Ireland lay there literally "dead on the field of honour." Chatham, in
the House of Lords, John Quincy Adams, in the House of Representatives,
fell in harness, but neither death so speaks to the heart as the simple
and sublime self-sacrifice of the great Dominican, dragging himself from
his dying bed into Dublin to spend the last splendour of his genius and
his life for the starving children of the poor in Donegal.

What would I not give for an hour with him now!

After breakfast I went out to find Mr. Davitt, hoping he might suggest
some way of seeing the Nationalist meeting on Wednesday night without
undergoing the dismal penance of sitting out all the speeches. I wished
also to ask him why at Rathkeale he talked about the Dunravens as
"absentees." He was born in Lord Lucan's country, and may know little of
Limerick, but he surely ought to know that Adare Manor was built of
Irish materials, and by Irish workmen, under the eye of Lord Dunraven,
all the finest ornamental work, both in wood and in stone, of the
mansion, being done by local mechanics; and also that the present owners
of Adare spend a large part of every year in the country, and are
deservedly popular. He was not to be found at the National League
headquarters, nor yet at the Imperial Hotel, which is his usual resort,
as Morrison's is the resort of Mr. Parnell. So I sent him a note through
the Post-Office.

"You had better seal it with wax," said a friend, in whose chambers I
wrote it.

"Pray, why?"

"Oh! all the letters to well-known people that are not opened by the