bill, very rarely a wine-merchant's, and never | already mentioned, they had another girl a landlord or a tax-collector. Meanwhile, named Paulina, and an elder boy, Pickever they had scrupulously obeyed the first rule of Falcon, who was heir to the family estates in Nature's arithmetic-the law of multiplica- Airshire, and the patrimonial castle in the tion. Besides the two daughters and the son isle of Sky. THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. BORN 1823 DIED 1867. [Meagher was the orator of the Young Ireland party; and his speeches-fiery, brilliant, and highly finished-contributed as much as the writings of the Nation to stir the people to insurrection. tinguished himself at the battle of Bull's Run, where his horse was shot under him. Afterwards he raised the famous Irish Brigade, of which he was elected first general. The services which this gallant force rendered to the arms of the Union are well known, and have been admitted by all the historians of the civil war. The brigade especially distinguished itself in the seven days' fighting around Richmond; and its conduct at Antietam was made the subject of flattering notice in an order of the day by General M'Clellan. The terrible battle of Fredericksburg gave the general and his troops an opportunity of still further adding to their laurels. Seven times they charged up to the crest of the enemy's breastworks; and the best proof of their desperate courage was that out of 1200 men whom the general led into battle, only 280 appeared next day on parade. In this engagement Meagher himself was wounded in the leg, and for a while had to retire from active service. In the May following, however, he was able once more to lead his forces; and at Chancellorsville the destruction of the broken brigade was com Thomas Francis Meagher was born on August 3, 1823, in Waterford, which his father had represented for some time. He left the colleges of Clongowes-Wood and Stonyhurst, where he had been educated, with a brilliant reputation. When he returned to Ireland in 1843, after a tour on the Continent, he found the country in the full fever of the repeal agitation; and he ultimately gave to the movement the benefit of his eloquent tongue. As time went on he joined the more fiery spirits of the Young Ireland party. He was one of the deputation to Paris in 1848 to congratulate France on the establishment of the Republic; and on his return he presented with a glowing speech an Irish tricolor flag to the citizens of Dublin. In May of the same year he was arrested for seditious language; but the jury being unable to agree, he was discharged. Soon after, when the passage of the treason felony act drove the Young Ire-pleted. Meagher now came to the conclusion land leaders into open insurrection, Meagher was among those who took the field. He was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. We quote his speech on this occasion. The sentence was afterwards commuted to transportation, and he was sent to Tasmania with O'Brien and Macmanus. that it was no longer desirable to drag the phantom regiment into action, and resigned. Criticism was freely passed on Meagher's skill as a general, but there was complete agreement of opinion that he had proved himself a gallant soldier, of a courage at once cool and reckless. After he had resigned his command he In 1852 he made his escape and landed in was appointed by President Lincoln brigadierAmerica, where he was enthusiastically re-general of volunteers, and also had charge of ceived. For a time he became public lecturer; in 1855 he was admitted to the bar. The outbreak of the American civil war opened up to Meagher another career. From the beginning he was an enthusiastic supporter of the cause of the North. First he raised a body of Zouaves, who were incorporated in the famous 69th New York Regiment under the command of Colonel Corcoran. He was present and dis the district of Etowah, where he had under his orders a force of 12,000 infantry, 200 guns, and also some cavalry. At the conclusion of the war he was made acting governor of the territory of Montana. He had a tragic end. While travelling in a steamer on the Mississippi, he fell overboard, and was drowned. His body was never recovered. At the time of his death, July 1, 1867, he was but forty-three years of age. He published a volume of his speeches and some essays under the title Recollections of Ireland and the Irish. The latter display a keen sense of humour, and some powers of description; but his work as a writer was far inferior to his achievements as an orator. He was at his best when he was the youthful mouthpiece of the passions and dreams of the "Young Irelanders;" his speeches in America, though brilliant, were not unfairly, though somewhat contemptuously, characterized by his friend and admirer John Mitchel as "rhetorical exercitations."] SPEECH FROM THE DOCK. My Lords, It is my intention to say only a few words. I desire that the last act of a proceeding which has occupied so much of the public time, shall be of short duration. Nor have I the indelicate wish to close the dreary ceremony of a state prosecution with a vain display of words. Did I fear that hereafter, when I shall be no more, the country which I have tried to serve would think ill of me, I might, indeed, avail myself of this solemn moment to vindicate my sentiments and my conduct. But I have no such fear. The country will judge of those sentiments and that conduct in a light far different from that in which the jury by which I have been convicted have viewed them; and by the country, the sentence which you, my lords, are about to pronounce, will be remembered only as the severe and solemn attestation of my rectitude and truth. Whatever be the language in which that sentence be spoken, I know that my fate will meet with sympathy, and that my memory will be honoured. In speaking thus accuse me not, my lords, of an indecorous presumption. To the efforts I have made in a just and noble cause, I ascribe no vain importance, nor do I claim for those efforts any high reward. But it so happens, and it will ever happen, that they who have tried to serve their country-no matter how weak their efforts may have been-are sure to receive the thanks and blessings of its people. With my country, then, I leave my memory -my sentiments-my acts,-proudly feeling that they require no vindication from me this day. A jury of my countrymen, it is true, have found me guilty of the crime of which I stood indicted. For this I feel not the slightest In feeling of resentment towards them. fluenced as they must have been by the charge of the lord chief-justice, they could have found no other verdict. What of that charge? Any strong observations on it I feel sincerely would ill befit the solemnity of the scene; but I earnestly beseech of you, my lord-you who preside on that bench-when the passion and the prejudices of this hour have passed away, to appeal to your own conscience, and ask of it, Was your charge as it ought to have been, impartial and indifferent between the subject and the crown? My lords, you may deem this language unbecoming in me, and perhaps it might seal my fate. But I am here to speak the truth, whatever it may cost. I am here to regret nothing I have ever done, to retract nothing I have ever said. I am here to crave with no lying lips the life I consecrate to the liberty of my country. Far from it. Even here-here, where the thief, the libertine, the murderer, have left their foot-prints in the dust-here, on this spot, where the shadows of death surround me, and from which I see my early grave, in an unanointed soil open to receive me-even here, encircled by these terrors, that hope which first beckoned me to the perilous sea upon which I have been wrecked, still consoles, animates, and enraptures me. No, I do not despair of my old countryher peace, her glory, her liberty! For that country I can do no more than bid her hope. To lift this island up, to make her a benefactor to humanity, instead of being the meanest beggar in the world-to restore her to her native power and her ancient constitution-this has been my ambition, and my ambition has been my crime. Judged by the law of England, I know this crime entails the penalty of death; but the history of Ireland explains this crime and justifies it. Judged by that history I am no criminal, you (addressing Mr. Macmanus) are no criminal, you (addressing Mr. O'Donoghue) are no criminal. Judged by that history, the treason of which I stand convicted loses all its guilt, is sanctified as a duty, and will be ennobled as a sacrifice! With these sentiments, my lords, I await the sentence of the court. Having done what I felt to be my duty, having spoken what I felt to be the truth, as I have done on every other occasion of my short career, I now bid farewell to the country of my birth, my passion, and my death,- -a country whose misfortunes have invoked my sympathies-whose fac tions I sought to quell-whose intelligence I | crooked, but evidently gifted with a wonderprompted to a lofty aim-whose freedom ful ubiquity of vision. It was everywhere. has been my fatal dream. To that country I now offer as a pledge of the love I bore her, and of the sincerity with which I thought and spoke and struggled for her freedom, the life of a young heart; and with that life, the hopes, the honours, the endearments of a happy, a prosperous, and honourable home. Pronounce then, my lords, the sentence which the law directs. I trust I shall be prepared to meet its execution. I shall go, I think, with a pure heart and perfect composure to appear before a higher tribunal-a tribunal where a Judge of infinite goodness, as well as of justice, will preside, and where, my lords, many many of the judgments of this world will be reversed. NASH AND THE DRAGOONS. (FROM "RECOLLECTIONS.") The day after I had arrived at Waterford from Stonyhurst, the trades of the city held a public meeting to petition Parliament for the repeal of the union. The meeting took place at the town-hall. There was a dense crowd. The enthusiasm was vehement-the rhetoric still more so. The speakers rose with the occasion, and from the loftiest clouds flung hail and lightning on the listeners. Two of these soared far above the rest. Strikingly different in their "physique" and speech, the one impersonated the Iron age, the other the age of Gold. The one was an alderman and draper. The other was a schoolmaster, and earned his bread by dispensing the fruit of knowledge. James Delahunty was the alderman's name. James Nash was the school master's name. The schoolmaster was full of humour, full of poetry, full of gentleness and goodness; he was a patriot from the heart and an orator by nature. Uncultivated, luxuriant, wild, his imagination produced in profusion the strangest metaphors, running riot in tropes, allegories, analogies, and visions. Of ancient history and books of ancient fable he had read much, but digested little. He was a Sheil in the rough. Less pretentious than Phillips, he was equally fruitful in imagery and diction, and more condensed in expression. His appearance was in keeping with the irregularity and strangeness of his rhetoric. That he had a blind eye, was a circumstance which, at first sight, forcibly struck one. The other was In a crowd it took in every visible point; and, though revolving on an eccentric axis, impartially diffused its radiance all round. He had a comical face. Every conceivable emotion and mood was blended there in an amusing enigma, the exact meaning of which it was most difficult, if not impossible, to solve. Addressing an audience, his attitude excited the highest merriment, whilst his sound sentiments and capital hits called forth the loudest cheers. His usual attire was an old claretcoloured coat, buttoned to the neck. What his trousers consisted of, or looked like, I nearly forget: but it would be no great mistake to say they were of drab cloth, hung very voluminously about the ankles, and were deeply stained. The hat-as comical an affair as the face-was cocked on one side of his head, and suggested a devil-may-care defiance of the world. "Mr. Mayor and fellow-citizens "-it was thus he addressed the meeting the morning I returned to Waterford-"I came to attend this meeting, driving Irish tandem—that is, one foot before the other." With exuberant adjectives, he then went on to compliment the distinguished people who were present at the meeting. The Right Worshipful the Mayor of the city was in the chair. The Right Rev. Dr. Foran, the Catholic bishop, was on the platform. "Patriotism," exclaimed Nash, "flashes from the mitre of the one, and burns in the civic bosom of the other." Then he proceeded, in an amazing medley of facts, and metaphors, and figures of arithmetic, to enumerate the evils which the legislative union had produced. "What has been the upshot of it all?" he asked. "Why, it comes to this, they haven't left us a pewter spoon to run a railroad with through a plate of stirabout." The threats of coercion uttered by the government next claimed his notice. He despised them; repelled them; haughtily flung them back. He defied the government; he defied them to come on. "Let them come on," he exclaimed, "let them come on; let them draw the sword; and then woe to the conquered! Every potato field shall be a Marathon, and every boreen a Thermopyla." I have often thought of delivering a lecture on Nash. Of a class now almost extinct in Ireland-the Irish schoolmasters-he was the finest specimen I ever saw. Had Carleton seen him he would have immortalized him in type. As it is, he is dead, buried in some potter's field. Like all the poor, honest, gifted men-the rude, bright chivalry of the towns and fields-who thought infinitely more of their country than of themselves-he died in utter poverty, companionless and nameless. Yet, should anyone give me a file of the Waterford Chronicle from 1826 to 1847, there would be in my possession the materials of an epic, of which poor Nash, with his headlong honesty and reckless genius, should be the hero. He was a conspicuous figure in the political action of Waterford for more than twenty years. During the days of the Catholic Rent he was conspicuous. In Stuart's election, which broke down the prestige and power of the Beresfords, he was conspicuous. In the elections of 1830 and 1832 he was equally so. In 1843 he emerged from his classic seclusion-for a season gave over flogging his boys and making them Spartansand appeared once more as a Demosthenes on the hill of Ballybricken, the Acropolis of Waterford. The last time I saw Nash was the day of my father's election as representative of Waterford, in the month of July, 1847. It was about five o'clock in the evening. The polling was nearly at a close. Sir Henry Winston Barron and Mr. Wyse were sadly beaten. The excitement of the people was intense. For years they had longed for this victory; and at last, in a fuller measure and with a more precipitous speed than they expected, it had come. They hated these gentlemen, for these gentlemen were aristocrats in social life and imperialists in politics. They were not of the people, nor among them, nor for them. Both would lord it over them-the one from vulgar affection; the other instigated by the haughtiness of superior intellect. For a long time they had kept their seats, not with the assent of the people, but favoured by circumstances and a temporizing policy, dictated by the leaders of the people. Circumstances were changed-radically changedand the temporizing policy, before the breath of the national spirit, was impetuously swept away. Hence the defeat of these Whigs both of them respectable men, and one of them an eminent scholar-who had so long misrepresented in the supreme political convention of the empire the heart and mind of the chief city of the Suir. A huge crowd was before the town-hall. The Mall was impassable. The windows on both sides of the thoroughfare were filled with eager and excited gazers. The door steps, the lamp-posts, the leads and skylights of every house within sight or hearing of the town-hall, were densely thronged. A troop of dragoon guards, coming down Beresford Street in double file, pushed their way through the enormous crowd, and suddenly facing about, formed line in front of the town-hall, in the centre of the Mall, thereby cutting the crowd in two. At this moment Nash made his appearance in one of the front windows of the town-hall immediately facing and looking down on the dragoons. His queer eye played through the multitude for a moment. Then giving his hat, as was usual with him on all such occasions, a jerk to one side, he turned up the cuffs of his coat, unbuttoned his shirt sleeves, took a bite of an orange, and commenced his harangue. "Men of Waterford! the day is ours. Barron is beaten. Wyse is beaten. The boys are with us. The girls are with us. diers are with us-aren't ye, boys?" The sol There was a tremendous cheer at this. Many of the dragoons seemed pleased. Their captain, however, became highly incensed. Banners, and green boughs, and scarfs, and handkerchiefs, and hats, and bonnets were flung out and shaken to and fro, up and down, in tumultuous delight. The horses of the dragoons became restless. They champed their bits impatiently, flinging flakes of froth here and there upon the crowd. They pranced a little, and shied a little, and backed a little. The cheering still went on. In the midst of all, at that window in the town-hall, with his crooked eye in full play, and his hat still on one side, stood Nash, with the most comical complacency, waiting for the excitement to subside. It did subside a little, and he went on to say that he loved a soldier's life, and would be a dragoon before long. The only objection he had to the service was the red jacket. Why shouldn't it be green? "Why shouldn't it, boys?" he exclaimed, addressing himself to the dragoons, “why shouldn't it be green- our own immortal green?" - There was another tremendous cheer when this was asked, and the dragoons gave way to the good-nature and enthusiasm of the crowd. They laughed out aloud, and some of them cheered, and not a few of them waved their swords. "Do you see that?" cried Nash, and he dashed his hat about, and tore his coat wide open, and hurrahed with all his might. But the captain, a handsome young snob, with sleepy eyelashes and the daintiest moustaches, | His object was to remove the dragoons; and looking down the line, gave his men the order to move off, which they did amidst the loudest cheers-poor Nash all the time twisting his eye, and shouting as before with all his might. That was the last time I saw him. the speediest way to do so was to appeal to their patriotism. He thought so, and his calculations were right. The dragoons were ordered off, and Nash and his audience had it all to themselves. The day was their own. SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON. widely popular among contemporary verses. The poem established Ferguson as a contributor to the great northern magazine; and for some years he was one of its most welcome writers. The best known of his articles is "Father Tom and the Pope," a sketch of quaint and often brilliant humour, which immediately attracted, and has permanently retained great popularity, and which was for years supposed to be from the bright pen of Dr. Maginn. The Dublin University next offered a market nearer home; and from the first Ferguson contributed largely. In its pages will be found compositions of various kinds: poems original and translated, tales and reviews. In the "Hibernian Nights' Entertainments" he dealt some well-deserved blows at the caricatures of Irish character which used to pass, and to some extent still do duty, for portraits of Irish life. Those sketches have been republished in a volume. Sir Samuel has also written a remarkable epic, Congal, and an excellent volume of translations from the Irish entitled Lays of the Western Gael.] [Sir Samuel Ferguson belongs to a class of literary Irishmen not too common in the history of the present century. Irish writers have as a rule belonged to either of two kinds; they have been active political workers on the national side, their literary efforts being the complement of their public struggles, or, abandoning national sympathies altogether, they have neglected Irish subjects entirely, or have written of them only to deride. The place of Sir Samuel Ferguson is in neither of these two divisions. Holding aloof from political organizations, he has nevertheless maintained the full ardour of Irish feeling; and all his writings tend in some form or other to advance the cause of Irish literature. He was born in Belfast in 1810, and having passed his first years of education at the wellknown academical institution there, entered Trinity College. In 1838 he was called to the bar; in 1859 he became a queen's counsel, and in 1867 he finally retired from his profession. He had been appointed in the latter year to a position which eminently suited him, and for which he was most fitted. He has been throughout his life an ardent student of Celtic archæology; and it was therefore singularly appropriate that he should have, as deputykeeper of the records, the duty of exploring the muniments of ancient Irish history, and arranging the results. Let us finish our record The of his professional career by saying that he received some recognition of his labours in The 1878 by having the honour of knighthood conferred upon him. Ferguson's literary life began when he was almost a boy; and his first attempt was a triumph. The "Forging of the Anchor," which he offered to Blackwood, was not only received, but was honoured with a special and highly THE FORGING OF THE ANCHOR.1 Come, see the Dolphin's anchor forged: 'tis at a white heat now: bellows ceased, the flames decreased; tho' on the forge's brow little flames still fitfully play thro' the sable mound; And fitfully you still may see the grim smiths ranking round, All clad in leathern panoply, their broad hands only bare; Some rest upon their sledges here, some work the windlass there. eulogistic notice from the mighty editor The windlass strains the tackle chains, the black 66 'Christopher North." The verdict of Wilson has been affirmed by the public; for the ballad remains to the present day one of the most mound heaves below; 1 This and the following extracts are by permission of the author. |