Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/75

 Sympathetic contributors soon flocked in, among them a Professor of Maynooth whose verses, however, were of the peaceful school of O'Connell. After a little, local poets sang the revival of national spirit in the North and the decay of British ascendancy, and correspondents sent to the Vindicator, as to their natural habitat, verses disinterred from commercial and statistical newspapers of the day. Here is a specimen:—

The worm at the root of the whole social system in Ireland, the land laws, was not forgotten in these tirades.

I copy these rude experiments because they were the precursors and precedents of the poetry of the Nation, which produced a memorable and permanent change in the spirit of the country.