"Most welcome!" cried Gluck cordially, taking the offered hand and warmly pressing it, "I esteem and honor so noble an adversary!"
"We are no longer adversaries!" exclaimed Piccini. "Our strife is at an end. I acknowledge you as my master, and shall be happy and proud to call you my friend! Let the Gluckists and Piccinists dispute as they like; Gluck and Piccini understand each other!"
"And love each other, too!" cried Gluck, with vivacity. "Indeed it shall be so!"
The supper was enjoyed by the whole party.
The Irish In America.
[Footnote 68]
[Footnote 68: The Irish in America.
London: Longman, Rees & Co.
New York, Boston, and Montreal: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1868.]
This is the title of a book recently published simultaneously in London and New York, and which bids fair to excite considerable attention east and west of the Atlantic. The author, Mr. John Francis Maguire, M.P., has long since attained to honorable distinction not only in Ireland, his own country, but in the British House of Commons. His visit to this country during the past year strengthened the favorable impression already made on those who had known him only through his published speeches and the prominent part he has taken for many years in the affairs of his native country. Heart and soul devoted to the best interests of that country, and of the Irish race everywhere; thoroughly acquainted with the Celtic nature, its capabilities for progress and improvement, and fervently devoted to the faith which is the richest inheritance of Catholic Ireland, Mr. Maguire felt anxious to see with his own eyes the actual condition of the Irish in America, what advantages they had gained by emigration, and how far they had retained and carried out in their new country the Christian traditions of the old. He accordingly visited America, availing himself of the interval between the sessions of parliament, and, in so far as his limited time permitted, took personal observations on the state of "the Irish in America." The book before us is the result of these observations.
In the main, Mr. Maguire has given his readers a fair and correct view of his subject, vast and comprehensive as it is; he has taken pains to find out the exact condition of the people of whom he writes, in the new home across the wave to which they have carried their broken fortunes as a race. The opening paragraph of the first chapter is well adapted to interest the general reader. It is as follows:
"Crossing the Atlantic, and landing at any city of the American seaboard, one is enabled, almost at a glance, to recognize the marked difference between the position of the Irish race in the old country and in the new. Nor is the condition of the Irish at both sides of the ocean more marked in its dissimilarity than are the circumstances and characteristics of the country from which they emigrated and the country to which they have come. In the old country, stagnation, retrogression, if not actual decay—in the new, life, movement, progress; in the one oppression, want of confidence, dark apprehension of the future—in the other, energy, self-reliance, and a perpetual looking forward to a grander development and a more glorious destiny. That the tone of the public mind of America should be self-reliant and even boastful, is natural in a country of brief but pregnant history—a country still in its infancy, when compared with European states, but possessing, in the fullest sense, the strength and vigor of manhood—manhood in all its freshness of youth and buoyancy of hope. In such a country man is most conscious of his value: he is the architect of his country's greatness, the author of her civilization, the miracle-worker by whom all has been or can be accomplished. Where a few years since a forest waved in mournful grandeur, there are cultivated fields, blooming orchards, comfortable homesteads, cheerful hamlets—churches, schools, civilization; where but the other day a few huts stood on the river's bank, by the shore of a lake, or on some estuary of the sea, swelling domes and lofty spires and broad porticoes now meet the eye; and the waters but recently skimmed by the light bark of the Indian are ploughed into foam by countless steamers. And the same man who performed these miracles of a few years since—of yesterday—has the same power of to-morrow achieving the same wondrous results of patience and energy, courage and skill. But for him, and his hands to toil and his brains to plan, the vast country whose commerce is on every sea, and whose influence is felt in every court, would be still the abode of savage tribes, dwelling in perpetual conflict, and steeped in the grossest ignorance. Labor is thus a thing to be honored, not a badge of inferiority."