Thank God that all is not profligacy and corruption in the history
of that devoted people--and that the name of Irishman does not
always carry with it the idea of the oppressor or the oppressed--the
plunderer or the plundered--the tyrant or the slave! Great men
hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time. What
Irishman does not feel proud that he has lived in the days of
GRATTAN? who has not turned to him for comfort, from the false
friends and open enemies of Ireland? who did not remember him in the
days of its burnings and wastings and murders? No Government ever
dismayed him--the world could not bribe him--he thought only of
Ireland--lived for no other object--dedicated to her his beautiful
fancy, his elegant wit, his manly courage, and all the splendour of
his astonishing eloquence. He was so born and so gifted that
poetry, forensic skill, elegant literature, and all the highest
attainments of human genius were within his reach; but he thought
the noblest occupation of a man was to make other men happy and
free; and in that straight line he went on for fifty years, without
one side-look, without one yielding thought, without one motive in
his heart which he might not have laid open to the view of God and
man. He is gone!--but there is not a single day of his honest life
of which every good Irishman would not be more proud than of the
whole political existence of his countrymen--the annual deserters
and betrayers of their native land.



MOORE'S CAPTAIN ROCK.