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Show Did Moore Die Out of the Church? Irish' papers to hand are discussing' the neglected neg-lected state of that grave in England, where, in the words of Denis Florence McCarthy, "Moore Ties sleeping -from his land afar;" and we have no doubt, that the agitation will result in some measures being taken to keep the last resting place of the Irish poet, in a more fitting condition, saj-s a correspondent of the Catholic Advance. . . : , Strangely enough, this gifted son of a Catholic; race is buried in a Protestant graveyard in Eng-i land. Moore, of course, w-as a "born" Catholic, all, Ins people before him being Catholics, but of him. truly might it have been written that "the passion-s ate heart of the poet is whirled into folly and. vice.",. bV we -find Turn, leading, a Tife,.. free .jperhaps.from the darker faults which disfigure the character of Byron, and yet sufficiently -careless to account' for his lukewarmness in the discharge of Catholic. duties. du-ties. So we find him in yissfinith writing immoral verses under the pen name of Thomas Little, verses which he was afterwards ashamed of. So we find him marrying a' Proiestant4 wife, bringing up his children as Protestants; and so we find him buried in a Protestant graveyard, with a beautiful stained-glass stained-glass window to his memory in the adjacent Pro-lestant Pro-lestant church. Whether he. died -a Protestant, or wheiher he ever formally renounced the church of his boyhood is a question. S. C. Hall, who apparently knew the poet, states that Moore had become a .Protestant some.ypars before his death, and that as a Protestant he died; but. there are others who declare that though a careless care-less Catholic he never turned away formally from the old faith. Dr. Daniel Ambrose, formerly M. P. for Louth, made a special pilgrimage in J8S7 to Sloperton. England, where the Moores lived and died, for the purpose of discovering the fact as to Moore's alleged change of faith. There, he met the Kev. Mr. Edgell, the rector of the parish, the clergyman clergy-man who had. according to report, attended the poet in his last illness; ami from him Mr. Ambrose learned that Moore never attended Mr. Edgell's church and lhat. so far as be was aware, the poet was of the Koman Catholic, faiih. and lived and died in it. Evidence, more or less hearsay, further has it. that, some time before his death the poet met. a priest who took an interest in Moore's spiritual j condition. Moore asked the priest, to visit, him. j The priest did so, only to be met in great trepida- ' tion at the door by Mrs. Moore, who exclaimed, that her husband was in a delirium. .Nevertheless, the priest, was admitted to the poet's bedroom, only to find him in an unconscious state. The trouble with Thomas Moore, as with many another Catholic of genius or wealth, is that he became be-came prosperous too quicklv. The son of a grocer iu Dublin, and a member of a despised church, he almost suddenly through the .force of his talent and his winning personality found himself taken up by the nobility. As his biographer expresses it, he "became "be-came the fashion in London, and was a welcome guest at the tables of the aristocracy." It is dangerous to their faith for Catholics to become the fashion. Of course there are exceptions, excep-tions, but this may be taken as a pretty fair general proposition. Moore's lukewarmness certainly gives it proof. 1 |