THE CELT.

with such, as mere assertion, but a long intercourse and a heartinterested deep observance of our countrymen, north, south, east and west have forced the sad conviction upon us-and thank God! with that conviction suggested a remedy.

It is nearly ten years ago since having sailed in and out of the magnificent harbour of Cork, and having feasted our eyes with its sweet waters and picturesque banks, we turned our thoughts from the glories of nature to the consideration of the names which Cork numbers amongst those that were, and are hers. It was easy to make most of them out, for we had stored them in memory, one only escaped us. We wished to stand beside the humble grave where reposed the mortal remains of one of the sweetest, the gentlest and the holiest of Ireland's gifted writers. We longed to bend in reverence over the ashes of Gerald Griffin, but the grave-yard of his interment had lapsed from our memory. We sought for information in our hotel, in sundry shops; and asked in vain. A gentleman suggested it might be in the Matthew burying-ground. We visited it. The caretaker knew of no such grave there or any where in Cork. At last we bethought us, he had been a Christian Brother. We were told the Christian Brothers had two convents in Cork, but our informant knew not to which Griffin had belonged, but a jarvey solved the difficulty by suggesting we should drive first south and then north, and that if it wasn't one sure it was the other; and it was his sapient advice which led us to the humble mound, with its humble and rudely graved headstone, where looking down upon the city, whose poor children he devoted his life to teach-the gifted Griffin lies in his mother earth.

Since then it has been our fortune to pass north, and standing upon the bank of that evil river where James and Ireland failed, we turned in sadness from the memory of that fatal fight, and asked our driver if he could take us to the convent where was preserved the head of that noble old martyr Plunkett. The fellow had seen some sixty summers and winters too. He knew everybody in Drogheda, he was master of William's Glen, thoroughly conversant with Donore and Duleek, knew more of Slane than he ought to know; but "the martyr, a dead head preserved in Drogheda." He had never heard of it. And when I came back to my hotel, even there all I could learn was, that there was some relic at St. Laurence O'Toole's convent, and I had better try there. And when at last my eyes rested on that sainted head and I bowed in its presence, I thought as I gazed upon the calm spirit expression that left its features all at rest, sweet and gentle as when in reply to the officious Chief Justice who urged him to have a Protestant Minister in his last moments, he replied, that there were clergymen in prison" and they will do my business very well, for they will do it according to the rites of our own church, which is the antient usage, they cannot do better, and I would not alter it now,”– the gentle irony of that "non;" or as when he made the solemn appeal, "and now, my lord, as I am a dead man to this world, and as I hope

for mercy in the other world, I was never guilty of any of the treasons laid to my charge." I thought if all Drogheda were assembled in front of the head of that sainted bishop, they would be the better of holy thoughts such as I felt crowd upon me then.

More recently in journeying over the rich valley lying between the town of Tipperary and the city of Limerick, in search of that spot where the gallant Sarsfield surprised King William's convoy and performed that feat of boldness now historic; I was once more struck with the grossness of popular ignorance; my driver, a Tipperary man born, and living till his hair whitened on his temples within a few miles of the very spot, had never heard of Ballynetty or Sarsfield. Peasants living upon the very ground, looking daily and hourly upon the rock where that castle once stood, were equally ignorant, and the only one peasant, who could point to it as a thing of any note, could only tell that in his boyhood he had heard that great battles had been fought thereabout, long, long time ago; but Sarsfield, his name was forgotten upon the very ground where he had risked all for Ireland.

Dare we hope to be an humble instrument in remedying this degrading and denationalising state of ignorance. Will our modest magazine find its way into the homes of the peasant and the artizan. Will true nationalists, genuine Irishmen, give it a direction and send it where it may sow some good sced, to yet be reaped in a better time and for some noble purpose.

C.

NAPOLEON'S APPRECIATION OF TALENT.

M. Arago details in his autobiography an incident highly characteristic of Napoleon the First's deep insight into character and his wary caution in reference to punishing men of ability for political opinions. It occurred while Francis Arago was a pupil in the Polytechnic school. The pupils had been somewhat refractory in reference to attempts made to obtain an expression of their opinion in favour of some of the political movements of the period. They had refused to congratulate the government on the discovery of Moreau's conspiracy, again, they refused to manifest approval of the legion of honor. "They knew well," says M. Arago, "that the cross given without enquiry and control, would be in most cases the recompense of charlatanism and not of true merit."

66

The transformation of the Consular into the Imperial government gave rise to very warm debates in the interior of the school. Many pupils refused to add their felicitations to the mean adulations of the constituted bodies. General Lacuée who was appointed governor of the school, reported the opposition to the Emperor. M. Lacuée, cried Napoleon, in the midst of a group of courtiers, who, applauded by

voice and gesture, "You cannot retain at the school those pupils who have shewn such ardent Republicanism: you will send them away." Then collecting himself, he added, "I will first know their names and their stages of promotion." Seeing the list the next day, he did not proceed further than the first name, which was the first in the artillery. "I do not drive away the first men from promotion," said he, "Ah! If they had been at the bottom of the list! M. Lacuée, leave them alone." Arago's Autobiography, p. 17.

In the foregoing extract, M. Arago refers to the lamentable ill use so constantly made in the distribution of honors intended for the gifted, the brave and the great. Too frequently influence unduly exercised, or meanness and servility cunningly displayed wins for mediocrity, sometimes for rascality, the honor rightfully belonging to true merit. Proud worth stands back, while flunkey toadyism presses in and wins. We remember reading that Selwyn, at the sale of the effects of the minister Mr. Pelham, remarked in reference to a dinner service of silver which the auctioneer was offering to the company, "How many toads have eaten off these plates !"—and Henri Beyle the French writer has bitterly remarked, "When I see a man strutting about in a room with a number of orders at his button hole, I involuntarily reckon up to the number of paltry actions, degrading submissions, and often of black treasons, that he must have accumulated to have received so many certificates of them."

ANECDOTES OF JOHN BANIM.

I remember well the first public occasion I ever saw John Banim. I was sitting in the Kilkenny citizens' club room, I was disturbed by a bustling movement, a heavy step was audible advancing up the stairs, it was John Banim's servant man carrying him from his carriage and bearing him up to the green baize-covered sofa allotted to him. in the best corner of the room. Members pulled their chairs aside, the fire was raked up into a better blaze, and men pressed officiously to bid him welcome. He was in the servant's arms, half reclining, half sitting up, his arms round the man's neck so that his fingers were locked upon his shoulders, his legs hung down helplessly; and his emaciated frame told the sad story of paralytic wasting; his long and thin visage was made sadder still by the deep scaring of small pock and by well defined traces of anxious and painful thoughts, but his eyes were most expressive, pale blue or gray, but large, prominent, broadly open, starting out of their sockets, they were full of meaning and spoke to you before his lips moved. There was an energy of manner, a fiery gesticulation about him when he warmed with his subject or became excited in narrating some anecdote or reciting some piece of his own poetry, which he did in a most impassioned manner,

and so as to impress himself with great power upon his auditory. His voice was deep and solemn, and his emphasis peculiarly impressive. Upon this occasion I heard him recite with deep pathos" Sogarth Aroon," and in a moment after heard him thunder out these lines written in reply to Wellington's threat, of re-conquering Ireland," The Brigand, let him come, let him come," which he delivered with great power and with an impressive fervour that shook his attenuated frame like so many electric shocks. At its conclusion, when the plaudits of a crowded room answered him, his pale face became fiery red and his eyes actually sparkled.

It was upon that occasion that he narrated two anecdotes of his sojourn in France, which he visited just after the Revolution of 1830, and which event appeared to have awaked all his sympathies and aroused the full enthusiasm of his exquisitely poetic nature.

General Lafayette, then an old man, had waited upon him-the hero who had figured in three revolutions. Banim complimented him on that national guard in which he took such pride, and spoke of it as a grand new thought or suggestion to do away with standing armies and make every citizen a soldier. "Sir," said Lafayette, "you as an Irishman may well refer to it with pride. We had the idea from you; the first national guard the world ever saw was the Irish Volunteers." "Oh," exclaimed Banim when relating the anecdote to his fellow townsmen, "it was the highest compliment ever paid to me as an Irishman." Then he told amongst other anecdotes of the three days' revolution, how an old Parisian friend of his had suspended in his parlour the musket he carried on that occasion, and with it a solitary cartridge remaining of the powder he had used at the barricades. "I asked him," said Banim, "to give me of that powder, thirty-two grains." "Thirty-two grains," said the Frenchman, "for what?" "Tosow one grain in every county in Ireland," replied Banim. "My God! I would," said the Frenchman, "if I thought they would grow!"

D. T.

THE SIGNERS OF THE DECLARATION OF AMERICAN

INDEPENDENCE.

Upon the second of August, 1776, fifty-seven bold and resolute men signed the charter of America's liberty. The names and memory of those men will live as long as history endures. Amongst them were a large number of Americans by birth, blended with the descendants of many European States. Of the total number, seven or just one-eighth of the entire, held Irish blood in their veins. Three of them were born in Ireland, and the other four were the sons of Irish fathers. And of those men, there was one, whose property risked by his signature would have made a sovereign's income.

An Irishman may justly feel proud that his countrymen so largely participated in that great event, and identified themselves unmistakeably in that movement, which was not rebellion, because it did not fail, but was glorious revolution because it did succeed. A rebellion of which the great Chatham said in his place in Parliament. "I hear it said that America is obstinate, America is almost in open rebellion. I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of ourselves."

The three Irishmen were George Taylor, James Smith, and Matthew Thornton. The four sons of Irishmen were Edward Rutledge, Thomas M. Kean, George Read and Charles Carroll. The last named died at nearly one hundred years of age, having outlived all the other fifty

six.

Some particulars of these seven men must be interesting to Irish

men.

1st. George Taylor, was the son of an Irish clergyman, he was born in Ireland in the year 1716. The immediate locality of his birth is unknown, he was brought up for the medical profession, and well educated, but abandoned physic and went out an adventurer to America. He reached that country with perfectly empty pockets, and had to resort to manual labour for his support at the iron works of Mr. Savage at Durham on the Delaware, where his occupation was to cast coals into the furnace while in blast, but he speedily mounted from such fearful labour into the counting house of his employer, and upon the death of Mr. Savage, he became the proprietor of the works by marrying his widow. He was now able to purchase an estate in the county of Northampton. In 1764 he was elected a member of the Provincial Assembly which met at Philadelphia, where he attracted attention as an active member of Committees, and an earnest worker of that stormy period.

The state into which his fortunes had cast him, was at that time remarkable for inclining more than any other to British union. For six years he continued a member of the Assembly, when his fortune becoming injured, he returned to Durham, to repair it. In 1775 he was again elected a member of the provincial assembly in Pensylvania. Matters were becoming hourly more serious, and Pensylvania felt that the crisis of liberty was arriving. The assembly therefore instructed their delegates to the national convention in the following touching and solemn words.

"The happiness of these colonies, has, during the whole course of this fatal controversy, been our first wish. Their reconciliation with Great Britain our next, ardently have we prayed for both. But if we must renounce the one for the other, we humbly trust in the mercies of the supreme governor of the Universe, that we shall not stand condemned before his throne, if our choice is determined by that