THOMAS D'ARCY MCGEE. 647 was of a character to draw over the event an Imperial light, and mingle with his precious gore the tears of nations; to give him in addition to his many claims on universal interest-enthusiast, poet, orator, littérateur, journalist, historian, wit-that which in the case of eminent persons seems to appeal more powerfully than all others to the human heart-the charm of a fatal doom in an unselfish generous cause; to give him moreover, in the eye and heart of all Canada, the character of a proto-martyr for her national life. woman. Thomas D'Arcy McGee was born at Carlingford, County Louth, on the 13th of April, 1825. His father, Mr. James McGee, was in the Coast Guard service. His mother, Dorcas Catherine, who was the daughter of Mr. Morgan, a Dublin bookseller, was an educated His father excepted, all the men of his family on both sides had belonged to the United Irishmen, and McGee in his childhood not only drank in poetry from the grand and lovely scenery of the Rosstrevor coast, but imbibed national aspirations which, at that time, were only too natural for those of his class and creed. When he was eight years old the family removed to Wexford, where the elder McGee had received a more lucrative appointment from that Government, his son was to seek to overturn. His mother, a good musician and singer, loved the sweet old Gaelic melodies which, in the writings of Moore and Burns, have added so much imperishable wealth to English literature; she was also of a devout spirit; and her love for Gaelic song, her enthusiasm for Ireland, her religious sentiment, she transmitted to her favourite child; even as Lord Lytton's mother gave her son his passion for literature; Moore's mother, her diminutive prodigy, his social grace and wit; John Ramsay's mother, her fearless Scotch lad, his racy character and pregnant tongue; Napoleon's motherthe old lioness-her little Buonaparte, his restless nature and Imperial will; Macaulay's mother, her at first unwilling scholar, his all but unrivalled yearning towards books; Goethe's mother, her mighty boy, his free nature and lyric heart. The mother makes us most. She holds all the planet in her palm. Her shaping love, her tireless cares are ever around her offspring. The father engaged in business or study is comparatively seldom seen, but the mother is ever and "all there." The circle of her influence is around her children, an abiding protection, a ceaseless spell. She either dresses or superintends their dressing. It is with her they take their earliest walk. It is her voice soothes them in pain, her lips which kiss their ready tears away. She teaches them their manners, their lessons, their prayers. She tucks them in their little cot and sings them to sleep; she is their guide, their refuge, their play-fellow "Low bended to their tiny level," and as their minds expand, she becomes their ideal of whatever is tender, and beautiful, and good. Thackeray may well say there is no woman like a mother. Her love is not earth-born; its noon is calm as heaven, and warm and bright, but with no sultry splendour; its impulses are no winged wavelets of fleeting seas; its flowers are not heart-stricken in their bloom; and when life's red leaves are blown in later Autumn's blast, they shed abroad on the else wholly wintry scene, unfading beauty and immortal fragrance. To McGee, though he lost his mother early, her memory was throughout a chequered life, a star of guidance and inspiration. When only seventeen, he determined to emigrate to America, and made his way to his aunt in Providence, R. I., whence he went to Boston, just at the time the "Repeal Movement" was at its height amongst the Irish population of that city. He arrived in the Athens of America in June, 1842. When the 4th of July came round, his imagination was fired by the general jubilation, and he addressed the people, enchaining their attention and stirring their hearts with the skill of a born orator. A day or two afterward, the young exile was offered a situation on the Boston Pilot, of which, some two years later, he became editor. His speeches, his lectures, his writing, attracted the attention of O'Connell, and he was invited to take a leading position on the editorial staff of the Dublin Freeman's Journal. Three years after he had left his home, an unknown adventurous boy, he returned, having won reputation and fame, to be a colleague of O'Connell. He was acting as Parliamentary correspondent-an office in which so many statesmen have learned their craft--when the split occurred in the Repeal party, and he cancelled his engagement, and hurried over MCGEE ESCAPES TO AMERICA. 649 to Dublin to assist Charles Gavan Duffy in editing the Nation. The "rising" in Ireland having signally failed, McGee crossed over to Derry from Scotland, where he had been enlisting active sympathy for the " cause." At Derry he found his young wife my Molly," as he used in after years to call her-and after an affecting parting, disguised as a priest, he sailed for the United States. He immediately started the New York Nation, a journal which was a great success, until he attacked the Irish Roman Catholic clergy for the part they had played in the '48 business. This led to a controversy with Bishop Hughes, from which the Nation never recovered, and McGee, therefore, determined to stop the paper, and removed to Boston where he commenced the publication of the American Celt, which, during the first two years, breathed "revolutionary ardour." But about the year 1852, a revolution took place in the mind of the editor, and in that year he addressed a letter to a friend-Thomas Francis Meagher-in which he denounced "the recent conspiracy against the peace and existence of Christendom." Rarely has such a summersault been made. He declared that he had discovered his ignorance; that in Ireland they had not studied principles; that he had found out his superficiality; that he could really do no more than string sentences together; that he had to look to it-he had a soul! The production is a most singular one, in which in transcendental language, he registers the fact that he had cast the slough of rebellion; that he had passed from a Republican to a Monarchist, from an ardent Liberal to a quietist Conservative, from holding that politics are independent of the Church, to subjecting to it the whole conduct of life, public and private. Such a wholesale and almost instantaneous revolution was as open to cynical comment as the conduct of a mourning bride, who suddenly throws off her crape and looks of woe, to become the gayest of young widows; and his old friends of revolutionary days assailed him with traditional vehemence and congenial bitterness. This ultimately led to his gladly accepting an invitation from leading Roman Catholic Irishmen to come to Canada. A man of extraordinary versatility and great power of fitful, hardly of sustained labour-the one gift which is indispensable to a man determined not to be the tool of others-he found time while editing the Celt to lecture and compose poems. All his life he was writing poetry. He was a pleasing, but not a great poet; he had mastered the accomplishment of verse; the energy and faculty divine was not around him like storm, was not in his heart like fire; and his song is interesting mainly because in other spheres he proved himself a great man. They display an intense love of country, and occasionally great felicity, as when he says: "All Europe shakes from shore to shore ; The Jews bid for her crowns; Democracy with sullen roar, Affrights her feudal towns." Mr. Disraeli had probably read McGee's poems before he described Ireland as surrounded by a melancholy ocean. In the first of the "Three sonnets of St. Patrick's Day," Ireland, before the introduction of Christianity, is beautifully described as "Like Sinful Eve Hidden amid the thickest Eden grove, Our island-mother knew not of her hope! A sea of foliage fill'd the eagle's eye A sea within a sea-one wave-wash'd wood, Save when some breezy mountain, bare and brown, Rose 'mid the verdant desert to the skies!" The following verse in "The Heart's Resting Place" is not unworthy of Tennyson, while it shows his love of country: "Where'er I turn'd, some emblem still Roused consciousness upon my track; Some wild bird's whistle call'd me back; Between its white, cold wings of woe; Oh! if I had but wings like these, Where my peace went I too would go." He had great plans and great ideas. He contemplated an epic, to be styled "The Emigrants." But people who have to earn their bread from day to day cannot write epics, and in one poem he seems to express disappointment at the reception he met with in the United States. In Montreal he started the New Era, and ranging himself in opposition, he was returned, as we have seen, to Parliament for FOLEY. HOGAN. MCGEE. 651 one of the Divisions of Montreal at the General Election in 1858. He was, from the moment he entered the House, stamped as the ablest speaker in it, though he did not at first catch its ear, and he brought to discussion a wit of rare readiness and brilliancy, and language rich with the flavour of wide reading and literary feeling. Foley opposed the Government with an invective which was described by favourable critics as withering. Hogan, who had devoted his great literary talents to placing Mr. John A. Macdonald, when he was a young politician, above the other Conservative leaders, a position to which his talents entitled him, also swelled the volume of attack; but undoubtedly the sharpest and most imperial wit now confronting Ministers was D'Arcy McGee's. In those days, if we may believe Mr. Taylor-writing, however, as it seems to me, not from a purely literary standpoint, but from one adopted as much with an eye to passing party considerations as to that of abiding historical truth-D'Arcy McGee at first gave the impression that he would sacrifice everything to a laugh, and that he could speak but not reason. In his first speech his witty points were calculated to do as much harm to his adversaries as the sterner artillery of reason. One of his darts has been attributed to Hogan. Mr. Cayley, the Inspector-General, had been defeated in the Counties of Huron and Bruce. One of the electioneering cards he had played was of doubtful taste. He presented to several Orange Lodges beautifully bound copies of the Sacred Scriptures. McGee, alluding to this, said he perceived with that degree of gratification a mere worldling might be expected to feel in such subjects, that the Inspector-General had presented to several associations in the Counties of Huron and Bruce copies of the Sacred Scriptures. The electors appeared to have learned thence the lesson of retributive justice, for although they accepted the Gospel they rejected the missionary. Though the Opposition was so strong in Upper Canada, Ministers held their seats. The question of representation by population, without regard to the dividing line between Upper and Lower Canada, was argued, but only to be negatived. Parliament had voted $900,000 for the erection of public buildings at such place as Her Majesty might select for the capital. She |