Dan O'Connell. The time called for all the zeal and influence of Protestant England. Her Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, wrote to the Bishop of Durham against Papal aggression in sending Wiseman to England. 'I will not bate a jot of joy or hope so long as the glorious principles and the immortal martyrs of the Reformation shall be held in reverence by the great mass of a nation, which looks with contempt on the mummeries of superstition and with scorn at the laborious endeavours, which are now making to confine the intellect and enslave the soul' (A.D. 1850). The English Lord Chancellor, speaking at a Mansion House dinner (November 9, 1850), quoted, amidst thunders of applause, Shakespeare's lines :— Under out feet we'll stamp thy Cardinal's hat, The Bishop of London (1850) knew that the Catholic priesthood were 'emissaries of darkness'; and his brother of Bangor knew the Pope to be 'a foreign prince, insolent in his degradation,' and that 'Rome clings to her abominations,' 'the slough of Rome,' 'her claims are profane and blasphemous.' Ah! the pious zeal of those good men, loving their neighbours as themselves, so fair-minded, truthful, and tolerant. Some one thinks that this spirit was not general. Alas, it was almost universal. Hatred and fear of Rome made men mad. On Wednesday the effigies of His Holiness the Pope, Cardinal Wiseman, and twelve other bishops were completed. Friday evening, about 5 p.m., Castle Street, Salisbury, was so densely crowded that no one could pass to the upper part of it. Shortly after some hundreds of torches were lighted, which then exhibited a forest of heads. About half-past six His Holiness was brought out, amid the cheering of the populace. The procession being formed, proceeded in the following order: torchbearers, brass band playing The Rogue's March,' torchbearers, His Holiness in full pontificals, seated in a huge chair; torchbearers, bishops three abreast, torchbearers, Cardinal Wiseman, etc.. The procession went from the Cathedral Close, paraded the city and the effigies were taken to the Green Croft, where over a large number of faggots and barrels of tar a huge platform was erected of timber; the effigies were placed thereon, and a volley of rockets sent up. The band played the Doxology !!!], and deafening cheers followed. Hundreds of ... fireworks were then hurled at the effigies. Then followed the Morning Hymn [!!] and the National Anthem, in which thousands joined.1 Times have changed in England, and people in cathedral cities do not burn inanimate bishops on pyres, with bands playing and crowds firing rockets and singing the Doxology and the morning hymn. To attempt such amusement would be folly and worse than folly-bad form. But seventy years ago, mad, blind, bigotry was, for the masses, their daily bread. Earlier in the century things were far worse, both in Ireland and in England. In Ireland there had been the new reformation, originated by Lord Farnham and aided in hundreds of parishes throughout the land by bribes, agents, and much literature. In England the Catholic population was so small as to be negligible; but the hatred of Rome and Popes and Popery lived. When Newman and his thousands turned to the old faith, and when churches and schools and priests and nuns began to appear in English cities and towns, timid people cried, as did timid and rabid people long ago: Omnes credent in eum; et venient Romani, et tollent nostrum locum et gentem.' To save England from the Roman religion and to guard her from Catholic truth and faith was a mighty and, to many, a patriotic and praiseworthy work. The great pens of Kingsley, Froude, Palmer, Littledale, and others were freely used as weapons of offence and of defence. Hosts of hack writers, libellers and blasphemers were employed to stop the invasion of the forces of Catholicity; to cripple the efforts of those who tried to explain the doctrines of the Catholic faith, to prejudice the land against the faith of Bede and Becket, of Alfred and Anselm, to ridicule her doctrines, her practices, her prelates; and to scoff at the poor, ragged, naked creatures, who were bringing back to Christ the fair land of England. Ireland, the Irish poor, the Catholic Church in Ireland, priests, nuns, were themes for bigots. The Morning Chronicle (London), April 19, and May 8, 1836, show the English Attorney-General applying for a criminal information against the Churchman for 1 Newspaper extract, quoted in Ward's Life of Wiseman, p. 551. criminal libels, its printers, and vendors. This holy paper had libelled a new Carmelite convent in Darlington. It recognized in the convent a brothel for priests, and begged Parliament to inquire into the number of holy innocents born, whether same were murdered in infancy or matured to full age.1 The libels, it transpired, were written by parsons. The Protestant Journal (London) wrote, August, 1846 We wage relentless warfare against popery. . . . We shall never cease our warfare till it be accomplished, in the blight of every hope and in the ruin of every scheme that the enemies of Rome delight in; and when life shall wane, we shall bring our little ones to the altars of our common country and swear them as they value a blood-bought redemption—as they prize the inheritance of light and glory-as they cherish the weal of their native land as they love their happy homes and altars free-as they revere the ashes of their martyred fathers, who glorified God amid the fires-to resist the progress of popery to death; and in life and in death to grave upon every cherished altar, and to inscribe on every tomb, and to emblazon upon every banner, 'Delenda Roma! No Peace with Rome.' We will spare it neither in the camp nor in the hall-neither in the hovel nor in the palace wherever it shall, serpent-like, insinuate its gyry folds, it cannot but leave its slime behind it; and war, war, ceaseless and relentless war, we shall wage against it, whether it basks in the sunshine of a court, or interweaves itself among the gems of a sparkling coronet; whether it lurks in the councils of the great, or displays itself in the voices of the senate; whether it roams along the green and sunny fields and the villages of palmy and beautiful England, or riots among the burning passions of afflicted Ireland, still shall our warfare continue till either we or Rome shall be no more. Was the writer of this Macaulay-form stuff in earnest or play-acting? His and many similar effusions caused Irish apostles to think and to act. Could those British brooks and rills and springs and cascades of bigotry be united to form an immense energizing force? Could those kilowatts of bigotry be harnessed at ten thousand voltage and the current despatched to Ireland? Irishmen have poor commercial initiative, energy or staying power. They saw the mint and sent spies to spy, to speech, and to report on that holy, happy land of promise. (To be continued.] E. J. QUIGLEY. 1 The King v. Pickersley; The King. Wilson; The King v. Englefield. WHAT IS A WRITERS' WRITER ? FRAN BY PETER MCBRIEN RANCIS THOMPSON calls Edmund Spenser the poets' poet. You or I, or anybody who is wont to use one, can see the good and bad points of a table, but we feel that if a carpenter were brought in to judge it he would see things in it to which we were blind; while he would share our pleasure in the sight of its more obvious beauties, there are others which, whether we noticed them or not, would give him alone that special, delicate spinal quiver which is the prerogative of the fellowcraftsman. To call Francis Thompson a poet is not to be unduly dogmatic. He has, then, the right to bestow the title of the poets' poet. He bestows it on Spenser and on Coleridge. Why? What is there in their poetry that demands appreciation more imperiously from poets than from other men when the work of greater men does not do so? There is a newness of style and attitude. What kind of newness is this, and, increasing the amplitude of the question, is it a noticeable quality in the work of every writers' writer, whether prosateur or poet? Meredith is the first I saw the title given to, I think by Le Gallienne. Undoubtedly it is not the newness of mere novelty, which is a jejune and meretricious thing, leading nowhere, adopted-James Joyce is an instance of it-to gain notoriety by administering a shock to the groundlings. The newness of writers like Coleridge is a fecundating quality got from an as yet untried method of handling truth. It resembles a new variety of daffodil, which has been evolved after years and years of patient, loving industry by a gardener to whom a genuine horticulturist will cheerfully give as much as a hundred guineas for a single specimen. Thus the new and marvellously vivifying power of personification that is displayed to such purpose in the Faërie Queene reproduces itself in the poetry of Collins and of Shelley, while the style of Coleridge was, to quote the accurate metaphor of Francis Thompson, a fostering sun upon the work of Rossetti and of Coventry Patmore, citing this latter great singer in these words: 'I did not try to imitate his style. I can hardly explain how he influenced me: he was rather an ideal of perfect style than a model to imitate; but in some indescribable way he did influence my development more than any other poet.' In another way, and here we move into an easier ether, these two poets, Spenser and Coleridge, appeal more searchingly to writers than to others; it is in the subtlety of the emotions they describe and excite. In the Faërie Queene it is the aesthetic emotion, the emotion of pure beauty; in The Ancient Mariner it is mysticism, the emotion you feel when a corner of the curtain is lifted and your soul is transfused with a diviner atmosphere than that of earth. In both it is the effect of a style which is the very effluence of light. This perfection of style every writers' writer has. It appears now and then, at long intervals; pure, simple, inevitable, defying analysis, always strongly individual, never affected or precious, as a rule homely. It is like a substance that makes visible chemical rays. Its virtues are economy and grace. It is the style of the Latin poet Horace, of Cervantes, of Jane Austen, of Flaubert. Among Irish writers the only one I know that has it is Dora Sigerson. These lines of hers are a sample of it: they form the last stanza of The Four Children, whose subtitle is A Ballad of Good Intentions': In a far-off land on a lonely height The ease and economy of that paragraph are very thrilling, particularly when they are laden with the fruitage |