guished men in its past, was not well-to-do, and young Duffy had, at an early age, to rely on his own energies. He was but a lad when he went to Dublin, and obtained employment as sub-editor on the Dublin Morning Register. He returned soon afterwards to his native north as the editor of a paper of considerable influence in Belfast. Once more he turned his face to the metropolis, and obtained an engagement on the Mountain, an organ of O'Connell. It was not till 1842, however, that his career could be said to have really begun. In that year he, in conjunction with Thomas Davis and John B. Dillon, founded the Nation. The memoirs we have already given of several Irishmen orators, poets, and prose writers will have brought home to the reader what was the immense significance of this event in the literary and political world of Ireland. It will, therefore, be here but necessary to say that Duffy's new journal attracted to it all the young talent of the country, and that there grew up a literature which challenges favourable comparison with that of any other period of Irish history. Duffy was soon brought face to face with the difficulties which lay in the path of a journalist of anti-governmental politics; in 1844 he was tried with O'Connell, was defended, as we have already stated, by Whiteside, and was found guilty. The verdict, it will also be known, was quashed on an appeal to the House of Lords.

We need not here repeat the history of the breach that took place between O'Connell and the Young Ireland party. Duffy was one of the founders of the Irish Confederation, which the more ardent section set up in opposition to O'Connell's pacific organization. When the troublous days of 1848 came Duffy had to pass through the same trials as his companions; the Nation was suppressed; he himself arrested, and only released after the government had four times attempted, and four times failed, to obtain a conviction.

Duffy began life again, resuscitated the Nation, and preached the modified gospel of constitutional agitation. He also had a share in founding a Parliamentary party, having been elected for New Ross in 1852. The object of this party was to obtain legislative reforms, especially for the cultivators of the soil; and one of its principles was to hold aloof from both the English parties. The defection of the late Justice Keogh and others drove several of the "Independent opposition" party, as it was called, to despair, and destroyed for the moment all confidence in par

liamentary agitation. Duffy, being one among those who had abandoned hope, left Ireland to seek brighter fortunes and more promising work in another land.

He had not been long in Australia before his talents met suitable recognition: he had left Ireland in 1856, and was minister of public works in Victoria in 1857. That office he held twice afterwards; and, in 1871, he attained to the still higher position of prime minister of the colony. Being defeated in parliament he demanded the right to dissolve; but Viscount Canterbury, for reasons which were at the time the subject of hot controversy, declined to accede to the request, and Duffy had to resign. He was offered knighthood, which he at first refused, but ultimately accepted in May, 1873. In 1876 he was elected speaker of the Legislative Assembly. He has, since his departure from Ireland, paid two visits of some duration to Europe; and during his last there was a rumour, which proved to be false, that he intended once more to re-enter public life at home.

Sir Charles Duffy is a writer of vigorous prose and an effective orator; it is on his poems, however, that his reputation rests. Those poems are few in number, but there is scarcely one among them which is not excellent. He has also published speeches made on various occasions, and is the editor of a volume of Irish ballads which has reached its fortieth edition.]

Slowly must it grow to blossom,

Fed by labour and delay, And the fairest bud of promise Bears the taint of quick decay.

You must strive for better guerdons;

Strive to be the thing you'd seem; Be the thing that God hath made you, Channel for no borrowed stream; He hath lent you mind and conscience; See you travel in their beam!

See you scale life's misty highlands
By this light of living truth!
And with bosom braced for labour,

Breast them in your manly youth;
So when age and care have found you,
Shall your downward path be smooth.

Fear not, on that rugged highway, Life may want its lawful zest; Sunny glens are in the mountain,

Where the weary feet may rest, Cooled in streams that gush for ever From a loving mother's breast.

"Simple heart and simple pleasures," So they write life's golden rule; Honour won by supple baseness,

State that crowns a cankered fool, Gleam as gleam the gold and purple On a hot and rancid pool.

Wear no show of wit or science,

But the gems you've won, and weighed; Thefts, like ivy on a ruin,

Make the rifts they seem to shade:
Are you not a thief and beggar
In the rarest spoils arrayed?

Shadows deck a sunny landscape,

Making brighter all the bright: So, my brother! care and danger On a loving nature light, Bringing all its latent beauties

Out upon the common sight.

Love the things that God created, Make your brother's need your care; Scorn and hate repel God's blessings,

But where love is, they are there; As the moonbeams light the waters, Leaving rock and sand-bank bare.

Thus, my brother, grow and flourish,
Fearing none and loving all;
For the true man needs no patron,

He shall climb and never crawl;
Two things fashion their own channel-
The strong man and the waterfall.

THE IRISH CHIEFS.

Oh! to have lived like an IRISH CHIEF, when hearts were fresh and true,

And a manly thought, like a pealing bell, would quicken them through and throu h; And the seed of a gen'rous hope right soon to a fiery action grew,

And men would have scorned to talk and talk, and never a deed to do.

Oh! the iron grasp,

And the kindly clasp,

And the laugh so fond and gay;

And the roaring board,

And the ready sword,

Were the types of that vanished day.

Oh! to have lived as Brian lived, and to die as

Brian died;

His land to win with the sword, and smile, as a warrior wins his bride.

To knit its force in a kingly host, and rule it with kingly pride,

And still in the girt of its guardian swords over victor fields to ride;

And when age was past,

And when death came fast, To look with a softened eye

On a happy race

Who had loved his face,

And to die as a king should die.

Oh! to have lived dear Owen's life-to live for a solemn end,

To strive for the ruling strength and skill God's saints to the Chosen send;

And to come at length with that holy strength, the bondage of fraud to rend,

And pour the light of God's freedom in where Tyrants and Slaves were denned;

And to bear the brand

With an equal hand,

Like a soldier of Truth and Right,

And, oh! Saints, to die,

While our flag flew high,

Nor to look on its fall or flight.

Oh! to have lived as Grattan lived, in the glow of his manly years,

To thunder again those iron words that thrill like the clash of spears;

Once more to blend for a holy end, our peasants, and priests, and peers,

Till England raged, like a baffled fiend, at the tramp of our Volunteers.

And, oh! best of all,

Far rather to fall

(With a blesseder fate than he,)

On a conqu'ring field,