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.]

A LAY SERMON. Brother, do you love your brother?

Brother, are you all you seem? Do you live for more than living?

Has your Life a law and scheme? Are you prompt to bear its duties,

As a brave man may beseem?

Brother, shun the mist exhaling

From the fen of pride and doubt, Neither seek the house of bondage

Walling straitened souls about; Bats! who, from their narrow spy-hole, Cannot see a world without.

Anchor in no stagnant shallow

Trust the wide and wondrous sea, Where the tides are fresh for ever,

And the mighty currents free; There, perchance, oh! young Columbus, Your New World of truth may be. Favour will not make deserving

(Can the sunshine brighten clay?)

Than one right to yield,

Of the Island so proud and free!

Yet, scorn to cry on the days of old, when hearts were fresh and true,

If hearts be weak, oh! chiefly then the Missioned their work must do;

Nor wants our day its own fit way, the want is in

you and you;

For our God, who hath planted their home near his own,

Breath'd His spirit abroad upon fair Innishowen. Then praise to our Father for wild Innishowen, Where fiercely for ever the surges are thrown— Nor weather nor fortune a tempest hath blown Could shake the strong bosoms of brave Innish

owen.

dear Erin knew.

And with Brian's will,

And with Owen's skill,

And with glorious Grattan's love, He had freed us soon

But death darkened his noon, And he sits with the saints above.

Oh! could you live as Davis lived-kind Heaven be his bed!

With an eye to guide, and a hand to rule, and a calm and kingly head,

A type of their manhood so stately and strong-
On the weary for ever its tide is bestown,
So they share with the stranger in fair Innishowen.
God guard the kind homesteads of fair Innish-

owen,

Which manhood and virtue have chos'n for their

own;

Not long shall that nation in slavery groan, That rears the tall peasants of fair Innishowen.

Like that oak of St. Bride which nor Devil nor Dane,

soul of his land was fed,

No need to cry on the days of old that your holiest

hope be sped.

Then scorn to pray

For a by-past day

The whine of the sightless dumb!
To the true and wise

Let a king arise,
And a holier day is come!

INNISHOWEN.1

God bless the gray mountains of dark Donegal, God bless Royal Aileach, the pride of them all; For she sits evermore like a queen on her throne, And smiles on the valleys of Green Innishowen.

And fair are the valleys of Green Innishowen, And hardy the fishers that call them their own— A race that nor traitor nor coward have known Enjoy the fair valleys of Green Innishowen.

Oh! simple and bold are the bosoms they bear, Like the hills that with silence and nature they share;

1 Innishowen (pronounced Innishone) is a wild and picturesque district in the county Donegal, inhabited chiefly by the descendants of the Irish clans permitted to remain in Ulster after the plantation of James I. The native language, and the songs and legends of the country, are as universal as the people. One of the most familiar of these legends is, that a troop of Hugh O'Neill's horse lies in magic sleep in a cave under the hill of Aileach, where the princes of the country were formerly installed. These bold troopers only wait to have the spell removed to rush to the aid of their country; and a man (says the legend) who wandered accidentally into the cave, found

They have clung by the creed and the cause of

their own

Through the midnight of danger in true Innish

owen.

Then shout for the glories of old Innishowen, The stronghold that foemen have never o'erthrown

The soul and the spirit, the blood and the bone, That guard the green valleys of true Innishowen.

Nor purer of old was the tongue of the Gael, When the charging aboo made the foreigner quail; Than it gladdens the stranger in welcome's soft

tone,

In the home-loving cabins of kind Innishowen.

Oh! flourish, ye homesteads of kind Innishowen, Where seeds of a people's redemption are sown; Right soon shall the fruit of that sowing have grown,

To bless the kind homesteads of green Innish

owen.

When they tell us the tale of a spell-stricken band All entranced, with their bridles and broadswords in hand,

Who await but the word to give Erin her own, They can read you that riddle in proud Innish

owen.

them lying beside their horses, fully armed, and holding the bridles in their hands. One of them lifted his head, and asked, "Is the time come?" and when he received no answer for the intruder was too much frightened to reply-dropped back into his lethargy. Some of the old folk consider the story an allegory, and interpret it as they desire.-Edward Hayes.

2 The Couldah, or Culdaff, is the chief river in the Innishowen mountains.