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SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY

(1816-)

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IR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY was born at Monaghan, Ireland, April 12th, 1816, and educated at the Monaghan Public School and the "Belfast Institution." In 1842 he threw himself with ardor into the movement inaugurated by O'Connell, whom he supported in the Nation, a newspaper founded by him and published in Dublin. He was prosecuted in 1843 with O'Connell, and again in 1848. The charge in 1848 was treason felony," but after an imprisonment of ten months he was released. He had founded the Irish Confederation of 1846 and the Tenant League; but in 1856, despairing of accomplishing anything for Ireland, he resigned his place in parliament and went to Australia, where in 1871 he became Prime Minister. In 1880 he returned to Europe and took up his residence at Nice. Among his miscellaneous works are "The Ballad Poetry of Ireland,» «Conversations with Carlyle," "Bird's-Eye View of Irish History," and "Life in Two Hemispheres."

IN

A DISPUTE WITH CARLYLE

N ALL our intercourse for more than a generation I had only one quarrel with Carlyle, which occurred about this time, and I wish to record it, because, in my opinion, he behaved generously and even magnanimously. Commenting on some transaction of the day, I spoke with indignation of the treatment of Ireland by her stronger sister. Carlyle replied that if he must say the whole truth, it was his opinion that Ireland had brought all her misfortunes on herself. She had committed a great sin in refusing and resisting the Reformation. In England, and especially in Scotland, certain men who had grown altogether intolerant of the condition of the world arose and swore that this thing should not continue, though the earth and the devil united to uphold it; and their vehement protest was heard by the whole universe, and whatever had been done for human liberty from that time forth, in the English Commonwealth, in the French Revolution, and the like, was the product of this protest.

It was a great sin for nations to darken their eyes against light like this, and Ireland, which had persistently done so, was punished accordingly. It was hard to say how far England was blamable in trying by trenchant laws to compel her into the right course, till in later times it was found the attempt was wholly useless, and then properly given up. He found, and any one might see who looked into the matter a little, that countries had prospered or fallen into helpless ruin in exact proportion as they had helped or resisted this message. The most peaceful, hopeful nations in the world just now were the descendants of the men who had said, "Away with all your trash; we will believe in none of it; we scorn your threats of damnation; on the whole we prefer going down to hell with a true story in our mouths to gaining heaven by any holy legerdemain.” Ireland refused to believe and must take the consequences, one of which, he would venture to point out, was a population preternaturally ignorant and lazy.

I was very angry, and I replied vehemently that the upshot of his homily was that Ireland was rightly trampled upon, and plundered for three centuries, for not believing in the Thirty-nine Articles; but did he believe in a tittle of them himself? If he did believe them, what was the meaning of his exhortations to get rid of Hebrew old clothes, and put off Hebrew spectacles? If he did not believe them, it seemed to me that he might, on his own showing, be trampled upon, and robbed as properly as Ireland for rejecting what he called the manifest truth. Queen Elizabeth, or her father, or any of the Englishmen or Scotchmen who rose for the deliverance of the world, and so forth, would have made as short work of him as they did of popish recusants. Ireland was ignorant, he said, but did he take the trouble of considering that for three generations to seek education was an offense strictly prohibited and punished by law. Down to the time of the Reform Act, and the coming into power of the Reformers, the only education tendered to the Irish people was mixed with the soot of hypocrisy and profanation. When I was a boy, in search of education, there was not in a whole province, where the successors of these English and Scotch prophets had had their own way, a single school for Catholic boys above the condition of a Poor School. My guardian had to determine whether I should do without education, or seek it in a Protestant school, where I was regarded as an intruder,- not an agreeable

experiment in the province of Ulster, I could assure him. This was what I, for my part, owed to these missionaries of light and civilization. The Irish people were lazy, he said, taking no account of the fact that the fruits of their labor were not protected by law, but left a prey to their landlords, who plundered them without shame or mercy. Peasants were not industrious, under such conditions, nor would philosophers be for that matter I fancied. If the people of Ireland found the doctrines of the Reformation incredible three hundred years ago, why were they not as well entitled to reject them then as he was to reject them to-day? In my opinion they were better entitled. A nation which had been the school of the West, a people who had sent missionaries throughout Europe to win barbarous races to Christianity, who interpreted in its obvious sense God's promise to be always with his Church, suddenly heard that a king of unbridled and unlawful passions undertook to modify the laws of God for his own convenience, and that his ministers and courtiers were bribed into acquiescence by the plunder of monasteries and churches: what wonder that they declared that they would die rather than be partners in such a transaction. It might be worth remembering that the pretensions of Anne Boleyn's husband to found a new religion seemed as absurd and profane to these Irishmen as the similar pretensions of Joe Smith seemed to all of us at present. After all they had endured, the people of Ireland might compare with any in the world for the only virtues they were permitted to cultivate: piety, chastity, simplicity, hospitality to the stranger, fidelity to friends, and the magnanimity of self-sacrifice for truth and justice. When we were touring in Ireland together twenty years before, with the phenomena under our eyes, he himself declared that after a trial of three centuries there was more vitality in Catholicism than in this saving light to which the people had blinded their eyes..

Mrs. Carlyle and John Forster, who were present, looked at each other in consternation, as if a catastrophe were imminent; but Carlyle replied placidly, "That there was no great life, he apprehended, in either of these systems at present; men looked to something quite different to that for their guidance just now." I could not refrain from returning to the subject. Countries which had refused to relinquish their faith were less prosperous, he insisted, than those who placidly followed the royal Reformers in Germany and England. Perhaps they were; but worldly pros

perity was the last test I expected to hear him apply to the merits of a people. If this was to be a test, the Jews left the Reformers a long way in the rear.

When nations were habitually peaceful and prosperous, he replied, it might be inferred that they dealt honestly with the rest of mankind, for this was the necessary basis of any prosperity that was not altogether ephemeral; and, as conduct was the fruit of conviction, it might be further inferred, with perfect safety, that they had had honest teaching, which was the manifest fact in the cases he specified.

I was much heated, and I took myself off as soon as I could discreetly do so. The same evening I met Carlyle at dinner at John Forster's; I sat beside him and had a pleasant talk, and neither then nor at any future time did he resent my brusque criticism by the slightest sign of displeasure. This is a fact, I think, which a generous reader will recognize to be altogether incompatible with the recent estimate of Carlyle as a man of impatient temper and arrogant, overbearing self-will.

From "Reminiscences of Carlyle » 1892.

JOHN DUNCOMBE

(1729-1786)

OHN DUNCOMBE, Bishop of Peterborough, owes his place among classical English essayists chiefly to his contributions to the Connoisseur. His essays have a moral purpose, but it is well sugar-coated by his lively and entertaining style. He was born in London, September 29th, 1729. After graduating from Cambridge he was chosen Fellow of his college (Corpus Christi). His essays in the Connoisseur were among his earliest ventures in literature. His "Historical Description of Canterbury Cathedral" was published in 1772, and his "Antiquities of Richborough and Reculver» two years later. For twenty years he was one of the favorite contributors to the Gentleman's Magazine, and he edited the letters of Hughes and of John Boyle, Earl of Cork. He died January 19th, 1786.

Sir:

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CONCERNING ROUGE, WHIST, AND FEMALE BEAUTY

Facies non omnibus una,

Nec diversa tamen·

- Ovid.

"Where borrow'd tints bestow a lifeless grace,

None wear the same, yet none a different face."

TO MR. TOWN

T IS whimsical to observe the mistakes that we country gentlemen are led into at our first coming to town. We are induced to think, and indeed truly, that your fine ladies are composed of different materials from our rural ones; since, though they sleep all day and rake all night, they still remain as fresh and ruddy as a parson's daughter or a farmer's wife. At other times we are apt to wonder that such delicate creatures as they appear should yet be so much proof against cold as to look as rosy in January as in June, and even in the sharpest weather to be very unwilling to approach the fire. I was at a loss to account for this unalterable hue of their complexions, but I soon

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