SE

LAST RELICS OF FATHER THOMAS BURKE, O.P.

EVERAL years ago I invested a very small piece of silver in the purchase of a large lithographed sheet purporting to give likenesses of “Ireland's Illustrious Sons," and evidently intended to adorn the walls of humble Irish homes. I counted them-exactly a score, beginning with Brian Boru, then Hugh O'Neill, Sarsfield, Goldsmith, and Edmund Burke, Curran and Grattan, Wolf Tone and Robert Emmet, Sheil, O'Connell, Father Mathew, Moore, Gerald Griffin, Thomas Davis, Smith O'Brien, John Mitchel, John Mac Hale, Archbishop of Tuam, and Father Thomas Burke. This was the selection of twenty illustrious Irishmen, made with a view to please the Irish heart. Not a bad choice at the time, but already there are some changes to be made. "It is not death alone, but time and death that canonise the patriot." Father Burke forestalled the canonisation of time and death; for, long before his death, his graceful Dominican habit appears among the heroic figures of his country's story between O'Connell and King Brian.

More than once since his death this periodical has contributed its tiny pebble towards the cairn that must be raised to the memory of the great Dominican; and it has vowed, that, as far as its modest influence goes, the good that he did shall not be "interred with his bones." This devotion to his fame procured for us the privilege of being entrusted with some relics of Father Burke-relics of so sacred and domestic a kind, that we feel ourselves justified in making only a very sparing use of them here. They are chiefly private letters to his nearest kindred.

It is not a little curious how many of the greatest canonised saints have excelled in letter-writing. You might expect them to be austere, self-contained, self-sufficing, not needing the friendly gossip of correspondence themselves, and averse to indulging others therewith. Xavier, for instance, during his marvellous career in the East-so far away from Rome and Lisbon, immensely farther, as regards our present point of view, that the most adventurous explorer can nowadays penetrate. One might have imagined that such a saint, with his few years for such a mission in those distant regions, would have cut himself off from all communication with Europe. Yet he is an ardent letter-writer and ardent letter-reader, begging again and again for more letters and for longer letters, and for all news, down to the names of the youngest novices of the Society, whom he knew he would never see on earth. So also the great Teresa, and many

* See "IRISH MONTHLY," vol. xi., pp. 458, 478, 565.

other saints. "Ah! your saints have cruel hearts." No, it is your sinners that have selfish, hard, cruel hearts. The saints have the kindest and tenderest of hearts-kinder and more tender in proportion as they become more like to Him who is "meek and humble of heart."

That Father Thomas Burke possessed the kind, affectionate heart that inspired the letters of those saints, might be abundantly proved from even the fragments of his correspondence in our possession. We may begin our scanty extracts by remarking that his handwriting might be referred to by the graphiologists in confirmation of their idea that character is indicated by handwriting. His is bold, clear, free, unaffected, each letter plainly and fully formed, and each word perfectly legible, with nothing of the unreadable eccentricity of genius

about it.

The light-hearted boy, so innocent in his gaiety, had in his seventeenth year made his choice of his lot for life, and had offered himself to the Order of Friars Preachers. His superiors sent him to Italy where he was placed in the novitiate at Perugia, over which a youthful Archbishop had just been placed by Gregory XVI., Joachim Pecci, who is now our Holy Father Leo XIII. The young Irish exile of course strove as often as he could to assuage the pangs of home sickness by writing long letters home, as lively and as affectionate as those written by Thomas Babington Macaulay to Hannah and Margaret. With one of his sisters he kept up a correspondence in Italian, and later on in French, in which language he was much less expert. Nearly all of these have been preserved by the jealous fidelity of affection. But since the opening paragraphs of this paper were written a different arrangement has been made about the publication of these relics of Father Burke, which relieves us of the responsibility of deciding how much might be confided to the general reader. Before transferring the deposit, however, we have ventured to transcribe textually a little note of consolation to a beloved young relative, dated " June 22, 1882." Tallaght,

"My darling, I am praying constantly for you, and all here are praying. Try to offer these sufferings to God with resignation, so as to draw from them all the rich treasure of merit. I have asked Him to give me your pains, as I could bear them better. I send you my own beads, and I will go down as soon as ever I can. May God strengthen

and relieve my darling."

To one who was not a relative he wrote thus when she was in

trouble:

"My dearest child, my heart is with you in your sorrow, though I cannot move, for I have been very ill for the last week and able to get up only for an hour or two each day. May God strengthen and comfort you all. You need not remind me to pray for your mother, although

VOL. XII., No. 131.

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I believe that her sweet innocent soul, sanctified by so much suffering and sorrow, is already with God. As you say, the loss is yours. I beg of you to take care of yourself now, and not to indulge in grieving after your mother."

In one of the pages which have been devoted in this Magazine to the memory of Father Burke, we deemed it our duty to preserve the eloquent tribute paid to his gifts and his goodness in a speech by Judge O'Hagan. We have kept carefully at hand ever since a copy of the Cork Herald of October 8th, 1883, for the purpose of making similar use of a speech delivered in Cork by Mr. Denny Lane. That is a name which will be new to some of our readers, but there are many who know off by heart the two exquisite ballads that Mr. Lane contributed to the "Spirit of The Nation," and wonder why he has not been heard of more since '48. Have his townsmen often heard from him such language as this:

"There is one point in his character with which shallow formalists found fault. I allude to the joyous spirit of Irish mirth which he showed in his hours of relaxation. I quite agree with what Monsignor Sheehan has said, that instead of taking away from his character as an ornament to the pulpit, it only showed the genuineness of his Irish nature. I recollect hearing that two gentlemen were walking one day in the neighbourhood of London, and as they passed the gate of a park, they looked in and saw a young boy astride upon a stick, performing that expedition which is known as 'riding a cock horse to Banbury Cross.' He was followed by three elderly men, also mounted on sticks and led into action by this young general. One of the spectators asked, 'Who are these three old fools?' 'Don't you know them,' said the other. 'These are Fox, Sheridan, and Burke.' Fox, one of the greatest statesmen that England ever knew; Sheridan, the greatest of our modern dramatists, and standing in the first rank of orators; and Burke, the statesman, orator, and philosopher, who was judged by Mackintosh, along with Socrates and Cicero, to have been one of the three greatest minds the world ever produced. If these three men could follow that young boy, Burke's son, as he rode on his stick across the lawn, surely Father Burke may be allowed now and again to indulge his outrageous spirits, and to let them burst forth like boisterous boys let loose from school. Unfortunately, I had but few opportunities of meeting him in private, but when we spoke together it was often on serious topics, and nothing struck me more than the breadth of his intellect. On one occasion our conversation turned upon some of the general theories of modern sciencetheories in which some persons feared to find danger to faith. The same dread was at one time entertained regarding the theories of Kepler and Copernicus. Yet, what is the result? The laws which they discovered have raised greatly our reverent wonder at the struc

ture of the universe, and of the unerring hand that guides the planets in their path. When we know that a ray of light may in a second travel eight times around our globe, with a speed a hundredfold outstripping the lightning, and that some of the stars are so distant that it may take centuries for their light to reach us, this knowledge, by pushing back the boundaries of visible space, enlarges our idea of the grandeur of creation, and of the insignificance of the material man, so that it has now become a proverb 'the undevout astronomer is mad.' So the modern theories of the indestructibility of matter and of force teach a new analogy of religion, and point to the necessary immortality of the soul. And, again, the generalisations regarding matter and motion and life, if they be true, only raise within us a higher appreciation of the grandeur, simplicity, and the harmony of those laws which the Creator has enacted for the government of the universe. From such a point did Father Burke regard the progress of scientific truth, feeling assured that every new discovery that was really true would be but another evidence of the power and goodness of the Creator.

"Next, he was essentially an Irishman-Irish as intensely, as purely as the native music he loved so much. The same variety, the same plasticity marked his character. At one time joyous, wild, and buoyant as a planxty, at another grave and measured as the tread of men marching to battle; at another time instinct with that tender melancholy which has sprung from the sad history of our fatherland, which is so typical of our finest music, and often is interwoven as a sombre thread into the sparkling texture of our brilliant strains. And I even think he felt this analogy himself, for I never heard anything from his lips more beautiful than his recitation of that poem in which Moore has married to immortal verse one of our most touching airs in praise of native music. I had often read the poem with admiration, and often heard it sung by not unworthy voices, but never did I feel the full proportions of its beauty until I heard it read by Father Burke with a rhythm that was beyond all poetry, and a cadence that was more

than music.

"I have said that Father Burke was, of all things, an Irishman, and in nothing was he more so than in his voice and accent. Someone

said that an Irishman should carry his honour and his brogue unsullied to the grave. Father Burke did both. I believe it is the fashion

to deride our

brogue. I have heard two natives who had it meted out to them in full measure-Daniel O'Connell and Thomas Burke. In no other form of the language could I find a medium more perfectly adapted to sustain and reflect the full freight of thought that it bore upon its brimming tide. It seemed capable of all forms of expression, and for my part, if I could, I would not change it for the dialect of Lancashire, or Yorkshire, or even Somersetshire. No, I

would not barter it for the most accomplished drawl of a west-end drawingroom, or the cold, pedantic primness of Oxford or Cambridge. The metal may be vulgar, but it is genuine, and I would not gild it to an English tone-I would not electro-plate it with a foreign accent. In the hands of O'Connell and of Burke it was a weapon brilliant, strong, and flexible as a Toledo blade; brilliant enough to glitter in a pageant, strong enough to smite an enemy to the death, but withal so flexible that it might be wound like a girdle round the zone of some proud beauty. There are some men, and you have heard many of them, who from their mode of action seem to think that language is the master of thought and not its minister. They recite their tedious litanies of words, to which, I confess, I can rarely attach a meaning. I suppose they trust to the genius of their audience to attach some sense to what is in itself bereft of meaning. Far otherwise it was with Father Burke. He seemed to care little for the form his words took. As you listened, you felt that a stream of thought, beautiful and pure, came welling up from perennial sources within, from the deep reservoirs of his large heart and his bright intellect. As the thought rose unbidden to his lips, it formed itself to language not cast into any mould of art, but of itself spontaneously crystallized into forms of beauty, luminous as a crystal, many-hued as the light of a prism, pure and chaste as the 'icicle that hangs" on Dian's temple.' It is almost a pity that he was so careless of literary reputation. Posterity would have gained much i he had more carefully elaborated his sentences, and spent more of the labour of the file on the forms he created. But he was so earnest in his work that if our successors may complain that he was a spendthrift of his genius, we at least have gained by his unmeasured prodigality. The tone of reverence with which he spoke of sacred things, the compassion with which he yearned to help the needy, the fond entreaty with which he strove to win back the erring, the authority with which he pronounced the doctrines of the Church, were as various as the stops of a grand organ whose keys quivered beneath the touch of a master-hand.

"His voice was like all instruments,

Now like a lovely flute,

And now 'twas like an angel's song,
Which makes the heavens be mute.'

And then to this diapason of music was added a dignified and expressive action, every gesture dramatic-dramatic I mean in the higher sense. I mean when not alone the tongue and lips speak, but the eyes, the limbs, the frame itself, became so many translators of thought and ministers of language. So wonderful was his power in this way that I believe those who did not understand the language he spoke, could almost follow the colour of his thoughts as we can trace out the tint of the sea-weed beneath the wave of the ocean.