Page:Brigadier-General Thomas Francis Meagher- his political and military career; (IA brigadiergeneral00lyon 0).pdf/15



the life of Thomas Francis Meagher should be written requires no explanation. The career of a man who has made so interesting a part of the history of twenty remarkable years, who participated prominently in two revolutionary struggles--a bloodless one in the Old World, and a sanguinary one in the New-whose eloquence has thrilled two peoples by a for your not common to the orators of our time, but almost peculiar to himself, and by a redundancy of classic beauty, both in thought and language, which distinguished his oratorical efforts from those of any contemporary; the career of such a man should not be left to tho more memory of his words and works.

Thousands who watched his course, from his first entry into public life in the very flush and exuberance of early manhood, down to the hour of his death;--who saw with what self-sacrifice he flung behind him the pleasures and honours of a wealthy home, to share in the labours and dangers of the patriots then battling for the cause of his country: and who remember how manfully he faced all the buffets of ill-fortune which followed--the disasters of defeat, the solemnity of condemnation to the scaffold, and the penalty of eternal exile: all these thousands living in two hemispheres who loved him for the grand chivalry which clothed