Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/106

 petition, Mr. John Sadleir presented himself, was proposed by the parish priest and supported by the Bishop, and got elected. In every constituency there was a group of manly, resolute priests and farmers who stood by the League, but they were warned that the hand of episcopal authority would fall heavy upon them.

To the consternation of Nationalists, Maurice Leyne was struck down at this time. He had established a newspaper in Tipperary to combat the Sadleir faction, who held a local bank, and had nearly all the local Members of Parliament under their control. The committee of the journal, which was a joint-stock one, asked me to recommend a successor to Leyne, and I told them they had the right man at hand in Leyne's assistant editor. They preferred another, however, and lost a man who proved a brilliant journalist, and in the end an accomplished orator—A. M. Sullivan. A lady who knew Leyne well, and was a competent critic, wrote to me:—

"Is not Leyne's death, in the midst of the vigour that seemed to run riot in his veins, appalling? Poor Leyne—poor Zozimus! It seems to me we have never done justice to his noble qualities, and the flashes of true genius which broke through his extravagance and exaggeration. Death reveals his real proportions. The largest and raciest Irish nature amongst us all lay under the mass of inertness and feebleness, which, we were too apt to conclude, was the whole of his character.—M.C."

I must recur to my diary:—

"Yesterday Mr. Cobden showed me an American newspaper containing an address signed by about fifty Dissenting Ministers assailing John Mitchel for his late longing for a plantation of fat niggers, and most unfairly holding the Irish people responsible for his offence.

"I dined at John Brady's to meet Sheridan Knowles, and had a long talk with the poet. He has a brow somewhat retreating, but expressive eyes, and a sweet, pleasant mouth. He was accompanied by his wife, a lady who is too aggressively pious for social enjoyment, and constantly whips the poor man up to his Tabernacle. When the ladies vanished Knowles talked in a most frank and cordial manner. He