarmness, in the end, by O’Connell himself, whose “Sheil, Sheil! this will never do,” has become historic, his early exertions merit a grateful remembrance. Nor can any Irishman ever forget the profound learning, the masterly reasoning, the weight of character which Dr. Doyle, the celebrated “J. K. L.,” brought to the contest in the early days of the Catholic Association. Rivalling Swift in the keenness of his satire, and “Junius” in the brilliancy of his style, he united to those qualities a purity of purpose and freedom from personal rancor which neither of those writers possessed. His life is an imperishable monument of the patriotism of the Catholic hierarchy of Ireland.

It is not the purpose of this article to speak of O’Connell’s position in the English House of Commons, of his action on the question of Reform, or the revenues of the Irish Church, on which he anticipated the tardy measure of Mr. Gladstone; nor of the truly liberal and tolerant spirit which made him welcome into the ranks of the Repealers the talented Protestant youth of Ireland, and oppose every manifestation of religious rancor wherever he found it. We have sufficiently pointed out what we believe to be his enduring claims to immortality—Catholic Emancipation, and, in pursuance of that aim and of Repeal, the new level of political thought and action to which he lifted the Irish race. He is the grandest representative of the pure Celtic blood of Ireland that the ages have produced. His power, like that of all other great national leaders, depended upon that representative quality. And he used his power faithfully. Unlike the great German chancellor of the present day, who, beginning with the rôle of a national liberator and organizer, has ended in a career of foreign domination and domestic persecution, O’Connell never perverted the strongest and noblest of popular forces to the uses of tyranny under any form. Prince Bismarck’s plans lead up to that very régime of hate, cruelty, and oppression which O’Connell combated in Ireland, and if they become the settled policy of the Empire, must in time give birth to a German Liberator.

It remains only to say a word upon the future of that Irish people to whom O’Connell devoted his life. We will not venture upon hazardous speculations. The wisdom of his policy was never more apparent than to-day. The motives upon which it was founded repeat themselves anew. There are too many interests in Ireland—Irish and Catholic interests—opposed to revolutionary violences, to make rebellion either desirable or practicable. It is only those who want to confiscate and live by tumult that cry out for it. The same communists who burned Paris and murdered its priests and archbishop under the name of liberty, would like to sack Dublin under the cry of “Down with the Saxon!” National ideas are everywhere the footballs of those radicals, by which they lead the easily-swayed multitude to follow them in their game of plunder. But an Irish communist—that is, one born of a Catholic Irish stock—is a creature of abnormal growth. He will never make much headway in Ireland.

The true course of modern Irish politics points to the assertion of that principle of federalism which has been established as the basis of government in Austro-Hungary, in Canada and all the great free British Colonies, and in the United States, and which, under the name of “Home Rule,” is now the matured policy of the trustworthy exponents of Irish public opinion. We would not be understood to commit ourselves to any particular political programme, but before any of what may be termed sentimental considerations, it would seem that the leaders of public opinion in Ireland must direct their energies to build up its material prosperity, and this can be best accomplished by local self-government. Unanimity in its pursuit is therefore demanded even of those who ultimately look beyond it. A rich and prosperous community will not long remain enslaved. It is only the poor who are trampled on, among nations as among individuals. It must be admitted, however, that nothing could well appear more hopeless than the present position of the Home Rulers in the English House of Commons. The decisive triumph of the Conservative reaction has put them out of the calculations of both parties. But this state of things is not likely to exist in the next Parliament, nor in the one after. Courage and endurance, therefore—the virtues of O’Connell—are the virtues that are needed in this temporary Slough of Despond. The contempt, so loudly and persistently expressed as to imply some apprehension, the frenzy of opposition, Home Rule has evoked in the House of Commons, we do not count for more than it is worth. It is not more bitter or uncompromising than the same feeling prior to Emancipation or even Reform. The same threats of eternal opposition were then common. It took sixty years of active opposition to gain the former; the same number at least and enormous outside agitation to carry the latter. The success of great national movements is necessarily slow against existing forces, and must often be transmitted from generation to generation. There is no need therefore of discouragement at a temporary check. Local self-government—the same that exists in New York and Massachusetts, and for the same objects—leaving foreign and exclusively national questions for the consideration of an Imperial Parliament, as for Congress—is a demand that commends itself to the feeling of justice of all mankind, a feeling which England will eventually be unable to resist. We are not of those who inculcate an eternal policy of revenge. This is easy for irresponsible demagogues to preach, but blows are not given without being received. The reality, the dreadful experiences of war, soon teach moderation where war is felt. Even were the two states independent, peace with England would be the true policy of Ireland.

As for the Irish in America, the future lies before them brilliant, unclouded. It is bounded only by their own ability to make it honorable and useful. Relying primarily, like every other man in the community, upon his own industry, sobriety, and energy, the Irishman in the United States or Canada may attain to any position he is fitted for. If in some instances he has to encounter native prejudices, these will be best overcome by an earnest effort on his own part to observe faithfully all the duties of citizenship. No one who does so will ever fail to obtain the respect and support of his Protestant neighbors. Those who make foreign grudges their first consideration must expect to be looked upon as strangers. Yet we must face what exists. So long as the stream of immigration continues to pour into this country, so long will there be a large body of our countrymen, receiving continual accessions, whose dearest thoughts will be directed towards Ireland, their bitterest towards England. This is inevitable. England reaps the fruit of her past. She is now in the position of a jailer who would fain take off the handcuffs from her prisoner, but dares not, for fear of retrospective revenge. The misgovernment of ages cannot be blotted out from the memory of the misgoverned in a day—nor in a hundred years. It is a national Nemesis; and it will be well for England if it do not overtake her in some dreadful form. This feeling naturally finds its strongest expression in the United States. Sympathy with the mother country will never fail. And God forbid that it should do so. But let that sympathy take a proper direction, an efficient form. Give the strength of your moral support—of your purses, if you will—to the men who are carrying on under a different form the work of O’Connell in Ireland—who are now bravely struggling for Home Rule. But turn a stern countenance on those adventurers and desperadoes who have nothing wiser to advise than wild and criminal incursions into a friendly province, where Irishmen possess all the rights they do here, or conspiracies and secret societies in Ireland—projects which make the honest patriotism and tried courage of Irishmen a farce for the laughter of mankind. The Irish in America have many traps laid for their nationality and their faith; but let them avoid the snares of revolutionary, infidel leaders for themselves, and of godless schools for their children, and the day will eventually dawn when the weight of their support will turn the scale in favor of their country’s rights against England. This is the true way to follow the example and honor the memory of O’Connell.

In spirit, the Great Liberator still beckons the way to his countrymen. The echo of that voice, sonorous, but clear and sweet as a silver bell, is heard no more on the hillsides of Erin. The clover springs up where the feet of thousands pressed closer to listen to its magic spell. But his memory is eternal as the hills themselves.

Unwearied by labors, animated by a single passion—the love of country—men like him “becoming the heroes and benefactors of the human race, attain to the glory of immortality.” The national historian, in a future age, will date the rehabilitation of Ireland from the birth of O’Connell.

ULTRAISM.

To be ultra is to go beyond. It is to attack the sceptre in the name of the throne, and the mitre in the name of the altar; it is to maltreat the thing you support; it is to kick in the traces; it is to cavil at the stake for undercooking heretics; it is to reproach the idol with a lack of idolatry; it is to insult by an excess of respect; it is to find in the Pope too little papistry, in the king too little royalty, and too much light in the night; it is to be dissatisfied with the albatross, with snow, with the swan, and the lily, in the name of whiteness; it is to be the partisan of things to the point of becoming their enemy; it is to be so very pro that you are con.—Victor Hugo.

MARIA IMMACOLATA OF BOURBON.[156]

We still see her, a gentle and beautiful girl of fourteen, seated beside her brother, the exiled King of Naples, in a low carriage which passes through the Villa Borghese, in Rome. Her face is of the Bourbon mould. A fair, open forehead, doubly suggestive of the water-lily, because of its snowy whiteness and the innocent frankness with which it seems to turn towards heaven. Bright hazel eyes, the limpid, loving depths of which are expressive of the innocence and purity of the soul, which gives them life and light; while the lines of her chaste mouth and finely-chiselled chin are ever forming themselves into a subdued smile of love, of peace, and of quiet resignation. There is a modesty, and withal an elegance in her dress and carriage, which strike the beholder at once. Her eyes do not wander about, but are fixed with trusting tenderness on the face of her brother, or rest affectionately upon the beautiful greyhound which crouches at her feet and looks up at her with an earnestness almost human. It may have been a mere fancy of ours, founded on our knowledge of the history of that lovely creature; but it always seemed to us that the earnest look of the dog at its young mistress was one of pity as well as of affection—pity because she was an exiled princess; affection, because she was fair to behold and gentle in demeanor, and the life-giving spirit of both qualities was a pure and noble soul, which we have since learned to regard with a veneration not unlike that which we bear towards a saint. We do not purpose to write her biography, nor even her memoirs. We will merely sketch briefly, and in the simplicity with which they were narrated to us, some recollections of that short life of nineteen years which wrought a chastening and ennobling influence upon all whose happiness it was to be near her.

Maria Immacolata Aloysia of Bourbon was the youngest child but one of Ferdinand II., King of Naples, and Maria Theresa of Austria, his second wife, and was born in the castle of Caserta, on the 21st of January, 1855. Her father the king died when she was quite young, and was succeeded on the throne by Francis II., the first-born of his marriage with the saintly Maria Christina of Savoy. After the death of Ferdinand, the Queen-Mother, Maria Theresa, devoted all her energies to the religious and secular education of her four children, the Princess Maria Pia; Prince Don Pasquale, Count of Bari; the subject of this sketch, Princess Maria Immacolata, and Prince Don Gennarino, Count of Caltagirone. In doing this she was actuated by a strong sense of the obligations of a Christian mother towards her children, while she felt that in discharging these obligations with fidelity she paid a worthy tribute to the memory of her deceased consort. Maria Immacolata, even in childhood, showed herself worthy of the sweet name which was given her in baptism, and the name of Aloysia was peculiarly becoming to her; for as S. Aloysius was called “the Angel of the Court of Mantua,” so did her sweet and angelic disposition win for her the appellation of “Angel of the Court of Naples.” Naples, however, was not destined to possess its “angel” long. The sad history of the treacherous expulsion of Francis II. by his own first cousin, Victor Emanuel, is too well known to need recital here. Enough to say, that in 1861 the Bourbons were forced to fly from the fortress of Gaeta and seek refuge in Rome, which was still the home of the exile, the weary, and the world-worn. As their father Ferdinand had offered an asylum to Pius IX. when the revolution of 1848 drove him from Rome, so now the noble heart of the Pontiff sympathized with the exiles, and he forthwith ordered the Quirinal Palace to be prepared for their reception. King Francis soon after took up his residence in the Farnese Palace, and the Queen-Mother retired with her four children to Palazzo Nipoti. It is into this sanctuary of piety, order, and industry that we would introduce the reader, that he may admire with us the domestic virtues of that Christian mother Maria Theresa. All is order, tranquillity, and modesty. Each prince has his own separate apartment and his own instructors. The hours for retiring to bed at night, rising in the morning, for prayers, Mass, study, meals, and recreation are regularly established. Besides the ordinary exercises of piety, there is a religious instruction given once a week, and a spiritual retreat once a year, at which the queen herself and every member of her household assist. She is the ruling and guiding spirit of all, and it was but natural, under the influence of such a perfect model, that the children should soon give evidences of those rare qualities of mind and soul which, in later years, became the theme of general admiration. Such was the domestic life of the exiles. It was here that the character of Maria Immacolata began to develop itself with singular beauty. Naturally pious, she loved God tenderly. At the religious instructions she observed a gravity of demeanor rarely met with in a child of her years, and on retiring to her room, she used to note down upon a slip of paper the principal points in the discourse which she had just heard. Her temperament was a lively one, and no one enjoyed the hours of recreation more heartily than she did. Yet it was apparent to all as she grew up that she was struggling hard to obtain a perfect mastery over herself, and the success which attended her efforts was especially manifest in her affectionate obedience to the queen, to her elder brothers and sister. The sweetest little nook in the Nipoti Palace was the room of Maria Immacolata. It was so small, so neat, so orderly, and the little altar in one corner, surmounted by a statuette of the Immaculate Conception, and ornamented with sweet-smelling flowers, told more plainly than words could who was the occupant. During the month of May her room became a little Eden of flowers in honor of the Virgin Mary. But other flowers were offered up to Our Lady which were far more acceptable to her than the fairest flowers of earth. On the altar stood a little vase of porphyry, containing a number of slips of paper, upon which was written the name of some virtue, some act of charity to be performed, or little mortification to be practised. Every morning, she and her sister, Maria Pia, repaired together to this urn, and, with joy depicted in their countenances, each drew out a slip of paper. Immacolata was always wont to say, when she had read her slip of paper, “O mamma! I need this virtue so much.” It has been said that love is ingenious; and if this be true of that love which creatures, following a God-given instinct, bear one towards another, it must find a proportionately more beautiful application in the love which a pure creature of the earth cherishes for the Immaculate Queen of Heaven. Maria Immacolata and her sister were not content with practising daily the virtues named on each slip of paper, but on the last day of the month they collected all the slips of paper together, and, with the addition of some lilies, they wove them into a chaplet, with which they crowned the statue of their Queen. The idea had a doubly beautiful significance, being suggestive at once of purity of heart and the traditional love of the Bourbons for the lily. The young princess was scarcely eleven years of age when she was told, to her unutterable delight, that she might prepare to receive her First Communion. In this event of her life our admiration is divided between the solicitous care of her noble mother in preparing her daughter for a worthy reception of the Blessed Eucharist, and the holy readiness and thorough spirit of appreciation with which the child performed all that was enjoined upon her. In order to remove every possible occasion of distraction during the spiritual retreat of eight days, which she made in the palace under the direction of a Jesuit father, she sent all her toys to a conservatory of little girls, and on the day previous to her beginning the exercises, she was overheard to say to a parrot, of which she was very fond, “Bird, you and I must part for awhile; a great Visitor is coming, and I must prepare to receive him.” She went so far as to deny herself the cup of chicken-broth which she was in the habit of taking in the morning, because of her delicate constitution. During the retreat she prayed most fervently to S. Aloysius, to whom she was tenderly devoted, beseeching him to obtain for her the grace of overcoming the enemies of her soul—the world, the passions, and the demon. After her death, a slip of paper was found in her prayer-book, upon which she had noted down all that she intended to ask our Lord for at her First Communion. She seems to have been strongly attached to her governess, for she writes: “and I will pray for Maria Laserre, that she may never be separated from me; and I will also pray,” said the child, “for Victor Emanuel, that God may enlighten him and pardon him all the harm he has done to us.” The first prayer received a gracious hearing, and we find Maria Laserre her constant and cheerful companion in all the trials and vicissitudes to which that short and guileless life was afterward subject. The other prayer reveals a sensitive soul, which was penetrated to its depths with a full and saddening consciousness of the monstrous wrongs which her family had suffered from their disloyal cousin, and at the same time a generous, forgiving spirit, not unlike that which prompted the touching prayer of Christ upon the cross, “Father! forgive them.” Many a noble deed is recorded of the Bourbons when they were in power, when the fleur-de-lis was the emblem of a glorious reality; but there is a sublimity of pathos in the forgiving prayer of the delicate child of eleven, despoiled of every vestige of royalty but her princely name, which is far beyond our appreciation, and is only justly estimated by Him who taught us to forgive the trespasses of others if we would hope for the forgiveness of our own. For all the favors which she asked of S. Aloysius she promised to give him a clasp of diamonds, which she had received from the king her father. Her anxiety, however, was great lest her mother might not consent to her parting with such a precious souvenir, as will appear in the letters which she wrote to the saint during the retreat, and which were found after her death in a small silver purse which she carried about with her. They are written in elegant French. As they were never intended for mortal eyes, but were addressed in all innocence and simplicity to a saint in heaven, we take them up with all possible delicacy, and reverence for the chaste heart of which they were the candid outpouring. While they bear testimony to her purity of soul, they are also an evidence of what religion was to her—not a hard, galling yoke, which must be borne from sheer necessity, nor a heavy burden, to be carried only on a Sunday or a holyday. No, there was an every-day warmth in her religion; it was something near at hand, familiar, consoling, and refreshing, and nowhere more perfectly embodied than in the short definition of the Redeemer: “My yoke is sweet, and my burden light.” Here is one of her letters:

“O great saint! who never lost your innocence, and who by your sanctity brought so much glory and honor upon your mother; S. Aloysius Gonzaga, patron of the young, you who were possessed of a great knowledge of the world and of human frailty, I recommend myself to you, that, by your intercession with Jesus Christ our Lord, you obtain for me the grace that I too may make a good First Communion. S. Aloysius Gonzaga! you who knew so well how to make a First Communion, oh! grant that the First Communion may be for me the beginning of a new life, the rule and guide of all my actions; and that I too may begin to battle courageously with the world, the demon, and my own passions. Grant me this favor, O great Saint! Meanwhile, I choose thee for my protector, and I will recommend myself to thee every day, in every sorrowful trial, at every suggestion of the enemy, and in every instance of impatience; and when temptation assails me, I will say a Gloria Patri for thee.

“Maria Immacolata of Bourbon (great sinner).

“Postscript.—Pray for me, O great Saint! and obtain for me these graces. Glory be to God the Father! O my S. Aloysius Gonzaga! pray that mamma will permit me without hesitation to carry as a gift to your chapel that little clasp of diamonds, and give me light to know how to ask her well for the favor, and how to reply, if she makes any objection.

“The Great Sinner.”

Another letter is couched in these terms:

“O S. Aloysius Gonzaga! you see that I recommend myself to you every day, as I promised you. Now, obtain this grace for me, that mamma may look at me with a good face when I ask her for the cope for Father N., of your own society; but especially when I ask her for the first favor (permission to bestow the diamonds upon S. Aloysius), that she may say yes without hesitating; and that she may also allow me to give my photograph to Don Domenico (an old domestic in the family). But let mamma say yes without difficulty. I ask you earnestly. Glory be to the Father.”

Here is another precious document:

“O S. Aloysius! my protector, I again recommend myself to thee. Give me light and obtain for me the grace that I may make my First Communion well. O happy day! O day that comes but once! O thrice happy day! Great Saint! give me thy faith, give me the faith of all the saints. Pray that I may not be ashamed to confess my sins. Meanwhile, I am thankful to thee for the favor which thou hast granted me in the clasp of diamonds, and for other favors, which I received from thee on other occasions. Pray for the most humble servant of God.

“M. I. of B. (great sinner).

“Postscript.—I recommend myself to thee, my dear protector; do me this favor: ask God to pardon me.”

The “thrice happy day” came at last, and on the 24th of December, 1865, she received Holy Communion from the hands of Cardinal Riario Sforza, in the same chapel in which her “dear Protector,” S. Aloysius, pronounced his vows. This chapel is in the Roman College, where S. Aloysius lived and died. It was beautifully ornamented for the occasion, and, besides the king, queen, and queen-mother, with their suites, a number of distinguished persons were present, and a score of little girls, dressed in white, assisted at the Mass, bearing lighted tapers in their hands. Every eye rested on Maria Immacolata, whose recollection edified all present. The smile which played around her mouth, and the blush which mantled her cheeks, were but faint indications of the happiness in her soul. What passed in that abode of purity and innocence is known only to herself and Him whom she loved. We can only narrate what we saw. Having obtained permission, she repaired with her governess, after thanksgiving, to the room of S. Aloysius, and with a face all aglow with joy, she placed a little casket on the altar. It was the clasp of diamonds. On leaving the room of the saint, she remarked to her companion that she was overwhelmed with gratitude towards God. “I must make him a present;” and before the day was over she had bestowed every coin in her purse upon his poor. Only one piece of gold was reserved, and that she sent on the following day to a conservatory, to clothe a little orphan girl of her own age, who was preparing for her First Communion. But of her boundless charity we will have more to say anon.

The summer of 1867 found the royal exiles at Albano, a charming country resort on the Appian Way, about fifteen miles from Rome. They had not been there long when the Asiatic cholera broke out with a violence unprecedented in the history of that terrible plague. The victims daily were numbered by hundreds. Not a family in the city was spared.

The first victim in the Bourbon family was the young Prince Gennarino, a bright little boy of eight years. At the first symptoms of the malady he asked for his confessor, and confessed with such compunction of heart that the good priest was moved to tears. He begged earnestly that he might receive Holy Communion; “for,” said the little fellow, “I want to die like a man.” Though he was so young, his request was granted. His First Communion was his Viaticum, and “like a man” the young Bourbon passed to another life. But death had singled out a more illustrious victim in the person of Maria Theresa, the Queen-Mother. Her whole life having been one of preparation, her death was that of the just. And here we would willingly stop to admire the character of that noble Christian mother, and worthy descendant of the great Maria Theresa of Austria; but we are restrained from doing so by the reflection that we cannot pay a more worthy or glowing tribute to her memory, than by sketching the life and character of her saintly daughter Maria Immacolata. To a heart so sensitive, so appreciative and affectionate, as was that of Immacolata, the death of a mother was a great blow, and it was a long time before she could be comforted. King Francis now became the natural protector of the orphans, and took them to his own residence in the Farnese Palace, in Rome. The habit of study had already been formed in the children by their saintly mother, and so they applied themselves with renewed vigor to the acquisition of knowledge. Maria Immacolata was gifted with talents of the highest order. Besides speaking her own language with captivating sweetness she spoke French and German fluently, and the facility with which she could pass from one language to another was surprising. Drawing was her passion, and her sketches in oil and water colors gave evidence of no inconsiderable genius. Wherever she went, she brought her drawing materials with her, and amused herself by sketching landscapes, palaces, villas, and the like. She was equally skilled in portraits, and the last production of her pencil, a beautiful picture of the Immaculate Heart, has been very much admired. Literature was another source of pleasure to her. Though she had a lofty appreciation of the beauties of the Italian language, and was passionately fond of reading, she was never known to indulge in light and promiscuous literature. While applying herself to the cultivation of her mind, she did not forget the more modest accomplishments which become her sex; and there are several beggars in Rome this day who will show, with no small pride, the coarse stockings which were knitted for them by the tiny hands of Maria Immacolata of Bourbon. But these and many other accomplishments were but as the gold which encircles a diamond of rare value and purity. Her richest treasure was her humility and modesty. Her conversation, though entertaining and lively, was modest; her deportment, though easy and graceful, equally so. The sweetness of her disposition was especially noticeable in her treatment of domestics.