dented force in Irish journalism was the passionate sympathy of women elicited by this struggle. That my kinswoman Margaret Callan should have written much might seem inevitable when a gifted woman belonged to such a society as the young journalists; but a more constant contributor was Francesca Elgee (in latter years Lady Wilde), the stately daughter of an archdeacon of the Established Church; and a constant counsellor watching the party as a mother does her beloved children, was Mary Macgee, the gifted and charming daughter of a Protestant clergyman whose name was synonymous with fierce and contemptuous antipathy to the Catholic majority.[1] The ballads and songs of the Nation had been so well received that it was resolved to publish a collection of them, and the little volume had a marvellous success. It was made the subject of a debate in the House of Commons and of a Tory demonstration in Dublin. Wilson Croker assailed it in the Quarterly Review, and Macaulay, to whom I sent a copy, acknowledged the beauty and vigour of the verses, but reprobated their hostility to England. It was much debated in the British Press; the Times affirmed that O'Connell's sedition was tepid compared to the fervour of these young poets; but one London journal[2] recognised the character of the phenomenon with more insight, I think, than any of its contemporaries:—
"The men of twenty-five have placed in the rear rank the men of fifty—and they come forward with all the energies and all the courage of their grandfathers—the Volunteers of 1782—to declare that they will not be content with a secondary position for Ireland amongst the nations of the earth. It may hurt our pride to find such a feeling avowed, but it would be a paltering with truth to conceal the fact. We see it; it is evidenced by every Irish newspaper that comes to hand, and in a collection of songs and poems it bursts upon us with all the suddenness, quickness, and force
- ↑ Mrs. Callan, who was wife to Dr. J. B. Callan of Stephen's Green, Dublin, was my cousin german and constant friend, and touches this narrative at many points past and to come. She was sister of T. M. Hughes, mentioned in the first and third chapters, and of Don John Hughes, mentioned in the first and fourth, and a sympathetic granddaughter of Judith Gavan, who flung the Pro-Union petition into the fire more than a hundred years ago.
- ↑ The Planet.
