for a few hours. To give the gentleman his due, when he set about wishing he did not stop at a trifle. Future commentators may dispute about the vocation of that prophet; it may be questioned whether he was not an accessary before the fact; we care not. Ireland has but risen from a very sea of tribulation. All that she has suffered for generations of oppression, opprobious tyranny, degrading thraldom, and fiendish persecution, need not now be dwell on. Friends she had in the days of her deepest sorrow; advocates in the moment of her lowest degradation; defenders in her sorest need; worthy sons, not a few, to lead the forlorn hope of her nationality. But martyrs they were as much as heroes; martyrs, alas! too often, "by the pang without the palm." Their labours have not yet borne the rich harvest of such a seed. There was not one, we fancy, of all those noble souls who, in his dying hour, could find any greater consolation than that which the recollection of a weary, heroic life could give; not one of all those could say that his work was accomplished, and all that gained for which he lived and worked, in such vicissitude of trial and circumstance.

To go but a short time back, Grattan fought hand to hand with systematised injustice, until there was no longer ground to stand on. The senator and the patriot sadly enough followed the remnant of an Irish Legislature, and witnessed its annihilation in the proud and unscrupulous majority of an Imperial Parliament. The fight was overthe field with the oppressor. Curran confronted corruption in the Senate, and the very demons of hate and injustice in the courts of law. Government, Acts of Parliament, unrighteous custom, dominant sectarianism, were all against him. He shook the Commons with the thunders of his denunciations, and made the unjust judge writhe upon the bench, and grow pale in the gaze of his victims. But to what good? Evil has had its way. The dispirited, worn out advocate lingered a few years, and died; still bereft of his great hope, in the company of strangers. Emmet and Fitzgerald are names of blood and tears: non ragionam lor. O'Connell went through a life of labour, turmoil, pressing care, which would have broken the heart of a giant; and died at last, having conquered much, but not all; weary enough, we dare say, and sore, too, with the

di

Brutus stab of his own disciples. Then came famine, pestilence, the reign of terror and of death. No longer patriotie fury of Conciliation Hall, or the shouts of millions on the hill sides of Tara; but instead, the death moan of stricken households, the hurrying of despair and disease, and a nameless desolation to the swarming lazars of the poorhouse. The noyades and massacres of a French Revolution. destroyed the population of cities; the snows of a Russian campaign buried alive whole legions; earthquakes and plagues have desolated states. The victims of these are counted by thousands. By millions we reckon the multitudes whoin the accursed misgovernment of a party left to die on the highways, and in the ditches of Ireland, while there were ships in England's harbours, and stores in her granaries, which would have fed three kingdoms. There was no Joseph in Egypt in those days.

A very night of sorrow darkened the land, and silence has reigned ever since. Those that wish to have it so, assert that there is now no patriotic feeling, no nationality in the country; that politics, and all that sort of thing, are at an end; that the people are minding their business, and will soon get comfortable, well fed, content. "You have no Dan O'Connell," say they, "to agitate for you; no one makes fine speeches about you now; your patriotism is dead; you are quelled utterly!"

But is it all over indeed, the blood and sweat of all these valiant men gone for nought? We say no; most assuredly, no. It is not the silence of despair that wraps the land, but the silence of the seed time, before the hurrying feet of the reapers, and the joyous gathering of the harvest, make a welcome inroad on the stillness. Yes, it is even so. The seed is scattered; the husbandmen are gone; there is no more talking. The people are left to themselves, and to— God. But is there nothing doing? Nothing! Pause a moment, and you may feel the grass grow under your feet, so instinct with life is the very ground you tread on. Νο agitation on the surface certainly; no passing show, but beneath a great, dumb, ever-growing power, which shall 800n be a nationality the world may wonder at.

When we speak here of the people of Ireland, we mean not the few native-born hundreds who talk and write, make money and spend it; not the select circle whom people

meet in genteel society, dine with, dance with, and to go the devil with-who calculate the country's prosperity by the balance sheet of their rent-rolls, and its progress in civilization by the attendance at levees and drawingrooms, and the increased demand for fashionable country-houses-who, going to church, if they are orthodox by the law, piously detest all manner of Papists and Dissenters, affectionately recommending a friendly aggression on themselves and their doctrines; or who, if they be born" Papists," strain every point to observe an amiable conformity, and are so "liberal," so free from all rough corners, that in polite society no one would know them from unbelievers. This class, which may be called the upper branch of the middle order in Ireland, is thoroughly contemptible, and uneducated in every true sense. Their ambition is to ape the attitude of their masters; they have come in too close contact with a race alien in every way; they have touched what was to them contamination; they are neither sterling Saxon, nor honest Irish; they are a mongrel breed, and flunkeyism is their code of law, the profession and practice of their creed. When, therefore, there is question of the people of Ireland, we do not make allusion to those, but to the thousands of real men, who, far below them in the social scale, do the rough work of life, and toil hard for mere dry bread, but who have living souls for all that, and are the very heart of the nation.

It seems to us that it was because this great myriad race was left too much out of the calculations of former patriots, that so much good work was marred, or entirely wasted. Perhaps there was scarcely help for it. A nation of slaves may rise for revenge, but cannot stand up for freedom. Self-consciousness and self-reliance have first to be learnt, and O'Connell had not yet come to teach that lesson. Too much labour went in vain efforts to make the dry branch bud into life. Now let the dry branch wither; there is sap still at the root for healthy offshoots. For once, let us begin at the beginning.

And are the great mass of the people standing still in all that regards true progress? Are they following crooked roads, or travelling they know not whither? Very far from all that. There is more of hardy, earnest, eager life in this class in Ireland at the present day, than

any one not

actually living among them could easily believe. There is a spirit of self-development among them, and a system of education at work, silently, it might be said unconsciously, moulding a very facile material into a most solid vigorous nationality. Since green grass first grew on the island there was never such hope as now. Thrice blessed those who outlive some few years more of toil and weary waiting, and witness the first grand outburst of a nation's selfassertion!

The immense educational power at work in Ireland, is the real preparation for this consumation, and forms the solid basis of the superstructure. Whatever may be said of the colleges and middle-class schools, there can be but one opinion of the training pursued by those who have charge of the great mass of the population. The mechanical part is excellent, and there is a very necessary vigilance exercised by those who have even a higher responsibiliy, than the schoolmaster. Mere intellectual culture is a poor provision for any class; without much in addition it is especially pernicious for the lower orders, who are not amenable to those influences, so subtile yet so powerful, which often act as a needful check upon the rank above them. The vexations and defects of the so-called "National System," which cause so much irritation, and hinder so materially the benefit which a system truly national would accomplish, are neutralized in a great measure, by the watchful care of the clergy and the religious orders, who so often are the guardians and correspondents of these schools. objections urged against the system are to be traced, rather to a justifiable fear of the mischief, which surely would ensue, if the administration of the charge fell into unfit hands, than to any wrong that has actually been done. Fortunately there are vigilant eyes abroad-laborious hands and real energy at work; and, so controlled, the national system is a help, and to say the least, in the present state of affairs, a great convenience. The great advantage, however, is with the Christian Brothers. They reject the national system altogether, use their own method, and compose their own books; and let any one who visits their schools, and listens to an examination of their classes, say whether the fifteen thousand "monks' boys," as they are called, do not, with their ready answers, bright intelligent

The

eyes, and consummate discipline, represent a very phalanx of power, ready drilied for all purposes of good. Truly these fifteen thousand are an army of civilization. The steady march into manhood, every few years, of a generation so trained, will clear the ground of many obstructions. In these schools alone, there is a whole nation gaining intellectual power, and gathering vital strength. Let your gownsmen look to their honours, and your hitherto privileged classes make way. There is a new race ready even now to supplant them, and claim by right divine the inheri tance of their forfeited birthright.

If we look to a higher, or at least older portion of the community, we find evidences of almost miraculous advance in refinement and intelligence. There is hardly a large town in Ireland which has not now its Catholic Young Men's Society, organized for purposes of self improvement, intellectual culture, and mutual support in faith and works. The strong bond is here of unity, and a fixed aim and principle; for the want of which Mechanics' Institutes, and such like fast and loose associations, fall away, after a hopeful beginning, and a more or less enduring play of spasmodic action. Here the tie is strong as love, for it is no other; powerful to fetter all base passions; and strong enough to keep in check even such characteristics of temperament and of race, as have hitherto proved fatal to social progress. The principal of self restraint is taught in these societies, by the example in daily life of each individual member. The real strength of will, the power of continuous self-denial, which the Irish, of all others, were supposed least capable of exercising, until Father Mathew proved the contrary, are no where better shown than in the existence and conduct of these societies. Sobriety reigns supreme in the midst of their pleasant meetings; works of edification, and the care of those less prosperous, in the world's sense, than even they themselves are, occupy the rare intervals of leisure, which break up the monotony of the working man's life. No angry debate disturbs their meetings; no word of politics is ever heard within the precincts of their halls and reading rooms. In the cities and towns of Ireland hundreds of poor, humble, toil weary artisans are congregated in these societies, maintaining most exact discipline. Their politics to keep themselves unspotted from the world; their propagandism