In the Rotunda in Dublin, Mr. Parnell made a considerable
speech on Wednesday, of the drift of which we have said enough elsewhere. There was visible in it an odd con- flict between his desire to humiliate Mr. Gladstone and his desire to keep a back-door open for reconciliation, if by chance reconciliation should be possible. But we never ex- pected to find a speech of Mr. Parnell's actually sanctimonious, which parts of his speech in the Rotunda are. His Irish audience, however, cheered him to the echo, and did not seem to be at all revolted by the hero of the Divorce Court taking up his stand at the corners of the streets, as it were, to air his willingness to submit his cheek to the smiter. But at Mallow, on his way to Cork, a very different recep- tion awaited him. There an attempt was made, organised apparently by a priest who had a genuine horror of liber- tinism, to express the hatred of the people for profligacy, and an assault was delivered on his railway-carriage which made his friends uneasy for his life,—Mr. Harrison, M.P., thinking it necessary to get him into the corner of the carriage farthest from the platform, and to defend him by the display of the full proportions of the mighty " stripling." When Cork, however, was reached, the enthusiasm was found to be as great as ever, and Mr. Parnell, speaking from the window of his hotel, again assumed the dignity and the authority of the commissioned prophet of Home-rule,----the Irish audience rather admiring the display.
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