were the best beloved contributors to the Nation, and the revived Nation was destined to rally recruits of the same class. Julia Kavanagh, who was earning her income by literary work for the English periodicals, offered to aid this new experiment, without payment or applause, by her facile pen."
The letter which is thus described by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy is as follows:—
"Sir—I am not, I confess, a constant reader of the Nation. I know it chiefly through the extracts and misrepresentations of the English Press, but these extracts have sufficed to give me as exalted an opinion of your talents as the persecutions you formerly endured gave me of your patriotism. I should not, however, have troubled you with this letter, but, for an extract from the Nation given in this day's Times, by which I find you suggest a very excellent plan of promoting the Irish cause by means of popular tracts, essays, &c., &c. It occurs to me were this plan to be adopted I might perhaps be of some use. I do not suppose my name is known to you, but I have been a writer for five years. I have published a few books and contributed to Chamber's Journal, to their Miscellany, to the Popular Record, to the People's Journal. I am now writing for the journal of Eliza Cook. This, if I have not misunderstood you, is the literature you wish to turn into the channel of nationality. I have always felt that of myself I can do
