Page:A Memorial of John Boyle O'Reilly from the City of Boston.djvu/30

24 on which St. Patrick lighted that Easter fire that proved the morning star of Christianity to Ireland.

When we were boys the patriotic fervor aroused in men's minds by the O'Connell agitation had not so far lost its force as to leave no impress on our youthful souls. Our patriotic enthusiasm was aroused even in our school days, by reading the history of our country and the speeches and writings of the leaders of the Young Ireland Party, Gavan Duffy, Smith O'Brien, and Thomas Francis Meagher.

Our youthful imagination was fed with the poetic fire of Tom Moore, Davis, Mangan, and Speranza. The political ferment and upheaval of 1848, coming to us as a recent history, was not without its influence. In 1853 we were old enough to take an intelligent interest in the Tenant Right League, so ably conducted by Gavan Duffy, Sherman Crawford, and Frederic Lucas, and so wofully wrecked by the treachery of Sadlier and Keough. On the failure of the Tenant Eight movement, I left Ireland, but John Boyle O'Reilly became a leading spirit in the futile effort of the Fenians to wrest from England by force what she refused to yield to persuasion. In this Fenian episode, his fiery zeal for the freedom of Ireland outran the slow-footed prudence of older politicians and clerical conservatism. In this critical time he never swerved in his loyalty to the Church of his Fathers. He was a splendid illustration of the kinship that exists between patriotism and religion, and showed