manner on the spur of the moment, as it is put by the curious expression that is always applied to this case. There never was a more effective speaker than O'Connell. Can any of his speeches be read, except the one for Magee ?

The title taken by the clever Tory debater mentioned in the preceding paragraph was Cranbrook. It would not be hard to confound him with Lord Cranborne, whose family name the present deponent knoweth not. [Eldest son of the Marquis of Salisbury, and therefore a Cecil.]

The number of poets who have received the gift of faith, from James Crashaw to Coventry Patmore, is very remarkable. The last named was a true poet who in many ways seemed unlikely to be the obedient child of the Church that he was till the end. In one of his letters he says:

"I have got to be so fond of the Rosary that I mostly say it thrice, and generally with sensible advantage. So far from taking the thoughts and affections off God, this way of prayer seems to be the most natural and, as Nicolas says, the most delicate way of approaching Him."

The writer that he quotes is, no doubt, Auguste Nicolas, the French layman (was he not a lawyer?); who wrote many solid books in defence of the Catholic faith. His description of the Rosary seems to me to be a good answer to those Protestants who object to our spending so much time addressing one of God's human creatures when we could go directly to God by prayer. But we are not always in a fit mood for direct prayer to God. It is more natural, more delicate (to use the Frenchman's epithet) to approach God indirectly. All our prayers lead on in the end to Him; but it is not expedient always to travel directly by a bee line. "The longest way round is sometimes the shortest way home." Let us at least face in the right direction.

In the Jesuit Theological College, St. Beuno's, near St. Asaph, North Wales, some devotees of Cardinal Newman used to send the affectionate greetings of the community to the illustrious old man according as his birthday came round in his last years. The answer that he sent, on at least one of these occasions, has been put into print, I think, in the Month, but I am not sure

that it was the following which I write out for the printer from a pencilled copy taken by an Irish Jesuit who was at St. Beuno's at the time :

MY DEAR VERY REV. FATHer and Rev. FATHERS and Brothers,I am too deeply moved, or rather too much overcome by your letter to me of yesterday, my birthday, to be able to answer it properly. For such an answer I ought to be more collected than I can be just now.

If I were not writing to Religious, it would be affectation in me, and want of taste, to say what is the real truth that at the moment I cannot address to you the thanks due to you for your most loving words, for I am full of the thought of the goodness of God who has led you to send them. Misericordias Domini in aeternum cantabo.

Do you in your charity, my dear friends, pray for me, that I, an old man, may not fail Him who has never failed me; that I may not by my wilfulness and ingratitude lose His Divine Presence, His sovereign protection, His love; and that, having been carried on by His undeserved mercy almost to the brink of Eternity, I may be carried on safely into it. Your humble and affectionate servant in Xt,

J. H. N.

GOOD THINGS WELL SAID

I. Sorrow is the atmosphere which ripens hearts for Heaven. -Father F. W. Faber.

2. Nothing, Lord! is lost to him who hath not lost Thy grace. The same.

3. It is an immense mercy of God to allow anyone to do the least thing which brings souls nearer to Him.-The same.

4. Many a one blames another for doing what he himself would have done in his place.-Father Tilmann Pesch, S.J.

5. He whose faults are most apparent is not always the worst. The clearer the crystal the plainer the flaw.—The same.

6. If you want to convince anyone of error, first discover his point of view. Make the most of such truth as there is in it, and then put the other side before him.-The same.

7. All that I think, all that I hope, all that I write, all that I live for, is based upon the divinity of Jesus Christ, the central joy of my poor, wayward life.-Gladstone.

8. They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts.-Sir Philip Sidney.

9. A diversity of interests, though it adds charm to a man's personality, tends to weaken him.-Lord Fisher.

IRREGULAR ODE BY A GRATEFUL

DYSPEPTIC

Hovis,

By Jove, is

An excellent comestible,
Quite easily digestible,
And in flavour

And savour

Not at all detestable.

This last expression is a mere meiosis,

Which means much more than its wording discloses. It means here that Hovis in taste is pleasant.

Time was when its present

Grateful poet laureate,

Whenever he drank or he ate,

Ventured on every sort of bread;

But now, instead

Of this injudicious variety,

And yet without feeling the slightest satiety,
He chooses and chews no bread but Hovis,

And eschews all other kinds :

For he finds

That, as surely as Clovis

Was amongst all

The kings of Gaul

A sort of nominative of "Jovis,"

And as surely as bovis

Is of bos the genitive,

So surely do ingredients lenitive,

Digestive, eupeptic,

And eke antiseptic,

Commingle and combine.

Their properties fine

In this most palatable stuff

Which has now been be-rhymed enough.

M. R.

THE IRISH MONTHLY

JULY, 1910

THE LAST OF JOHN MITCHEL'S CHILDREN

O

By A. J. TASMAN

NE of the last few remaining links has been severed with probably the most brilliant period in the modern history of Ireland, when "a soul came into Erinn," the Young Ireland period from the foundation of The Nation in 1842, until its sun set in the disasters and gloom of '48. The intelligence of the death of Mary Mitchel Page, the last of John Mitchel's children, will be received with deep regret whereever her father's memory is honoured and preserved, and honest hearts still beat with sympathy for the sacrifices of a heroic patriot, and of his noble wife and children who shared, and supported him, in his exile, his trials and vicissitudes.

While the black shadow of the Famine-the most terrible in Europe since the Middle Ages-was creeping over the land, and multitudes of the people were soon sinking into death under their inevitable, inexorable doom,* and other multitudes were flying, as from a pestilence, to all the ends of the earth, Mary, the second daughter of John Mitchel, was born, on the 16th of August, 1846, at Heathfield, Upper Leeson Street, Dublin.

Unlike her elder sister, Henrietta, and her brothers, John and James, the events of that dreadful time of darkness and despair could not, of course, have made any impression upon the infant child-" Minnie," as she was always affectionately called in her home circle-and it was not until after years that she understood the agony through which her country had a kind of sacred wrath" had taken possession gone, and how " of a few devoted Irishmen, who had determined to face all

*Jail Journal, Introduction.

VOL. XXXVIII.-No. 445.

25

dangers, if only as a protest, to save their perishing people; how her father had thrown himself with all his soul into the struggle for freedom, and with the pen of genius, worthy of a Swift, was writing his wonderful articles in the Press to arouse his countrymen in their peril; how he had shown the way by which the people might be saved, and had told the Government that, so far as his influence could prevail, they should not perish; and how he had sacrificed almost all that a man can hold dear-home, country, associations-for what he believed to be right and just.

Courageous to the verge of rashness, when the hand of power fell upon him, John Mitchel was ready to accept all the responsibility for his words and acts, and having been arrested while sitting with his family at dinner at 8 Ontario Terrace, on the 13th of May, 1848, he was soon afterwards convicted and sentenced, as "a Felon," to be transported beyond the seas for the term of fourteen years.

From the cells of Newgate he was hurried away to the convict hulks at Bermuda, where he was kept in rigorous confinement for nearly a year. When orders came for his removal, it was thought that he was a dying man, and he was transported, first to the Cape of Good Hope, and next to the then penal colony of Van Diemen's Land, where he arrived on the 6th of April 1850.

Thomas Francis Meagher, then in durance vile, has described in beautiful and sympathetic language his friend's condition when first he met him after two years separation :

"Haggard and exhausted by his long stay at sea; torn and worried by the asthma, the cruelties of which were rendered excruciating, almost beyond endurance, by his detention in the hulk at Bermuda; oppressed with anxieties, ceaseless and relentless, respecting his wife, his children, the companions of his struggle, and his fate, and the country for whose example and inspiration he had offered himself up exultingly; half suffocated with the hot winds, the thick and clammy sea vapours, and the stagnant heat which beset and girdled him on the ocean, he was, in truth, a startling and heartrending spectacle to look upon, the evening I met him up here in this wilderness. When I saw him first, I thought that with him, at all events, the exile was for life. his bloodshot eyes, his pale and sunken cheek, his dry lips and damp hands-in the bent form, moreover, and the subdued, yet grating voice-it struck me I beheld the clear and terrible

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