Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/31

 Wallis grumbled at large, as his wont was, and announced that I need not count upon him for much assistance. But he recognised that our work was generous, even noble. "By the living God," he wrote, "I can conceive nothing nobler than that a few men, standing up in the midst of such social, moral, and physical pestilence as covers the length and breadth of Ireland, should say, 'We don't despair—we b elieve endlessly in the redemptive energies of man, whether in the mass or in the individual,' and who should testify by a lifetime of recuperative toil to the sincerity of their belief." Speranza had not lost sympathy with the National cause, but she had not unnaturally lost hope, and was indignant with the people at large. "I do not blame the leaders in the least," she wrote to me; "in Sicily or Belgium they would have been successful." To my policy and projects she gave a general but tepid assent and sympathy; but the eagerness and impatience of a woman of genius could ill reconcile themselves to the slow road we were bound to travel. One project to be mentioned presently—the Small Proprietors' Society—excited her enthusiasm as of old:—

"I read the pamphlet with great interest. If the object can be accomplished it will make Ireland a 'Garden of the Lord.' Nothing so admirable has ever yet been suggested. But the Small Estates should be guarded against sub-letting, or we shall have renewed cycles of pauperism only."

The new journal was more the express image of my own will and conscience than the old one, because my colleagues were young and untrained, and for a long time were fitter to practise than to project. They matured in time and became notable men, but not yet. It was impossible to write any longer with the glad confidence of '43, but visions of speedy success were replaced by a dogged determination not to fail in the end, and never to be turned aside from the goal of our race.

The national sentiment was subdued, but not extinct. It broke out in the disguise of imperfect and impossible proposals, but they at least showed that there was still an Irish question to be dealt with. A society for promoting the periodical meeting of the Imperial Parliament in Dublin met, in which Lord O'Neill, Lord Castlestuart, Lord Rossmore,