These rough, desperate men meant, as they said,
"business." This movement
only to break out more appallingly than ever some ten or twelve years
later, in brutal assassinations, which have curdled the blood of the
world. Ah, must it always be so? Will this tiresome old Celtic Enceladus
never lie quiet, and be dead, though the mountain sit upon him ever so
solidly, and smoke ever so placidly above him?
Where now, we sadly ask, is the Ireland of Tom Moore, Father Prout, Lover
and Lever? Not enough left of it to furnish a new drama for Mr.
Boucicault. Donnybrook Fair has given place to midnight conspirations.
Fox-hunts to the stalking of landlords--all the jolly old customs
extinct, except the "wake." Peasant-life, over there, sometimes seems, at
the best, one protracted "wake."
I suppose it is too late now, yet I can but think that if the Queen had
built years ago, a palace in Ireland, at Killarney, or in lovely Wicklow,
or in Dublin itself, and resided there a part of every year, things might
have been better. She was so popular in that "distressful country" when,
by frequent visits, she testified an interest in it, and her gentle,
motherly presence might have had a more placating influence than any
"Coercion bill.
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