Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/73

 if one encountered him in the Great Desert, would be recognised as the head of a Christian teacher. He supported my educational proposal cordially. "We were not permitted to govern our country," he said, " but we might teach it, and it is a nobler task to teach a people than to rule them." This was the second friend. From that time forth, whenever I made any public proposal entitled to his support the support of the Bishop of Dromore was sure to come; and whenever any difficulty embarrassed my public life the good bishop, as we shall see, came to my aid. This proposal did not perish on the highway. Father Mathew afterwards declared that he caused thirty thousand copies of my speech to be printed and circulated among the teetotalers of Ireland. These were some of the incidents which reconciled me to a provincial career, and left me not discontented with the use I had made of three years of my early manhood.

As a political journal the Vindicator was a success, but I longed to see it awaken an interest in native literature. The fragments of Celtic song which came down to us from the eras of resistance, often in rude translations only, had been a constant joy to me, and I was persuaded that among a race whose public festivities were always enlivened by ballad poetry, chanted by minstrels and chiefs, song was an immense though greatly underrated force. Swift, who was as little as possible of a Celt, seems to have divined this passion in the race, and his political songs were almost as powerful stimulants of opinion as his pamphlets. Clarence Mangan contributed constantly to the Vindicator, but his verses were either epigrams or. mere elaborate pleasantries; his national enthusiasm and confidence were not yet awakened.

" (he wrote to me at that time) Don't ask me for political essays just now I have had no experience in that genre, and I should infallibly blunder. I send you six pages, 'Our Budget,' 'Jokeriana,' 'Jokerisms,' 'Flimflams,' and 'Whim-whams,' or anything else you like to call them—isms, they are facetiæ (at least I hope so) in the American fashion, and might do for your fourth page—pray Heaven you don't imagine they'd your paper altogether. If you like these I shall probably improve my