Curran did rally to a certain extent, and returned to Ireland to win new esteem as Master of the Rolls. But that was long after gentle Sara died, an event which caused Doreen deep grief, though Terence reminded her that it was for the best. Her reason went from her, so that she never knew of Robert's fate, but would sit crooning the weird ditties of her native land for hours together, and hearken for his coming with a vacant glee that was heartrending to those who loved her: and all who knew her loved gentle Sara. Slowly she faded and sank to rest--peacefully, serenely, with no last buffeting against the trammels of this life--as an infant sinks into refreshing slumber. To her, if not to others, was Heaven kind. Though she was given a cross to bear, yet she never felt its weight, nor knew that she stood in the ranks of the bereaved. It was of her that a gifted poet sang:
'Oh! make her a grave where the sunbeams rest
When they promise a glorious morrow;
They'll shine o'er her sleep like a smile from the West,
From her own loved island of sorrow!'
[TO THE READER.]
It has been the habit of novelists, for some reason or another with which we have nothing to do at present, to associate the Irish character with rollicking fun, naïve bungling, and mighty fine tastes of the brogue; and it occurred to me some time since that English readers who are surfeited with orthodox Hibernian jollities might be glad, for a change, to look on Pat from his shadowed side; to contemplate his dreary pilgrimage through the Valley of the Shadow of Death; to pause for a moment over the events which have bound round his character with sorrow and hedged him about with grief. The history of Ireland has been so perverted by mendacious faction that the truth lies deeply interred. Protestant has vilified Catholic, and Catholic Protestant, to the extent which is inevitably associated with religious rancour. My sympathies being specially with neither party, I have endeavoured to weigh the evidence in a free and independent spirit, and have come to the conclusion, as might have been expected, that both were in a measure right and both wrong, considering that both were actuated by grievances of a more or less awful character, which, being tinged by a colour of religion, drove them both to madness and excess.
One of the chief difficulties with which an historical novelist has to contend, is the question how far imagination may be permitted successfully to fight with fact. Conversely, even reverend historians are beset by this trouble. Walter Scott, Chateaubriand, Michelet, hardly allow us to separate romance from history, and history from romance.
Being desirous of giving a true picture of a time, clothed in romantic garb, I, in my last novel, conscientiously pointed out the peccadilloes which lay cunningly in ambush in its chapters; and, being still anxious to keep my conscience clear, I deem it advisable now to repeat the process.
In the construction of this work I was deliberately guilty of two crimes, both of which, I consider, are attended with extenuating circumstances.