The Catholic World Volume Iii Part 19

In the notes which Mr. Fitzpatrick has appended to his biography of the "Sham Squire" as "addenda" we have some well-authenticated and racy revelations of many of the singular Irish characters who flourished during the last thirty or forty years of the last century, and in the first few years of the beginning of this. Ireland appears to have been the "paradise of adventurers" in that day, as the times appear to have been out of joint, and the habits and general _morale_ of the upper and middle ranks were to the last degree loose and irregular. As the manners and modes of action of a people are in a considerable degree fashioned and influenced by the example set them by those who are placed in authority over them, it is not too much to a.s.sert that a great deal of the lax morality, unscrupulous spirit, and general demoralization were produced by some of the occupants of the vice-regal throne, and their "courts," the character and course of life of whom are painted by our author in anything but a seductive way. Brilliancy, show, pleasure, wit, and extravagance were the order of the day; lords-lieutenant were either dissipated _roues_, or incompetent imbeciles, and in either case they were sure to be coerced or cajoled by a mercenary tribe of political adventurers, who directed their actions and influenced their minds. We at once see by the wholesale corruption practised to bring about the Union, how utterly depraved must have been the men who openly or covertly prost.i.tuted themselves, when it was in contemplation; and never was political profligacy more open and more daring in its violation of honor, probity, and principle than in the abject submission of the Irish parliament, and its unhesitating anxiety to sell themselves, souls and bodies, to those who tempted them, and who had studied them far too accurately not to be sure of their prey. Amongst those who consented to accept the remuneration thus profusely offered them the lawyers bore a very prominent part; in fact, government could hardly have succeeded without their aid; of these, Fitzgibbon, afterward Lord Clare and chancellor, was the most forward and efficient. There was never a man better adapted for the work he had to do. Bold, active, astute, and unscrupulous, he could be all things to all men; those whom he could not cajole, he frightened; equally ready with the pen, the pistol, and the tongue, he was neither to be daunted nor silenced; terrible in his vengeance, no windings of his victims could escape him; and extravagant in his generosity (when the public purse had to bear the blunt), his jackals and partisans felt that their reward was sure, and therefore never hesitated to comply with his most exact demands. Few men had a larger number of followers, therefore, and no man ever made a more unscrupulous use of them. He had nothing of the recusant about him, however, and first and last he was consistent to his party and to the Protestant creed which he had adopted in early life, for he had been born and partly reared in the Roman Catholic faith. In his personal demeanor he was a lion-hearted man; when hissed in the streets by the populace he calmly produced his pistols; and once, on hearing that a political meeting against the Union was being held, he rushed into the middle of the a.s.sembled ma.s.s, commanded the high-sheriff to quit the chair, and so closed the meeting. On the bench he was equally fearless, and when recommended to beware of treachery, his answer was, "They dare not; I have made them as tame as cats." "If I live," he said, "to see the Union completed, to my latest hour I shall feel an honorable pride in reflecting on the share I had in contributing to effect it." He did live to see it, and to take his seat in the British parliament; but matters were altogether altered there. In his maiden effort he was rebuked by Lord Suffolk, called to order by the lord chancellor, while the Duke of Bedford indignantly snubbed him by {126} exclaiming, "We would not bear such insults from our _equals_, and shall we, my lords, tolerate them at the hands of mushroom n.o.bility?" while, to cap the climax, Pitt, after hearing him, turned to Wilberforce, and said loud enough to be heard by Lord Clare, "Good G--d! did you ever, in all your life, listen to so thorough-paced a scoundrel as that!" Disappointed and despairing, he returned to Ireland, and died of a broken heart, while almost the last words he uttered to a friend were, "Only to think of it! I that had all Ireland at my disposal cannot now procure the nomination of a single gauger!"

John Scott, afterward Lord Chief-Justice Clonmel, was another prominent actor in those busy times. His birth was lowly, but his talents were considerable; he was light and flippant rather than profound, and he felt to the last a terrible mortification that his claims had been postponed to those of Lord Clare. He had neither the grasp of mind, nor the unhesitating manner of the chancellor, however; he was apt to surround himself with companions, like the "Sham Squire," for instance, who might be pleasant but were by no means reputable. Beside, his character for probity was distrusted; his first uprise in life was his wholesale appropriation of the property of a Catholic friend which he held in trust, as Catholics, at that time, could not retain property in their hands, and which he refused to disgorge. He was both venal and vindictive, and but too often prost.i.tuted his authority in pursuit of his pa.s.sions. On one occasion, however, he was signally discomfited. A man of the name of Magee, who owned and edited the "Evening Post," had frequently come under the lash, and was treated with no mercy. Magee's vengeance took a curious form. Lord Clonmel was an ardent lover of horticulture, and had spent many thousand pounds in making his suburban villa a "model." Magee knew this, and as the chief demesne was skirted by an open common from which a thick hedge alone separated it, the journalist proclaimed a rural _fete_, on an enormous scale, to be held on the vacant ground, and to which the whole Dublin population, gentle and simple, were invited. Meats and liquors were given to an unlimited extent, and, in the evening, when the "roughs" were primed with whiskey, several pigs (shaved and with their tails well soaped) were let out as part of the amus.e.m.e.nt of the day. By preconcert, the affrighted animals were driven against Lord Clonmel's inclosure, which they speedily over-leaped, followed by the mob. Trees, shrubs, flowers, vases, and statues were in a wonderfully short time demolished in the "fun,"

while, to make the matter still more deplorable, the owner of the property thus wantonly devoted to revenge stood on the steps of his own hall-door, and with alternate fits of imprecation and entreaty besought the spoilers to desist, but in vain. Toward the close of his life, Lord Clonmel became a hypochondriac, and, supposing himself to be a tea-pot, hardly ventured to stir abroad lest he should be broken.

On one occasion, his great forensic antagonist, Curran, was told that Clonmel was going to die at last, and was asked if he believed it. "I believe," was the reply, "that he is scoundrel enough to live or die _just as it meets his convenience_." Shortly before his death he said to Lord Cloncurry, "My dear Val, I have been a fortunate man, or what the world calls so; I am chief-justice and an earl; but were I to begin life again, I would rather be a chimney-sweeper, than consent to be connected with the Irish government."

Another "celebrity" was John Taler, "bully, butcher, and buffoon," who was afterward a peer and a judge. He was a bravo in the house and a despot on the bench. He jested with the wretched he condemned, and seemed never so happy as when {127} the scaffold was before his eyes.

He was ignorant but ferocious, and when he could not conquer an opponent he would browbeat him.

"Give me a long day, my lord," said a culprit, whom he had just doomed.

"I am sorry to say I can't oblige you, my friend," replied Lord Norbury, smiling; "but I promise you a strong rope, which I suppose will answer your purpose as well."

When he died, and was about to be lowered into the grave himself, the tackle was rather short.

"Tare-an-agers, boys, don't spare the _rope_ on his lordship; don't you know he was always fond of it?" said one of the standers-by.

"I never saw a human face that so closely resembles that of a bull-dog!" remarked one barrister to another in court.

"Let him get a grip of your throat, and you will find the resemblance still closer," was the reply.

These and a hundred others, their equals, instruments, and subordinates, may be supposed to represent the Irish "turnspit"

element; it must be acknowledged, however, that in contradistinction to them, there were sounding examples of men of a different and far superior cla.s.s, such as the Leinsters, Charlemonts, Plunketts, Currans, Ponsonbys, and so forth, who would have adorned any country, and who certainly contributed to relieve their own from the almost intolerable odium which the wholesale venal profligacy of a large number had brought upon it.

From Once a Week.

THE LEGEND OF THE LOCKHARTS.

I.

King Robert on his death-bed lay, wasted in every limb, The priests had left, Black Douglas now alone was watching him; The earl had wept to hear those words, "When I am gone to doom, Take thou my heart and bear it straight unto the Holy Tomb."

II.

Douglas shed bitter tears of grief--he loved the buried man.

He bade farewell to home and wife, to brother and to clan; And soon the Bruce's heart embalm'd, in silver casket lock'd, Within a galley, white with sails, upon the blue waves rock'd.

III.

In Spain they rested, there the king besought the Scottish earl To drive the Saracens from Spain, his galley sails to furl; It was the brave knight's eagerness to quell the Paynim brood.

That made him then forget the oath he'd sworn upon the rood.

IV.

That was his sin; good angels frown'd upon him as he went With vizor down and spear in rest, lips closed, and black brow bent: Upon the turbans, fierce he spurr'd, the charger he bestrode Was splash'd with blood, the robes and flags he trampled on the road.

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V.

The Moors came fast with cymbal clash and tossing javelin, Ten thousand hors.e.m.e.n, at the least, on Castille closing in; Quick as the deer's foot snaps the ice, the Douglas thundered through, And struck with sword and smote with axe among the heathen crew.

VI.

The horse-tail banners beaten down, the mounted archers fled-- There came full many an Arab curse from faces smear'd with red, The vizor fell, a Scottish spear had struck him on the breast; Many a Moslem's frighten'd horse was bleeding head and chest.

VII.

But suddenly the caitiffs turn'd and gathered like a net, In closed the tossing sabres fast, and they were crimson wet, Steel jarr'd on steel--the hammers smote on helmet and on sword, But Douglas never ceased to charge upon that heathen horde.

VIII.

Till all at once his eager eye discerned amid the fight St. Clair of Roslyn, Bruce's friend, a brave and trusty knight.

Beset with Moors who hew'd at him with sabres dripping blood-- Twas in a rice-field where he stood close to an orange wood.

IX.

Then to the rescue of St. Clair Black Douglas spurred amain, The Moslems circled him around, and shouting charged again; Then took he from his neck the heart, and as the case he threw, "Pa.s.s first in fight," he cried aloud, "as thou wert wont to do."

X.

They found him ere the sun had set upon that fatal day, His body was above the case, that closely guarded lay.

His swarthy face was grim in death, his sable hair was stain'd With the life-blood of a felon Moor, whom he had struck and brain*d.

XI.

Sir Simon Lockhart, knight of Lee, bore home the silver case.

To shrine it in a stately grave and in a holy place, The Douglas deep in Spanish ground they left in royal tomb.

To wait in hope and patient trust the trumpet of the doom.

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[ORIGINAL.]

REMINISCENCES OF DR. SPRING. [Footnote 23]

[Footnote 23: "Personal Reminiscences of the Life and Times of Gardiner Spring, Pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church in the City of New York." 2 vols. 12mo. New York: Charles Scribner & Company.]

Few persons who have lived much in New York during the last quarter of a century are not familiar with the dignified, resolute, yet kindly countenance of the pastor of the Brick Presbyterian church. Fewer still are ignorant of his reputation as a leading and representative man in his denomination; a keen polemic; a great promoter of missionary, tract, and Bible societies; and, we may add, a very determined enemy of the Pope of Rome and all his aiders and abettors.

For more than fifty-five years he has preached to the same congregation which gave him a call when he was first licensed as a minister. During his career thirteen Presidents of the United States, from Washington to Lincoln, have died; three Kings of England have been laid in their graves; the horrors of the Reign of Terror, the execution of Louis XVI., the rise and fall of the first Napoleon, the shifting scenes of the Restoration, the Orleans rule, the second Republic and the second Empire, have hurried each other across the stage of French history. He has long pa.s.sed the scriptural term of the life of man; and now, at the almost patriarchal age of eighty-one, he gives us a collection of reminiscences of what he has seen and done during this protracted and eventful career.

It would be natural to suppose that such a book by such a man must be full of interest. As one of the recognized leaders of a rich and influential religious denomination, and one of the oldest and most respectable citizens of the first city of America, how many historical characters must he have met! to how many important events must he have been a witness! But any one who takes up these volumes in the hope of obtaining through them a clearer view of persons and times gone by, will be disappointed. They are interesting, it is true, but not, we will venture to say, in the way their author meant them to be. They cause us to wonder that the doctor should have seen so much and remembered so little. Yet as a picture of the life of a representative Presbyterian preacher and a complete exposure of the utter emptiness of the Presbyterian religion, these garrulous and random "Reminiscences" are the most entertaining pages we have read for many a month. We propose to cull for our readers a few of the most interesting pa.s.sages.

Dr. Spring was born in Newburyport, Ma.s.sachusetts, Feb. 24, 1785. His father was a minister, of whom the son says that "he would not shave his face on the Lord's day, nor allow his wife to sew a b.u.t.ton on her son's vest; and on one occasion, when his nephew, the late Adolphus Spring, Esq., arrived in haste on a Sat.u.r.day evening with the message that his father was on his bed of death, he would not mount his horse for the journey of seventy miles until the Sabbath sun had gone down."

Though young Gardiner used to wonder, when a boy, why he was not allowed to partic.i.p.ate in the customary sports of children, he seems to have preserved a warm affection for both his parents, of whom he speaks in a loving and reverential tone which we cannot too carefully respect. The thought that most affected him on their death was {130} "_that he had lost their prayers._" Gardiner was sent to Yale College at the age of fifteen, and during "a remarkable outpouring of the Spirit" upon that rather unregenerate inst.i.tution, in the year 1803, he became, for a season, "hopefully pious." He had been uneasy for some time about the state of his soul, and one afternoon he resolved to pray, several hours, if necessary, until his sins were forgiven.

"There," he says, "in the south entry of the old college, back side, middle room, third story, I wrestled with G.o.d as I had never wrestled before." The result of this spiritual struggle we do not profess to understand. He says that he rose from his knees without any hope that he had found mercy, yet feeling considerably relieved. For several weeks he went about, peaceful and happy, when, unluckily, the Fourth of July came, with its speeches and fireworks, and his "religious hopes and impressions all vanished as a morning cloud, and as the early dew." It was five or six years before they came back again.