OCR Text |
Show "THE FAIR HILLS OF IRELAND." An Incentive to Intelligent Travel in the Green Isle. One of the consequences of tlie Gaelic Gae-lic revival has been tlie spreading of interest in Ireland's nr.tural beauties, her history and literature among intelligent in-telligent persons of other than Irish blood. So closely is the Catholic faith identified with the Irish race lhat to th. latter's exceeding honor Catholic and Irish are, in th'?' common : mind, interehangcabl? terms: and v whe:i an Irish Protestant tries to treat fji'rly questions involving the religion ( cf the land, it seoms to the Catholic hardiy less surprNin than if a German Ger-man Laiihtran were o come and at-I at-I 1cmpt like witness. We say this. loo. I with no forget fulness or the iittie band 1 of -distinctly Protestant patriots who t" suffered and died for Ireland, and are 1 ehei ished in lier heart of hearts. I The book before u.s, "The Fair Hills J of Ireland" by Stephen Gwynn, with j some beautiful illustrations by Hugh I Thomson, is a dellgl.tf ully written ! Volume evidently designed to attract j tourists and to help to maintain dis- I tinctively Irish characteristics. The I. m liter has avoided as far as possible I the history of the relations between j Ireland and "England, concentrating I himself rather on the seven centuries I before the Norman invasion, when the the Gael, rot Ireland of the Gael an.! the Gall." "This mateiial," he says. lent itselic the better to our method beeause here regular history is as yet impossible: and it seems- likely that many readers will be glad to meet not' i'Jily some description of the roonu-: ments which survive from those early I days, but also passages gathered from the early documents, cut of which now; fit last faithful an! laborious study is building un a truly historic record." We are sorry to see that the author! r.ecepts th allege! bull of Pope Adrian IV granting Ireland f- ihe English I king. There is no record of such doc-; I umrnt in the Vatican archives, and f within a couple of years past th bull hay been ittterlv discredited by a nro- fressor of the University of Chicago. Mr. Gwynn grants the hardships I which tlie Catholic Irish suffered at the 4 band of the at first (qually Catholic English :nvadors. but dwells on the monuments of architecture with which the latter, in line -with the custom of I the Irish princes, enriched the land, ; Rnd. of th" gradual fusion in !au-i !au-i gr.ago anil other interests which was taking place between the two element:, whei, Heavy VIII and his worthy ; daughter. Elizabeth, added religious to political persecution. Writes Mr. Gwynn: "The second phase of conquest begins when i he object is not merely to subjugate Ihe Irish and obtain ihe overlordshin nf their lands, but to extirpate the form of religious belief professed by the Irish. To many minds this 'after project seemed to carry with it the necessity !or extirpating the Irish themselves. Spenser's Lord Grey, the povc-rnor horn his noet chose as the embodied type of justice, was of this (pinion. A natural corollary was the scheme for planting Ireland 'with England Eng-land cultivators, and conquest assumed 4 the double character of a religious per- tceution and a confiscation of private property." Tlie author, however, seems to -J pret that Protestantism was in this way . prevented from having a chance lo present itself "on Us own merits" j to the Irish people: as if that would s j have made any difference in the odhe- 1 Fion of the Irish to the True Church! It must be said for Mr. Gwynn lhat lit makes no attempt to deny tlie PJo-inan PJo-inan mission of St. Patrick, and while 1 showing the saint's fympathy with !the development of the native geniur , fhows also that Ireland gained 'not a little by being brought into commun'-eation commun'-eation with what was then politically ns well as religiously the world's capital. cap-ital. Very fascinating are the veil attested at-tested accounts of the advancement of pre-Christian Ireland to many of the nrts of civilization. Mr. Gwynn has borrowed largely from Archbishop Healy's and also from Hurry's ' Life of. St. Patrick" in recording the strange 1 Incidents which marked the unprece- I dented rapid conversion of an entire 1 nation to Christ: the fusing of all that was good and there was a vast deal of It in the Pagan laws and learning , :i"iTBi imHm, w MLminni-mniniiwiKini UTiipiwmi n imrm -mrw n T n . ippii nnrwniiwi n r- iffir " mr m. m with the spirit of Iho gesnd: but the version of St. Columbkille's political troubles and the story of Si. Ruadan have assuredly not been taken from sources friendly to the Church. There is. too. in this book something of a spirit which now and then gives evidence of its presence among the non-Catholics interested in the Gaelic ivvival a disposition io deplore that architecture, art, or even things of more importance whih have evmie to t her Irish people through, their-Catholic faith as "foreign." For example, in writing of St. Patriek's Cathedral. Armagh: -Here is the great est monument of all planted as if in de-fiance .--o as to dominate the country round and outface that older building ami Ihe lesser summit. " It is in geljid truth a monument, not of generous, gen-erous, wealth, but of devoted poverty: .the gift not of an individual but of'a race'. "So viewed. I question whether modern mod-ern Christianity can show anything ino(re glorious: yet in other aspects the new St. Patrick's Cathedral must sadden sad-den the beholder. Th? stone of which it is hewn, as the money that paid for the hewing, is Irish; but the ideas which shaped the fabric are pure Italian. At Cashel, Cormac's chapel the one ancient an-cient edifice which comes to us intact springs from the soil of Ireland like an apple tTee in blossom.; this building build-ing at Armagh is as exotic as a palm. In the great church itself this air of the foreigner is not so striking: but the archbiFhop's stately palace is coined co-ined straight t'vim a FJrimnn Tirrifl On the whole, however, the book holds much of interest and pleasure for the reader of Irish blood who is already al-ready well versed in the history of his country ana devoted to the Church from which she never can be considered consid-ered apart. The Pilot. The Irish College in Paris. The superiors of the Irish College in Paris, having grave reasons to fear that the college will be closed by the French Government at the same time as the French ecclesiastical seminaries, have communicated their fears to His Eminence Cardinal Logue, and have asked the intervention of the British Ambassador. This is grave news, and 1 has caused a very painful impression throughout Ireland. Indeed, nothing tould bring home to Irishmen more forcibly the bitter extravagance of the persecution to which the Church is now exposed in France. The college in which Irishmen save for the brief whirlwind of the Terror have for centuries cen-turies found a hospitable place of learning, founded by French generosity and Irish piety to blunt the edge of the persecution, is now threatened with the seme fate as historic Douai. It cannot be pretended that this college lias any connection with French parties. None of its students is destined for French missionary life. The college is simply an institution to which Irish students gc to make their ecclesiastical studies, and at the same time make acquaint ance wiin ine language, and the science eif a great Catholic nation. It is ar Irish home on French ground. But the faet that it is a home where the sacrec sciences are studied, and where workers work-ers are prepared for the Christian vine-ytrd, vine-ytrd, seems to be enough to cndangei its existence under the regime cf intolerance intol-erance which has been once more established estab-lished on the banks of the Seine in the names of liberty, fraternity and equality. equal-ity. It is almost certain that the ceil lege can no longer exist as an eccle siastical college enjoying the immuni ties which such cedlcges enjoyed undei the old conditions. Iron Mines in Ireland. i A discovery has been made at Bally-castle Bally-castle in North Antrim, Ireland, which indicates that nature has been far kinder lo the "evergreen isle", in this respect re-spect than had been generally supposed. sup-posed. Immense seams of coal, iron ore and fire clay have been found, and a company with $2,500,000 capital has been formed to work the mines. The discovery of the discovery is an uncommonly interesting one. Back in the eighteenth century coal mines had been worked in the neighborhood, but it was supposed that the deposits had been exhausted. Two years ago Mr. j Braude. an eminent mining expert, who 'had made a fortune in South Africa, chanced to visit the region on a holiday tour. Going over the ground, his keen eyes observed signs that appealed to him far more strongly than the beauty i f i i ! of the landscape. After going caipfuny over the ground, testing the thickness of the sesms revealed by the borings he gave it as his opinion that at least 55.000,000 tons of coal of excellent quality qual-ity were accessible there. The borings for coal also revealed the existence of large quantities of black band iron stone. The actual discovery of the stone did not create much sur prise, but people opened their eyeg , astonishment when Prof. Cole declared there were at the lowest estimate l",5 1 000,000 tons of it. Analysts' tesa showed that the stone is one 0f hi richest ores in the world, being superio:. even to the best of the famed Spanish ores. The average of the latter js '60 per cent peroxide of iron, while thp Irish find, according to the analyst's figures, yields slightly over SI per cnt 1 ! ' ) ' ! 1 1 |