Sad is my fate,' said the heart-broken stranger, Oh! if St. Patrick were now to visit Ireland, what changes could not the historian recount to him since he first set his Apostolic foot on the soil? For many centuries after he died, Ireland enjoyed a profound peace and a national prosperity. While, on the fall of the Roman Empire, most of the kingdoms of Europe rose up in vindication of their national rights, and all the neighboring nations were filled with the disastrous accompaniments and results of war, Ireland cultivated the arts and sciences, and practised the sublime precepts of the Gospel to perfection. She was the seminary where Europe was then educated, and whatever progress has been made by them in letters and religion, they must own that they lighted the torch of Science and Faith at the sacred fires which burned on the altars of Ireland. No doubt, a storm has in later days been evoked from the abyss by the emissaries of Satan against this ancient creed. It has burst over Ireland with an awful violence, and in its devastating passage over our fine country it has blown down the venerable institutions of past ages; it has rent the monarch oak which crowned the forest with its lofty majesty, but the trunk and the roots were too strong to be torn by the rage of the hurricane; and here we are, the new growth of the flourishing branches sprung from the old stock, and likely to rise higher, and to spread farther than the parent tres, which, three centuries ago, reached to the skies over Ireland. In fact, Catholicity, if I may so speak, is almost natural to an Irishman. He is, as it were, a Christian before he is baptized; he inherits faith by a kind of freehold grace which St. Patrick has bequeathed to the most remote posterity of Ireland. You can efface every feeling from his heart but Catholicity; you can crush out every sentiment from his mind but the love of his altars; you may break him into pieces, and crush him into dust, but like the diamond in fragments, faith shines in him to the last. The smallest particle of the Irish nature - the poorest, the most abandoned of Ireland's sons, reveals the sparkling inheritance as well as the most noble and lordly possessor; in fact, the darkness of the night is more favorable for seeing the native light of the fragment, than the golden hours of noonday sunshine; and thus the midnight of national trial is the best time to behold the effulgence of Ireland's creed, and to test the essential splendor of her national faith. Or, as our own bard has it, "The gem may be broke by many a stroke, But nothing can cloud its native ray, Each fragment will cast a light to the last; And thus Erin, my country, though broken thou art, A spirit that breathes through each suffering part, No doubt, you have heard the amusing fact of the Irish in a certain town in England, when, in 1850, they proceeded there to burn the Blessed Virgin in effigy. When all was ready for the idolatrous conflagration, the Irish were seen collecting in patches of tens and twenties, in the square where the fagots were prepared. The police observed that each Irishman had a short, thick stick thrust up the sleeve of his jacket; and on asking what use they intended to make of these dangerous weapons in the present instance, one of the Irish said "Why then, your honor, we were afraid you might not have wood enough to burn the Virgin out and out, and we brought these few kippcens, asthore, to keep up the blaze.” It is unnecessary to say that the Virgin was not burned on that day; and the Irish on returning home, were heard saying to each other na bocklish, avick. - As your chairman has given me credit for having some knowledge of astronomy, I must take the liberty of informing the people of Scotland that the length of the day and night in Ireland is twentyfour hours, and that it was twelve o'clock noon, in our colonies in the east, at about four o'clock this morning in Ireland; and again, that about this present hour, while we are filling our sparkling glasses, the Irish are just going to Mass, with the shamrocks in their hats, at twelve o'clock in America. The Irish soldier, therefore, on this morning, at four o'clock, saluted the glorious memory of St. Patrick at the mouth of the Ganges; he began the shout in the east as the sun culminated over Pekin, and as the day advanced, and that shout rolled along the foot of Himalaya, it swept across the Indus, passed over the track of Alexander the Great, was heard in ancient Byzantium, disturbed the slumber of the sleeping brave in the gray field of Marathon, reverberated along the Seven Hills of Rome, and almost awoke, about ten o'clock this morning, old Romulus on the banks of the Tiber. Owing to the mysterious destinies of Ireland and of our scattered race, there is not a spot, from the Yellow Sea to the Pillars of Hercules, from Garryowen to Melbourne, in which some merry Irishman does not on this day fix the green shamrock in his cap, and, with overflowing soul and wild transports of native joy, sing the inspiring airs of his country, and chant aloud the magical tune of "St. Patrick's Day in the morning." But the commemorating voice of this day through primæval Asia and old Europe is weak in comparison to the power it attains when it has crossed the Atlantic, and reached the friendly, crowded shores of young and vigorous Amer ica. There many a fond Irish heart welcomes the well-knowi cheers, as they burst in the patriot skies of Bunker's Hill: there the shout assumes the majesty of thunder as it rolls in peals, again and again repeated, over the boundless prairies that skirt the Mississippi, and is echoed and re-echoed along the chiselled Alleghanies, until it dies away into silence about two o'clock to-night, as it reechoes the placid boundless bosom of the Pacific. Thus round and round the globe is the voice of Ireland this day heard by all mankind - thus her scattered and fated children sing the wild song of their native land to the stranger -- thus they pour forth the patriot strains of their beloved country to the idolatrous Tartar, to the polished European, and the savage Indian; thus they stretch their united hands to each other on this day, and round the entire world they form a girdle of national love and patriotism, which reaches from the east to the west, and we couple the north and the south poles within the wide circle of our exiled but glorious affec tions. He proceeded - Listen for a moment, about twelve o'cloc to-night, and you will hear our own harp pour forth its Irish, plain tive voice from New York, across the broad enraptured waters of th Atlantic. Even now, if you will be quiet, you can audibly distin.guish the shout of joy raised by seven millions of our blood, our race, and our Faith, along the free shores of glorious, hospitable America. Oh! America, how I love your green fields, because they are now the resting-place of the wandering children of our country! I worship your lofty mountains and your rich valleys, because they afford an asylum and a barrier against the storms of adversity, which have swept away and withered the ancient homesteads of Ire land. I bless your majestic rivers, your magnificent lakes, because I behold the friendly canvas of your marine spread on their joyous waters, conveying my forlorn countrymen to a peaceful and plentiful home. Oh! America, I could die for your generous people, because they have opened their arms to welcome the ejected sons of St. Patrick!I long to stand in the presence of the patriot, the accomplished Mrs. Tyler, and the incomparable ladies of America, that I may offer to them the deep homage of my grateful heartthat I may present to them the respect and the enthusiasm of the people of Ireland, for the withering chastisement they have inflicted on the sainted cruelty of the Duchess of Sutherland, and for the grateful dignity with which they have exposed the well-meaning hypocrisy of her noble committee. And I long to behold the country where the broken heart of Ireland is bound for, her daughters protected, her sons adopted: where conscience is free, where religion is not hypocrisy, where liberty is a reality, and where the Gospel is a holy profession of Divine love, and not a profligate trade of national vengeance. How long, O Lord, wilt Thou hold Thy omnipotent scourge over Ireland, the most faithful nation of all the kingdoms that possess the Divine revelations from Heaven? But till Providence is pleased to staunch the flowing blood of Ireland, and to heal the wound, we, her persecuted sons, are bound to raise the cry of horror against our relentless oppressors; to keep up through each coming year and each century, the watchword of our sires for freedom, till the happy day of our deliverance. It is glorious to struggle for the redemption of one's country; it is base tamely to submit to the tyrant's frown-liberty, and then death, is preferable to slavery and life. Oh! eternal liberty-inheritance of the soul! "Better to bleed for an age at thy shrine, Beloved fellow-countrymen, of late years I have had more opportunities of seeing the sufferings of the Irish than many others I meet them at the seaport towns; I hear their complaints; I am familiar with their hard trials, and feel intensely their dire fate; and, in the midst of all their misfortunes, they never lose the native affections of their warm Irish hearts. About the year 1849 I went on board an emigrant ship at the custom-house in Dublin in order to see the accommodation of the poor emigrants. While walking on the deck, I saw a decent poor man from the County Meath, with the ugliest dog I ever beheld in his arms. He seemed to be keeping up a kind of private conversation with this dog, and occasionally he kissed him so affectionately, that I was led to speak to him, and made some inquiry about him. He told me that the dog's name was Brandy, that he and his mother were in his family for several years, and that he was the same age as his youngest child. He continued to say, that on the day he was ejected, and his house thrown down, Brandy's house was thrown down too; in fact, that the poor dog was exterminated as well as himself. That he took pity on him, brought him to Dublin, paid fifteen shillings for his passage to America, and that he would support him with his children as long as he lived. While we were speaking, the dog began to bark; on which I inquired what he was barking at. "Oh! sir," said he, "he knows we are talking about the andlord. He knows his name as well as I do, and the creature always cries and roars when he hears his name mentioned." Oh, many a trial the poor Irish have endured during the last six years! Many a volume could be filled with the cruel persecution of the faithful Irish. From Galway to America, the track of the ship is marked by the whitened bones of the murdered Irish that lie along the bottom of the abysses of the moaning ocean. And yet those that have reached the friendly shore still drag a heavy chain which binds them to their native land; still they long to see their own beloved hills, and lay their bones with the ancient dead of their Faith and their kindred. And if death summons them beyond the Mississippi, or amidst the snows of Canada, or the pestilence of Mexico, they turn their fading eyes towards the day-star that rises over Ireland, and their last prayer is offered to Heaven for the Derty of their country - the last sigh to God is made for the freedom of her altars. |