Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/234

 bad bargain for Ireland. But the passion of Nationality, the love of our mother country, which is no more dependent on the balance of profit and loss than the love of the mother who cherished us at her breast, had sprung from the teaching of the Nation, and had spread wide among classes who scorned Conciliation Hall, and among some even who would maintain the political Union, but ally it, as in Scotland, with the profound love of country. The correspondence of the period recalls projects designed to cherish this sacred flame. Mr. Moore was the nom de théâtre of an actor, who made a great success in recent plays by Leigh Hunt and Sheridan Knowles, and whom Mr. Knowles afterwards assured me was the most promising actor of his day, destined, if he had not abandoned the stage, to win a foremost place. But religious scruples induced him to give up his profession, and he became known to us in Ireland as Professor of Elocution in Maynooth College, under his actual name of Moore Stack. I believe his gifts amounted to genius; certainly he moved me more, reciting a speech of Curran or Patrick Henry, or a ballad of Davis or Lefanu, than any orator at the Bar or in the Senate dealing with the most vivid actualities of the hour. I thought such gifts might be of immense service to the National cause, and my comrades put forth all their influence to organise a committee which would give him a great début. Professors of the Dublin University and of Maynooth College, and leaders of all the learned professions assembled in the Rotunda to hear him recite some of the masterpieces of Irish literature, and poems by the Young Irelanders living and dead. We believed a very valuable work had been done for the National cause; and that it did not disappoint Mr. Stack's expectations we may gather from the following letter:—

"Friday, Feb. 20, 1845. ,—I cannot leave town without offering you such thanks as I am able for your kindly feelings and conduct towards me since the first moment I have had the happiness of knowing you. Never did I so deeply regret my inability^to express my thoughts as at this instant, or feel how feebly the commonplace expressions which I can command to convey the sentiments of my mind.