NEW IRELAND.*

Mn. SussivaN's New Ireland is only the Old Ireland of other writers. It is not a description of an utopian scheme as to what that country will or ought to be, after the style of the Now Atlantis. Mr. Sullivan has not written a dry, abstract disquisition

on the political and social changes in progress on the other side of the Irish Channel ; nor has he added another to the long list of political-economical monographs on his country. We should, indeed, have been glad to read anything, be it a Home-rule ser- mon or one of the customary peens on the prodigious growth of pigs and cereals, from his pen respecting Irish affairs. But we much prefer what he has actually given us, a loosely-connected series of sketches or narratives, drawn chiefly from his personal observation. For nearly thirty years Mr. Sullivan has played a part in Irish political life ; he has had rare opportunities for knowing his countrymen ; he is one of the most eloquent spokesmen of a largo body of them ; and it depends in some degree on Mr. Sullivan himself what the New Ireland will be. We may at once explain what he means by the verbal conceit, " New Ireland." In his view, his country has been completely trans- formed since 1848. Precedents drawn from anterior times are now as much to the point as precedents drawn from the reign of Brian Boru. Education has revolutionised society ; sectarian animosities are cooling down ; Catholic constituencies return Protestants, and by-and-by, perhaps Protestant constituencies will return Catholics. The "Black Forty-seven " destroyed the Old Ireland of Mrs. Hall and Carleton. It was not all gain ; the sacredness of the family tie was broken by experience of the workhouse; manykindly customs and openhanded ways and the old universal air of cheerfulness disappeared, in that terrible shaking and rending of society. But the sharp, bitter experience brought greater providence and forethought ; it infused into the character of the Irish peasant greater steadiness and resolution ; and it is manifest that Mr. Sullivan thinks that his country issued from the furnace of trial stronger and better than it was.

And it is in this sanguine strain in which Mr. Sullivan writes throughout. He admits, for instance, that the Land Act has opened up a new era for Ireland ; that though the restraints on capricious evictions by an unfeeling, reckless landowner are cobweb bonds, evictions of the old ruthless character—evictions such as Mr. Scully carried out at Ballycohey—are hardly likely to recur. He owns that the Irish Church Disestablishment has been beneficial not merely to the country at large, but to the Irish Episcopal Church. The bulk of the Irish people have now actually entered into public life ; they have attained political manhood ; and " the political power of Ireland has passed for aye from the custody of leaders, managers, and proxy-holders." Mr. Sullivan tells us that he writes for Englishmen, and it is only fair to say that ho does not at every pause in his narrative seize the opportunity to read

us a lecture on our miserable shortcomings, our insolence and in- capacity as a nation, and our wickedness in being the countrymen of Cromwell. There is a very visible desire to be fair, and to see both sides of every question. Mr. Sullivan is aware of tis own natural ardour, and he tries to keep it within bounds, But it will break out occasionally, in spite of himself. " I have been cool—quite cool, but take care—don't put me in a frenzy," says the simmering Sir Anthony Absolute ; and Mr. Sullivan is so far like that character that he mutters words of calmness when he is

all on fire with indignation.

To one fault of more importance we must advert. Mr. Sulli- van much exaggerates the merits and ability of many of the actors in the movements of '48, the Pheenix Conspiracy, and Fenianism.

His geese are all swans ; under his pen every one becomes re- markable ; and the eye of the reader is dazzled by the galaxy of unknown Irish celebrities who blaze out from Mr. Sullivan's pages.

Some of his heroes and heroines cannot but strike one as very common-place prodigies. For instance, we are introduced to a Nationalist poetess, Miss Eva Mary Kelly ; a long extract from one of her poems, " The People's Chief " is given ; and we are asked to join in admiring such ungrammatical gibberish as this, — " The leader of the world's wide host guiding our aspirations, Wear thou. the seamless garb of Truth, sitting among the nations; Thy foot is on the empty forms around in shivers cast, We crush ye with the scorn of scorn esuvial of the past."

Another poetess, known as " Speranza," and declared by Mr.

Arcia Ireland, By p, M. EiraLlivan, In 2 vols. London: Sampson Low and Co. Sullivan to be " the Madame Roland of the Irish Gironde," wrote in the Nation an article which, we are told, " glowed with fiery invective," and was, "in fact, a prose poem, a wild war-song."

While this was being read by the Attorney-General in the course of the trial of Gavan Duffy for high treason, a voice from the ladies' gallery cried, "I am the culprit, if crime it be," It was " the voice of the queenly Speranza." When Mr. Sullivan comes to speak of the leaders of the Fenian movement, he exalts Kick- ham, O'Leary, and Luby in terms of admiration which sound a little extravagant when applied to men whose capacity chiefly consisted of a limited power of talking incendiary nonsense, and who, as Mr. Rutherford shows, were quite unworthy successors of the actors in '48. Stephens figures as a sort of hero in these pages ; Mr. Rutherford has stripped all romance from him, and exhibited him as a mere charlatan plotter.

Much of the book is a narrative of events in which Mr. Sullivan was an actor, or of which he was an eye-witness. He was a spectator of all the horrors of the " Black Forty-seven," and in his narrative there is an entire absence of that rhetorical tone, we had almost said flourish, which marks some of the chapters, and stamps them as efforts of sensational reporting. The pages devoted to the "Black Forty-seven " are very different. The narrative is vivid, simple, and pathetic. The destruction of the potatoe crop in 1845, the renewal of hope, and the frantic energy shown by the peasantry in tilling the land once more, form a touching picture. "They worked as if for dear life. The pawn offices were choked with the humble finery that had shone at the village dance or the christening-feast, the banks and the local money-lenders were besieged with appeals for credit. Meals were stinted, backs were bared, anything, anything to tide over the interval of the harvest of Forty-six." But it was the harvest of Forty-six which sealed the doom of the poor people. " The last desperate stake for life had been played," says Mr. Sullivan, " and all was lost." Here is one picture

Blank, stolid dismay, a sort of stupor, fell upon the people, con- trasting remarkably with the fierce energy put forth a year before. It was no uncommon sight to see the cottier and his little family seated on the garden fence gazing all day long in moody silence at the blighted plot that had boon their last hope, Nothing could arouse thorn. You spoke; they answered not. You tried to cheer them; they shook their heads. I never saw so sudden and so terrible a transformation."

While refusing to call the famine, as some Irishmen do, "a slaughter," Mr. Sullivan charges the Government with very grave responsibility. Their exertions were " fatally tardy and inade quate," and afterwards "the blunders of precipitancy outdid the disasters of excessive deliberation." The Government, when appealed to as early as October, 1848, to open the ports, refused. Lord John Russell declined to listen to remonstrances and en- treaties. Mr. Sullivan loses, in his indignation, sight of the justice and essence of the case. He does not see that, with all

their blundering, the English Government and people were generous and liberal beyond precedent. One of the schemes of the Government was to sot up public soup-boilers on the road- sides, and dispense charity therefrom ; and here i.,Mr. Sullivan's comment on the scheme :—" I doubt if the world ever saw so

huge a demoralisation, so great a degradation visited upon a once high-spirited and sensitive people." Now, is there not some un- friendly perversity in all this ? How was it possible at once to give liberally and promptly to starving multitudes, and to preserve quite unimpaired their sense of self-respect ?

Mr. Sullivan is also drawing on his own experience when he speaks of the Phoenix Conspiracy. He, it is well known, took a prominent and not inglorious part with respect to it. As one of the Grattan Nationalists, he opposed it vigorously in the Nation, to the great displeasure of the secret leaders, who, speaking of their defeat, declared " it was Sullivan and the Nation that did it

all." When Fenianism was being hatched he came into conflict with its fosterers, and one gentleman, named Mr. Mooney, writing from San Francisco, denounced him as no true Irishman, because he disapproved of landlord assassination, intimating that Mr. Sullivan had touched him in his tenderest point. We gather from tliis book for the first time that Mr. Sullivan took an important part in another episode of Irish history. It Malls that he was in some degree responsible for the pro- posal to raise an Irish Brigade to aid the Pope. It was he who made the proposal to the Roman Court, and it was to him that the Chamberlain of the Holy Father came in order to ascertain what Ireland could do in the matter ; and Mr. Sullivan seems to have given advice and assistance which, we presume, he can re- concile with his duties as a peaceful citizen.

He tolls once more the story of Father Mathew and his total-

abstinence crusade, with all the enthusiasm of one who had

known and listened spell-bound to the preaching of the eloquent teetotaler. He gives a rather curious anecdote of the way in which "the Apostle of Temperance" was converted to the cause of total abstinence by the " sturdy Quaker," William Martin, of Cork. Mr. Sullivan—who, by the way, never omits an oppor- tunity of speaking well of the Quakers—says that one day when visiting the hospital, Mr. Martin made a powerful appeal to the young priest on the subject of the great curse of intemperance among the poor. "For some days," says the text, " Father Mathew considered the whole subject seriously. One morning, as he rose from his knees in his little oratory, be exclaimed aloud, 'Here goes, in the name of God 1' " Mr. Sullivan presents the sad side of the picture. The enthusiastic friar was not a good man of business. "He had established, extended, and maintained an organisation such as no managing execu- tive in these days could work without enormous pecuniary re- sources, and regular revenues for the purpose he had none whatever. He seemed to take little thought of financial ways and means ;" and owing further to the failure of a promised legacy from Lady Elizabeth Mathew, " Father Mathew found himself haunted by the tortures that dog the debtor's path." The good, hard-work- ing priest seems to have broken down under the pressure of anxiety and disappointment, and, saddest trial of all, he lived to see much of his good work undone. The moral enthusiasm, as is the case in most sudden revivals, died out in great measure, and the panic which followed brought back in a deplorable manner the evils that Father Mathew's crusade had seemed to have exter- minated. "In the track of the Government relief staff, and especially 4 licensed' by law, the drink shops reappeared, and to a large extent reconquered what they had lost."

We confess that we take with no small reservation Mr. Sulli- van's theories and opinions. They are over-coloured and charged with exaggeration. We cannot accept, for instance, as entirely correct his ideal representation of the influence of the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland, which lie would have us believe to be an almost unmixed good. He is most satisfactory when he is telling incidents of Irish life, or quoting examples of the astute- ness of the illiterate but not uneducated Irishman. Here is one, which relates to an Irish pilot, who had failed to satisfy the captain of an Indiaman that he could box the compass, and who asserted that ho could box it in Irish :-

"' Well,' said the captain, after a pause, ' let me hoar you clo it in Irish.' Ho, correctly enough, reflected that in almost any language one could detect whether the words would follow with such similarity of sound as north, north-and-by-east, north-north-oast, north-east-by- north, and so on. But old Jack Downing was just as sharp as the cap- tain was keen. Often and often at Mra.Crowley's public-house on shore ho had board sailors ' box the compass,' and though he could not attempt the task, he know how it sounded to the oar. ' Yes, to bo anre, sir ; I'll do it for you in Irish,' and ho forthwith began in homely Gaelic to recite- ' My grandfather—my grandmother—my grandfather's grandmother— my grandmother's grandfather—my great-great-grandfather—my—.. —‘ Stop, stop,' shouted the captain, perfectly convinced. 'I see, my poor fellow, I had wronged yell : take charge of the ship.'"

Here is a sample of the religious instruction prevalent in re►nete Terry Island,—a state of things, by the way, not very creditable to the Father Casey referred to. A young islander had crossed to the mainland, in order to procure a dispensation of marriage from the bishop :-

" The bishop thought it right to assure himself as to the knowledge on the islander's part of, at all events, the cardinal points of the Christian doctrine. ' How many gods are there, my good boy ?' his

lordship asked in Well, great and holy priest,' replied the islander, ' in Blaskotmore wo have but one, but 'tie very likely there may ho more than that in this great big world hero.' Father Casey was directed to give the Blasketmore man a few days'catochetical instruction, and then admit him to the matrimonial bond."

We do not see why Mr. Sullivan has introduced into his book thrilling chapters on " The Arbuthnot Abduction " or the suicide of Mr. Sadleir. These incidents are told in a manner much too akin to the style of Mr. Hepworth Dixon to be pleasing to every, one, and they do not illustrate the life or manners of " New Ireland." In his account of the clearings, he relates adventures which vie with anything told by Mr. Trench ; but they, too, have not much to do with the real theme of the book. We much prefer to read that portion that tells us, by reference to the fate of the Kingstowns, the Gorts, and many other families, the events which made the Encumbered Estates Act necessary, or describing the growth of the Tenant-Right agitation. When the book reaches a second edition, Mr. Sullivan will do well to erase some mannerisms. He need not, for example, write on the supposition that a recital of the whole muster-roll of his heroes' names gives importance thereto, and that Mr. Dillon and Mr. Moore have a cubit added to their stature by being called John B. Dillon and George Henry Moore.