prison, where he used to meet his fellow conspirators while organizing
the insurrection of the United Irishmen in 1803. Emmet was a brilliant,
eager boy, only twenty-four, and had been expelled from the University
of Dublin for sympathy with the revolution of 1798. He went to Paris,
remained there for a while until things had quieted down, and then
returned to Dublin, where he conceived a rash project to seize the
castle and the fort. The authorities were taken entirely by surprise,
but the country contingent which had been promised to support him failed
to arrive, and Emmet, with less than a hundred men, armed with
pikes--simply spearheads mounted on the ends of poles--marched against
the castle and, of course, were immediately overcome. Many of his
followers, who fled to their homes, were killed at their own doors, and
Emmet became a fugitive.
Robert Emmet was born in Dublin in 1778 and was a playmate and
schoolfellow of Thomas Moore, the poet. His brother, Thomas Addis Emmet,
born in 1764, was involved in the revolution of 1798 and fled to
America, where he became eminent at the bar of New York, serving at one
time as attorney-general of that State. He left several sons and
grandsons.
When Robert Emmet escaped, after the failure of his foolish attack upon
the castle, he took refuge among friends in the Wicklow Hills, south of
Dublin, to await an opportunity to cross over to France. Against their
protests he went at night to say good-by to his sweetheart, Sarah
Curran, daughter of the famous advocate, was arrested and tried for high
treason. He conducted his own defense with extraordinary ability. His
closing speech stands as one of the greatest examples of eloquence in
the English language. He was condemned to death and hanged outside of
St. Catherine's Church, upon the spot where Lord Kilwarden, an eminent
judge of the highest integrity, was killed by some of Emmet's men while
returning with his nephew and daughter from a visit to the country.
Emmet, in his farewell speech, asked that his epitaph should not be
written until Ireland was free, and that undoubtedly suggested the
popular belief that his burial place is known and will be disclosed in
due time.
Sarah Curran died soon after in Sicily of a broken heart, and Tom Moore,
one of Emmet's most beloved friends and also devoted to Miss Curran,
enshrined the pathetic story in a touching ballad:
"She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,
And lovers are round her sighing;
But coldly she turns from their gaze and weeps,
For her heart on his grave is lying.
"She sings the wild songs of her native plains,
Every note which he loved awaking;
Ah! little they think, who delight in her strains,
How the heart of the minstrel is breaking."
Near by the place where Emmet and his fellow conspirators planned the
revolution of 1803, is No. 151 Thomas Street, the house in which Lord
Edward Fitzgerald, leader of the insurrection of 1798, was captured
after desperate struggle, and it is a curious coincidence that he and
Emmet should both have been arrested by the same man, a certain Major
Sirr, in command of a regiment at the castle. Lord Edward's refuge was
the house of a tailor who sympathized with the insurrection, as almost
every other artisan in Ireland did, and sheltered him for several days
before the arrest. The house is marked with a tablet and an appropriate
inscription. Lord Edward was wounded in the shoulder by Major Sirr and
carried away to prison, where he died before he could be brought into
court.
The Corn Market of Dublin is just beyond the house, and the name of the
thoroughfare is there changed to Thomas Street, which is customary in
Dublin. Sometimes there is a different name for every block, and it is
very puzzling to a stranger. You walk from Clare Street into Merrion
Street and from Merrion Street into some other; from Dame Street into
the Corn Market, and from the Corn Market into Thomas Street, all
unconscious, but the names are plainly posted on the walls of the corner
houses both in English and Gaelic, so that he who runs may read.
Thomas Street is very wide, and that is understood when you know it was
formerly an open market-place outside the city walls for the sale of
country produce. The octroi tax levied by the corporation on the farmers
who brought in vegetables, butter, chickens, and eggs was paid in kind,
a measure of corn from each sack, a pound of butter from each firkin,
and one egg from every twelve, which was the origin of a proverb that
eleven eggs make a dozen in Ireland. The taxes were farmed out to the
highest bidder, who exacted every penny possible from the farmers and
used every means of extortion that could be devised to increase his
profit. The most odious of all the Dublin tax contractors in history was
a woman named Kate Strong, and they hated her so that after her death
the farmers erected a gross caricature of her person holding a large
toll dish in her hand. It stood for several years.
James Street succeeds Thomas Street on the same thoroughfare and runs
down upon the river quay, where the enormous brewery establishment of
the Guinness Company begins.
Across the river from the big brewery is No. 12 Arran Quay, named for
the son of the Duke of Ormonde, where Edmund Burke was born in 1729 of a
Protestant barrister and a Catholic mother. He was educated at a Quaker
school at Ballitore, County Kildare, and at Trinity College, where in
1747 he organized a debating club, which still exists.
After finishing his course in 1750 he went to London "to keep terms at
the Temple," that is, to finish his law studies and prepare for his
examinations; but suddenly, owing to some disappointment, he conceived
a strong distaste for his profession, and plunged into a wild career of
dissipation. He was introduced by Goldsmith to that circle of Bohemians
which gathered nightly at the Cheshire Cheese Inn and similar resorts.
He was a close companion of Garrick, Johnson, and others, and became one
of the many devoted attendants of his beautiful countrywoman, Peg
Woffington, the famous actress.
His dissipation gave his family great distress and caused his father to
cut off his allowance. This compelled him to do something for himself.
He went into politics, and soon made a reputation as a speaker and
writer and political manager. He wrote a great deal that was serious and
even sublime, and, mending his ways, secured the patronage of the
Marquis of Buckingham, the prime minister, who opened the doors of the
House of Commons for him. In a very short time he became the most
effective debater and the most influential leader of his party. Then his
abilities were fully recognized and his fame encircled the world.
He was the ablest friend of the American colonies in England during the
Revolution, and harassed Lord North more than any other man. He reached
the summit of his influence at the impeachment of Warren Hastings for
misgovernment and treason while viceroy in India; and then Burke's sun
began to set. He retired upon a pension, and passed from history with
the eighteenth century. One of his eulogists has said that
"notwithstanding some eccentricities and some aberrations, he made the
tide of human destiny luminous."
Near Burke's birthplace is the oldest and the quaintest church in
Dublin, built by the Danes before the English came to Ireland and
consecrated to St. Michan, a Danish saint. Within its walls is the
penitential stool, where "open and notorious naughty livers" were
compelled to stand and confess their sins in public and make pledges of
repentance and reform. The officiating minister, reciting the
fifty-first Psalm, led the offending sinner from the altar to the foot
of the pulpit,--barefooted, bareheaded, and draped in a long white
sheet,--and placed him upon the stool of repentance to hear a sermon
directed at his particular sins.
The tower of St. Michan's dates from the twelfth century, and is one of
the most beautiful things in Dublin. The view from the top of it
includes all the city, which is divided into two almost equal parts by
the River Liffey and spreads over an uneven surface from the dark green
woods of Phoenix Park to the dark blue waters of the Irish Sea.
Handel used to play the organ in St. Michan's Church, and it was there
the public first heard the score of "The Messiah."
The most remarkable feature of St. Michan's, however, is a peculiar
preservative effect from the soil in the crypt upon the bodies that are
buried there. They mummify before decay sets in and turn into a leathery
brown, similar to the mummies of Egypt. The vaults are filled with
remains that have lain there for centuries. Among them is the body of
one of the kings of Leinster, and beside him is the corpse of a baby,
from whose tiny wrists white ribbon has been hanging since its funeral
in 1679. Every corpse in the crypt is mummified in the same way, and it
is the only place in Dublin where this phenomenon occurs. Nor is there
any satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. The vaults are
absolutely dry. The popular theory is that a subtle gas arising from the
peaty soil suspends nature's law of decay.
There will always be a controversy among Irishmen as to whether Edmund
Burke or Daniel O'Connell was the greater man. They were so different in
their characteristics that it is difficult to draw a comparison.
O'Connell was not a native of Dublin. He was born at the humble village
of Cahirciveen, in County Kerry, one of the most forlorn, impoverished,
and hopeless sections of the west coast. He was the son of an exile who
fled to escape arrest and entered the service of France, and from him
O'Connell inherited an intense prejudice and hatred of everything
English and Protestant. He was educated in Cork for the priesthood, but
changed his mind and was called to the bar when he was twenty-three
years old. He immediately made a reputation, and by the time he was
thirty was regarded as the ablest advocate in Ireland, without an equal
in oratory. Probably no man ever surpassed him before a jury.
O'Connell is regarded by many as the ablest of all Irishmen, but, as I
have said, this claim is disputed in favor of Edmund Burke. He was
equally strong as a politician and undertook the cause of Catholic
emancipation in his very youth. In those days all Catholics were
disenfranchised; they could not hold office or even vote; the schools
were closed to them, and a Catholic child could only be taught by a
private tutor or governess. Daniel O'Connell organized the parish
priests for the movement and was the first to bring the clergy into
politics. Through them he organized the people, and regular
contributions were collected in the churches to pay the expenses of the
campaign.
O'Connell was the first Catholic to enter parliament, and the Duke of
Wellington confessed that this was permitted only to avert a civil war.
In 1828 he was elected to the British House of Commons, but was not
admitted because he refused to take the anti-Catholic oath. He came back
to his constituents and was elected again, and they continued to elect
him, just as the merchants and bankers in the city of London continued
to elect Baron Rothschild, who was refused admission for the same
reason,--because he would not take the oath. He was the first Jew, as
Daniel O'Connell was the first Roman Catholic, to obtain a seat upon the
floor.
O'Connell was elected lord mayor of Dublin in 1841 and was the first
Catholic to hold that office. At the height of his fame and power he
might have been a lord protector or the king of Ireland, but he
advocated peaceful revolutions, and, like Grattan, lost his influence
because he would not consent to the policy and the methods of the
radical and revolutionary element. In 1847 he went to address a meeting
of his sympathizers at Clontarf, a suburb of Dublin, where Brian Boru
won his great victory over the Danes in the last battle between
Christianity and heathenism upon the soil of Ireland. The meeting had
been forbidden by the authorities, and O'Connell was arrested,
convicted, and sentenced to prison for two months. This broke him down.
When he was released he left Dublin, started for Rome, and died at Genoa
on his way. He is buried in Prospect Cemetery under a lofty tower. His
will may be seen in the public records office in the Four Courts. He
married his cousin, Mary O'Connell, and had four sons, all of whom were
men of character and ability and have served in the British parliament.
The anniversary of the birth of Thomas Moore is celebrated in Dublin
every summer, and a programme of his "Irish Melodies" is sung by local
musicians--sweet old-fashioned ballads like "The Harp That Once through
Tara's Halls," "Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms," and
others like them. The proceeds of the concert are devoted to a fund
which is to be raised to erect a monument in memory of this most popular
of Irish poets, whose songs are heard in every cottage in Ireland. His
most pretentious poem, a Persian epic called "Lalla Rookh," brought
$15,000,--the highest price ever paid for a poem. Scott's "Lady of the
Lake" and some of Tennyson's and perhaps Kipling's poems and other
poets', have received larger sums in royalties, but no other man was
paid so much for his verses in advance of their publication.
Moore was born in a little house on Aungier Street, Dublin, which is
unfortunately now a filthy saloon. He was educated in a little grammar
school in Johnston's Court, off Grafton Street, near the Shelbourne
Hotel, where Richard Brinsley Sheridan was also a pupil. Petty, the
first great Irish scientist, who was also a physician and surveyor, was
educated there. His book of surveys made for Oliver Cromwell is still
used by the authorities.
Tom Moore was a chum of Robert Emmet at Trinity College. After
graduation he entered journalism and was connected with the _London
Times_ and the _London Chronicle_. He went to Bermuda as British consul
in 1803, and visited the United States before he returned. He was
lionized everywhere because his plaintive Irish ballads, which he set to
the music of the oldest peasant airs, were in the portfolio of every
musician in the civilized world, and his social attractions made him a
welcome guest. When he returned to England he was given a pension of
$1,000 a year until his death.
Volumes might be written concerning the literary reminiscences of
Dublin. Addison was private secretary to the notorious viceroy Wharton,
and the evidence indicates that his behavior was not so blameless as the
readers of Macaulay's sketch of his life would infer. His official
correspondence shows that he was not exempt from the usual weaknesses of
humanity and not above making an honest penny out of his office. He
seemed to be avaricious, and, although holding a position of the closest
confidence to the lord lieutenant, took an interest in several
commercial ventures that were not entirely beyond criticism.
Samuel Lover and Charles Lever, those two greatest of all delineators of
Irish character, were both born and educated in Dublin and did most of
their work there. Their graphic sketches of Irish life may have been
accurate in their day, and now and then, I am told, appears one of the
rollicking types of the Irishman they describe; but, while the character
of the race may not be changed, its habits and customs are quite
different from those of the period they describe. There's a grammar
school at which Tom Moore and Richard Brinsley Sheridan both received
their education. Sheridan was born on the same block, and the house is
marked by a tablet. Another tablet near the entrance of a house only a
few steps distant shows where Sir William Hamilton, the great Irish
mathematician, lived. Mrs. Hemans, that gentle hymn writer, whose lines
were much more familiar to the reading public half a century ago than
they are to-day, lived and died in the same neighborhood, and was buried
in St. Anne's Church, near by. Her epitaph, taken from one of her own
serene poems, reads:
"Calm on the bosom of thy God,
Fair spirit, rest thee now!
Even while with us thy footsteps trod,
His seal was on thy brow."
[Illustration: ST. STEPHEN'S GREEN. DUBLIN]
Near by the home of Mrs. Hemans is the Royal Irish Academy, occupying a
fine old mansion, once the residence of Lord Northland. It is the oldest
and most influential of the learned societies of Ireland, and possesses
a large number of ancient manuscripts in the Gaelic tongue, most of
them, despite their great age, beautifully clear and legible. The
academy, according to its charter, was founded "for the encouragement of
science, polite literature, and antiquities." There is a good deal of
interest in the attempt to revive the Gaelic tongue, but the bitter
partisanship of politics renders polite literature quite useless.
There is a great deal that is green about Dublin, and the remark is not
intended as a joke. There are several fine parks and breathing-places
scattered about the city. Many of the residences have large back yards
filled with trees and flowers that are hidden from the public by the
high walls that guard them from the street, but one can see them from
the tops of the tram cars as he rides about. The suburbs of the city are
very attractive, with plenty of large trees and vine-clad walls and
pretty gardens, and here and there a tennis court. As you look down upon
the city from a tall tower there is almost as much foliage as in
Washington. Phoenix Park is famous, and one of the largest public
playgrounds in the world.
St. Stephen's Green is a rectangular inclosure, twenty-two acres in
extent and corresponding to four city blocks, in the fashionable
quarter, and is surrounded by the mansions of the nobility and the homes
of the rich. Lord Iveagh, the representative of the Guinness Brewery
family, has a residence on one of the sides, and the archbishop's palace
is on the other side, near the Shelbourne Hotel, which is the best in
the city, and several clubs. St. Stephen's is handsomely laid out, and
has what I have never seen before in a city square,--a bridle-path
nearly a mile long around the interior of the fence, where several
gentlemen take their exercise on horseback in the morning.
Sir Walter Scott was entertained in what he writes was "a very large and
stately house in Stephen's Green, which I am told is the most extensive
square in Europe," and, writing to his wife, he said, "The streets
contain a number of public buildings of the finest architecture I have
seen anywhere in Britain."
A few blocks away from St. Stephen's Green is another large park known
as Merrion Square, which is a private inclosure like many of the small
parks in the city of London, and is accessible only to the residents of
the neighborhood, who, I understand, purchased the land and made it into
a park two or three hundred years ago, so that the public has no rights
there. Each of the leaseholders who are entitled to its privileges is
required to pay $5 a year for maintaining it and "half a crown for a key
to the gates," as I was informed by a policeman on that beat. It is a
pretty place, with deep, lustrous turf such as you seldom see outside of
the British Isles, and find in Ireland smoother and richer and greener
than anywhere else. There are a pond and several tennis courts, cricket
and croquet grounds, which are occupied every afternoon by the rich
families in the neighborhood; and it makes you feel a little resentful
to see the children of the poor, who need that breathing space more than
the owners, peeking through between the iron pickets. It is said that
this square plot of ground, which is equal to four ordinary squares in
area, was formerly a pond, and that the Duke of Leinster in early days
used to sail a boat upon it. But it was drained two hundred years ago or
more, and the splendid great trees that are growing there now were then
planted. Leinster House is in the neighborhood.
The residences around St. Stephen's Green and Merrion Square are built
of ugly brown bricks, but are spacious in their proportions, and were
intended for large families of ample means, and the aristocracy have
always occupied them. The Duke of Rutland has one of the largest, and in
Merrion Street, just around the corner, at No. 24, in a large house now
occupied by the land commission, the great Duke of Wellington was born.
It was the town residence of the Earl of Mornington, his father, and her
ladyship came in from Dangan Castle, twenty-four miles outside the city,
and the country residence of the family, a few days before the event,
which occurred on April 29, 1769. There is nothing either in the castle
or in the town house to interest people to-day, except that they were
the birthplace and the home of one of the greatest of Irishmen, and his
fellow countrymen have raised a shaft, similar to that at Washington, in
Phoenix Park in his honor.
Across from Merrion Square is the National Gallery of Ireland, which was
built in 1864, and contains a fine collection of paintings, numbering
about five hundred, which have been presented and purchased from time to
time. All of the old masters are well represented, and the Dutch school
is especially strong. Attached to the gallery is the Metropolitan School
of Art, which is liberally supported by the British government, and has
a large number of students. Corresponding to the Art Gallery, on the
opposite side of a quadrangle known as Leinster Lawn, formerly the
garden of the Earl of Kildare, is the Science and Art Museum and the
Museum of Natural History. Both are well arranged and full of
interesting things, particularly Irish antiquities, historical relics,
and examples of Irish industries. The most precious object is an iron
bell shaped like an ordinary cow-bell and riveted on each side, which,
it is said, St. Patrick used to carry about with him and ring to call
the people together to hear mass. It is accompanied by a silver "shrine"
or case for its protection, made in the year 1100 at the expense of
Donald O'Laughlan, king of Ireland from 1091 to 1105. The "Annals of
Ulster," written in the year 552, refer to this precious object as "The
Bell of the Will," and its history is known from that date. It came into
possession of the Archbishop of Armagh in 1044, and was among the relics
in the cathedral there until it was brought to the museum in 1869. No
one here seems to doubt that it is genuine.
In the adjoining case is another "shrine," as the case or covering for
sacred relics is called, that contains a tooth of St. Patrick, which,
according to the tradition, was loosened and fell from his mouth on the
door-sill of St. Brone's Church at Killaspugbrone in County Sligo, and
can be accounted for all these years.
A brooch formerly worn by the King of Tara is also shown as an example
of the prehistoric work of the silversmiths of Ireland, with many other
beautiful pieces of silver and gold which were dug up in the bogs.
Between the museum and the library is a fine old mansion known as
Leinster House, or Kildare House, erected by the great earls of Kildare,
the leaders of the Geraldines, who chose this spot four hundred years
ago for the location of the largest and at that time the most
magnificent city residence in Ireland. It once stood in the center of
large grounds, but they have been sold off from time to time, and nearly
a hundred years ago the residence passed into the possession of the
Royal Dublin Society, which has made it the center of activity during
its long and honored career in encouraging and developing the arts,
science, and industries of Ireland. The membership of the Royal Dublin
Society for two centuries has included all of the famous men of this
nation, and they have rendered a very important service. The Royal
Library, the National Gallery, the Museum of Natural History, and the
Museum of Antiquities owe their existence to this venerable institution,
and its influence has gathered the greater part of the pictures in the
gallery and the articles of interest in the museums.