The public man of our country, the member of the legislature, the priest, finds much to learn in the customs which centuries have sanctioned; and thus the experience of each supplies the want of this important and all-testing article at home. He sees by the condition of Switzerland, Bavaria, the south and west of France, etc., that people are just as prosperous, as happy and healthy, without the machines and various inventions on which we are apt to pride ourselves; while his visit to English manufacturing towns will make him slow to place much trust in institutions which have generated so much mental weakness and bodily disease; have tended so much to destroy the liberty and independence of the people by eliminating the private tradesman and creating vast tyrannous monopolies; and have, by their very circumstances and discipline, occasioned such an increase of immorality in populations heretofore uncorrupted. Having observed them in their homes, he understands better the circumstances and motives which influence men of different nationality and religion, and is enabled to form a more correct judgment of our adopted citizens, no matter from what land. When he sees the misery of the Irish people at home—a consequence of English misrule—he can better understand why they take refuge in the delusive cup, deprived as they are by their poverty of the commonest conveniences and much more of the purer pleasures of life; nay, he is even astonished to find that, with the unspeakable wretchedness of the people, they are so honest that, in the maritime city of Cork, the doors are often scarce more than latched; and so wanting in cool, calculating malice that, with all the strictness of the English, and with judges like Keogh, it is forty years since a man has been found guilty of wilful murder in that handsome town. Even the agrarian outrages are mitigated to our view when we consider that they partake of the “wild justice of revenge,” and the political disturbances have their spring of action in one of the noblest aspirations of the human soul. He is even disposed to pity rather than condemn or despise the Irish when they here become the tools of infamous politicians; reflecting how easily explained this is in the case of country people, such as most of them are (not one in five of whom ever voted before or entered a town except on a fair day), suddenly exalted to the comparative wealth of the American laborer, to the lordly exercise of political rights, and exposed to the new and captivating influences of a great capital. But when the American traveller meets the city people of Ireland, and learns to respect their justice, intelligence, and urbanity; when he sees what a dutiful, sober, conscientious man the Irish peasant can be, as exemplified in the constabulary, of whom I always heard their priests and all travellers speak in the highest terms, he will look kindly on the faults of the emigrant, in the sure expectation that, when his novitiate is passed, he will stand in the first rank of the citizens of the republic.
It will be a pleasure for me, and I trust may not be unacceptable to the reader, if I digress slightly here as I touch on this subject of the Irish people. Having Irish blood in my own veins, I naturally had a great sympathy with the country, especially after hearing the voice of Catholic Ireland crying in our American wilderness so eloquently, and was delighted when, on the 21st of June, her shores rose from the sea in all the charm of sunlight, balmy and verdant freshness, like Venus from the deep. From four in the morning, we had that long-desired land in view, and all day long our eyes feasted on its charms, as we stopped to land passengers and buy fresh meat, entertained by the beautiful Cove of Cork and the magic shores adjacent; and, when the full moon mirrored her beauty in the calm Atlantic, we enjoyed the spectacle at midnight of departing light in the west and the first faint streaks of day in the east. It was such a day and such a night as one might well go three thousand miles to enjoy. I do not wish to speak of the scenery of the country; that is well enough known. I only desire to testify to my experience of the people.
Nearly six months we dwelt in the fair city of Cork, one of the most beautifully situated I ever beheld and I never by any accident heard profane or obscene language in this town of ninety thousand inhabitants. Who could walk New York for a week, and relate such an experience? I was edified by the venerable presence of the faith in this people, as fresh and strong as ever to-day. You might compare it to a flourishing young oak that springs out from the body of an old, and furrowed, and blasted trunk, itself as beauteous as if it did not come from such ancient roots, and were not vegetating with the self-same inextinguished life of the patriarchal tree. How much to the honor of the nation that she has transmitted without a break the consecration which the hands of Patrick, Malachy, and Laurence laid upon her hierarchy, while neighboring people have been obliged to send abroad for pastoral unction! It is most edifying to see the congregations at Mass, and to hear the loud murmur of faith and adoration at the elevation of the Host. It is beautiful to see them stop at the church to pay a visit of a minute as they pass on their way to work, or at least to take the holy water at the door. Drivers, policemen, men cleaning the streets, all classes are seen to do this. I was coming out of a church one day in winter, and found a child’s maid with a child in her arms, kneeling in the damp, wet porch, praying. “Why don’t you go inside? ‘Tis quite wet here,” I said. “I was afraid the child would make too much noise, sir!” It was a week-day, and there were only a few persons inside.
The good, simple, peaceable man of The Imitation of Christ is found in Ireland. I met one of these—a learned, pious, prudent priest, yet as simple in worldly ways as a child, and amusingly ignorant of our modern progress, but courageous as a martyr when called on in court for testimony involving his priestly character. I met another man, a layman, a pure Celt, strong and vigorous, eighty years of age, simple in his diet and dress, speaking English poorly, but Irish fluently and well; he walked at sixty years of age as many miles in three days; and when at last his son, a man of twenty-three, got tired, he took him on his back, and kept on. Such a man might Abraham have been. No wonder his parish priest said to him before me: “I’m glad to see you, James. I hope to see you often, and that you may live long to inspire and encourage me and our people by your example!” His daughter died in Lawrence, Mass., and thus the grandson wrote to the old man at home: “Mother asked for the holy water, and washed her face with it, and sprinkled us, blessing us. She then directed that her body should be carried to the grave on the shoulders of her own flesh and blood, and asked us to turn her face to the east. We turned her, and we thought she had gone asleep, but it was the long sleep of death!” Such is Irish faith. These people are most edifyingly patient and cheerful in sickness and misery. They never complain, but always say, “‘Tis the will of God.” In Waterford, one awful, snowy day, I was much struck by this dialogue between two old persons: “How are you, Mary?” “Oh! then, pretty well, Denis, only I have the rheumatics.” “Oh! then, ‘tis God’s will; and you can’t complain, as you’re able to be about!” My friends, if you had the wretched rags that she and he had on, and their probably empty stomachs, I think you would have been neither inclined to preach nor disposed to practise resignation. I never, by any accident, met any one so ill-clad here as I saw there. Even in the snow they had no shoes nor underclothing.
Is it any wonder, then, that the great spirit of Montalembert was inflamed by visiting such a country? As Mrs. Oliphant says in her Memoir, “He had seen a worshipping nation, and his imagination had been inspired by the sight, and all his resolutions had burst into flower.”
Another spectacle that entertained us here was that of an artless maiden. Such a treat for an American! To see a girl of eighteen or twenty years so modest and artless in her ways. There is a charm about such an one; she seems God’s fairest work, as an honest man is his noblest. At the convent schools in Ireland one notices the same gentleness, which contrasts beautifully with what we have so much of at home, and that feature of which Shakespeare says, speaking of Perdita:
“... Her voice was ever soft,
Gentle, and low—an excellent thing in woman.”
I heard an American express his notion of it characteristically by saying: “How quick these girls would find a husband in America!” An English writer, speaking of a city which was remarkably Irish, though not in Ireland, first indulges in some of his usual pokes and jokes about its inhabitants, and then says: “Nowhere did I ever meet better bred ladies”; and a lady well acquainted with the high society of one of our sister cities told me that the ladies in Ireland were far better educated. Indeed, the love of education is very great amongst the Irish people.
I never saw finer schools than those of the Christian Brothers in Cork, and all supported by the voluntary contributions of the people, without a cent from the government, and in a very poor country. Although a poor Protestant is rare in Ireland, the statistics of the Dublin census for 1872 show that the number of illiterates amongst the Catholics is smaller than amongst the adherents of any other religious denomination. And still people will talk of the ignorant Irish, and the opposition of the priests to education! The ignorance, whatever it is, of the Irish, like the rags that hang on their limbs, is a sad but glorious sign of their fidelity to God’s truth! If they had wished to sell their heavenly treasure, they might have got the mess of pottage called godless education. All honor to them and to their priests for the inestimable value they place on the deposit of faith handed down by saints and scholars! There is a good deal of carelessness and want of enterprise amongst the Irish people, no doubt; but as for the former, as F. Burke says: “God help us! Much they’ve left us to be careless with.” The less a man has, the more thriftless he is likely to be. Having in this country a sure title to his own and a prospect of success, I maintain that the Irishman will become as thrifty, without being niggardly, as any other citizen.