It was Sunday—the one day of all others which, had I wished to show Harry the difference between the two countries, I should have purposely chosen; the one morning in the week when Dublin is astir from early dawn, and London, on the other hand, sleeps. Residents in the latter, Catholic residents especially, are painfully aware of the difficulty of finding cab or conveyance of any kind to take them to early Mass, and know how, in the finest summer weather, they may wander through the parks without meeting a human being until the afternoon. In England church-going commences, properly speaking, at eleven o’clock only, and then chiefly for the upper classes; the evening services, on the contrary, are largely attended by the servants and trades-people, to meet which custom a vast majority of families dine on cold viands, or even relinquish the meal altogether, substituting tea, with cold meat—or “heavy tea,” as it is generally called—for the ordinary social gathering. In Ireland, as in every Catholic country, the whole system is reversed, as the natural consequence of the church discipline, which enjoins the hearing of Mass on the whole community, high and low; and—contrary to the Protestant system—once this obligation fulfilled, the attendance at evening service is necessarily much smaller. Harry never having even been out of England, except for a “run up the Rhine” some years before, and knowing no Catholic but myself, it never occurred to him to think of these distinctions, nor to suppose that he would find anything in Ireland different from English ways, except that unlimited lawlessness the existence of which he believed made life so impossible there.
He was in the process of recovering from his astonishment at the unfamiliar phraseology of the Westland Row railway porters when our passage to the cab was impeded by a crowd suddenly rushing along the footway, met by an advancing one from the opposite direction, composed of the very poorest class, men, women, and children. Harry’s lively imagination and preconceived ideas led him at once to conclude that it must be a Fenian Hyde Park mob renforcé; and the bewildered horror of his countenance at thus finding his worst fears realized the instant he arrived at the Dublin terminus was beyond all description comic.
“Ah! sure, your honor, it’s the seven o’clock Mass that’s just over, and the half-past seven that is going to begin,” explained the cabman, pointing to the large church which stands at Westland Row adjoining the railway station. “Sure, this goes on every half-hour until one o’clock. An’t we all obliged to hear Mass, whatever else we do?” And as we proceeded, I cross-questioned him for the benefit of my cousin. We discovered that this same man had been to church at six o’clock that morning, belonged to a confraternity, approached the sacraments regularly, and performed various acts of charity in sickness and distress amongst his fellow-members, in accordance with the rules of the said society; yet he was but poorly clad, and showed no outward signs of the remarkable intelligence with which he answered me on every point.
As usual on these occasions, the choice of a hotel had been puzzling, the Shelbourne, Morrison’s, Maple’s, each having their distinctive advantages; but at last we decided in favor of the Imperial, a quiet but comfortable establishment facing the General Post-Office in Sackville Street. The streets were alive with people as we crossed Carlisle Bridge, past Smith O’Brien’s white marble statue; and Harry could not help noticing the contrast to England at that early Sunday hour.
Refreshed by our ablutions and clean toilets, we were comfortably seated at breakfast, when sounds of music approaching caused us to rush to the window, and showed us a wagonette full of musicians in green uniform, playing “Garry Owen” and “Patrick’s Day,” followed by half a dozen outside cars full of men and women.
“Fenians!” cried Harry. “I told you I could not be mistaken.”
“Only some trade guild going out for an innocent day’s pleasure in the country; after having been to Mass too, I have no doubt,” observed a gentleman close by, whose accent was unmistakably English. “This is not the only custom that will seem new to you, if you are strangers,” he continued, addressing Harry, and smiling meanwhile. “No two countries ever were more different than England and Ireland. I shall never forget my astonishment on arriving here two years ago. I could not get accustomed to it at all at first. I remember one circumstance particularly which greatly struck me. I arrived on a Sunday morning, as you have done, and taking up the Freeman’s Journal—one of the best Dublin papers—on Monday, perceived a short paragraph in a corner, headed, ‘A Bishop Killed,’ so small that it might easily have escaped notice. Nor was there any allusion to it in any other part of the paper; but, reading on, you may conceive my surprise at finding that ‘a bishop’ was no one less than the Bishop of Winchester, the leading bishop in England, whose death by a fall from his horse, you will remember, convulsed that country through its length and breadth. Not one of my acquaintances even—and I had many in Dublin—took the smallest interest in it. They had not followed his career; he had not the slightest influence in Ireland; and few knew his name, or that he was any relation to the great Wilberforce. On the other hand, they were at the time living upon news from the North, where a police officer was on his trial for the murder of a bank manager—a fact which no one in England gave the smallest heed to. I had never heard of it. But that same afternoon the head waiter of the hotel, unable to conceal his excitement, came up and whispered to me, ‘He is condemned, sir! I have got a telegram from Omagh myself this instant.’ I had only been thirty-six hours in Ireland at the time, and, having merely glanced at the newspaper, knew nothing of the trial; so I was electrified and mystified beyond measure, and had no remedy but to sit down and study it. I then discovered it was deeply interesting from its bearing upon all classes, and I could not resist writing to some of the English papers and endeavoring to excite them on the subject. But it would not do! No paper inserted my letter. The similarity of interest is not kept up continuously between the two countries, owing very much, I think, to the little interchange of newspapers between them. I hope you have ordered your Times to be forwarded, sir,” he continued; “for you can’t expect to find one to buy in Dublin. They’ll always give you the Irish Times, if you merely ask for the Times; they never think about the latter—far less than on the Continent.”
This was a dreadful blow to Harry; for, like all Englishmen, he could not exist without his Times at breakfast, and, though I proposed that he should write for it by that night’s mail, his reviving spirits were sadly checked by the feeling of being in a land which apparently did not believe in his guide and vade-mecum. I felt it would be heartless under such circumstances to leave him alone; yet, I should go to Mass. At length, not liking to let me wander by myself in “such a dangerous city,” he offered to accompany me and give up his own service for the day. A little curiosity, I thought, lurked beneath the kindness; but if so, it was amply rewarded.
Following the porter’s direction of “first to the right and then to the left,” we soon reached the handsome church in Marlborough Street, opposite the National Schools. As at Westland Row, so here an immense crowd was pouring out, but a far larger one pushing in; so that, although long before twelve o’clock, we considered ourselves fortunate in getting any places whatever. Unaware that this was the cathedral, and without any expectations regarding it in consequence, our surprise was great when a long procession moved up the centre, closed by His Eminence Cardinal Cullen, in full pontificals, blessing us as he passed. “Those are the canons who attend on all great occasions, and the young men are the students at Clonliffe Seminary,” whispered a young woman next me in answer to my inquiries, while his eminence was taking his seat on the throne, to Harry’s infinite edification. “And we shall have a sermon from Father Burke after Mass,” she continued—“‘our Prince of Preachers,’ as the cardinal calls him. I came here more than an hour ago, in order to get a place. I promise you it’ll be worth hearing. Oh! there’s no one like him. God bless him!”
And as she said, so it happened. The instant Mass was over, not before, the famous Dominican was seen ascending the pulpit. The centre of the church was filled with benches, and a standing mass in the passage between, while the aisles were so packed by the poorest classes that a pin could not be dropped amongst them. Of that vast multitude not one individual had stirred, and in a few seconds they hung with rapt attention upon every word spoken by the gifted preacher. By their countenances it was easy to see how they followed all his arguments, drank in every sentiment, and—who could wonder at it?—were entranced by his lofty accents. Harry himself was mesmerized. The subject was charity, and the cause an appeal for schools under Sisters of Charity. In all his experience of English preachers—and it was varied—Harry confessed that he had never heard anything like this. Whether for sublime language, beautiful, delicate action, pathetic tone, quotations from Scripture Old and New, or eloquence of appeal, he considered it unrivalled. It lasted an hour, but seemed not five minutes. As we passed out of the door, the plates were filled with piles of those one-pound notes which in Ireland represent the gold. I saw Harry’s hand glide almost unconsciously into his pockets, and beheld a sovereign fall noiselessly amongst the paper.