therefore I fully authorise any use of them that may be considered necessary by those who are responsible for the honour of Meath. Very faithfully yours,
C. Gavan Duffy.
Mr. William Dillon, on my strong insistence, at length named the person who had taken this liberty with his name, but after more than twenty years I am unwilling to complete the painful exposure. The offender is still busy in Irish politics, and poses, I perceive, as a man of honour and distinction, and perhaps he has learned to amend his ways; at any rate his father was a good Irishman of constant and unobtrusive patriotism, and for his father's sake I forgive him.
Mr. Butt was much elated by the Meath election. It disembarrassed him of an associate with theories of his own, and who insisted on the dangerous novelty of Independent Opposition. In his place he got a young man who accepted the entire programme of the League without demur, and who it might be hoped would prove a steady and deferential supporter. Alas for the futility of human hopes; in a brief time the new recruit completely overthrew the power of the leader, succeeded to his place, and established Independent Opposition as one of the permanent principles of the National programme in Ireland.
Cashel Hoey sent me news of my friends. I surmise from his note that I had quoted Mangan's "Lament":—
.My eyes are filmed and my beard is gray!
And I'm bent with the weight of years;
May I soon go down to my house of clay,
With my long lost youth's compeers." &cDon't talk to me (he wrote) of your long lost youth's compeers; your particular cronies among them are all looking as if they had just turned a new climacteric, and meant to go on to eighty at the very least. Lord O'Hagan was here last week, intending to take my Lady to Bournemouth next day for sea air. My wife, who is in Ireland dined with John O'Hagan last week, and he is taking to poetry again. I leave you to draw your conclusions from that. D F. MacCarthy dined with me recently. He is retranslating into assonant verse all the plays of Calderon which he originally rendered in blank. He looks nearly but not quite as young as you do, or at least did when I saw you last. Lord Granard I tells me that the other M'C. has been staying with him at Castle Forbes, and after a good brush with the gout is as lusty as a cricket Dr. Murray, too, recently published another theological volume, and is the strongest man of his age in Maynooth, as you are of your years in Melbourne, and MacKenna of his in London. There is a good deal of gristle in Monaghan men.
