Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/42

 me you would not run the smallest risk of prosecution. The Government could make no case against you, and want anything rather than to stir the embers of popular indignation. On that score there is no difficulty.

"In case you do this, I would not wish you to blow any trumpets about uniting the two Nations, but announce your return to Ireland in a quiet spirit. But it is time enough to discuss these things. The present question is, Will you come, and come at the period I have specified?

"P.S. I have never ceased to be anxious that you were here, because here or nowhere Irish work is to be done, and because, as a writer and a speaker, there is not any Irishman living whose help I would as soon have as yours. I think you want some faculties of statesmanship, for your Nation and Celt have been travelling the same road, which leads nowhere; but know, Thomas D'Arcy, that there is neither a poet nor journalist of the race of Heber and Heremon entitled to take his place before you. Therefore, I want to see you here in the time when the last effort must be made for Ireland. And perhaps, if I probed my heart a little deeper, also because life has not anything that compensates me for the pleasant summer rambles we have enjoyed together, speculating on the dead past and unborn future."

Later I wrote to the same friend:—

"On the question of the priests you are angry, and therefore unreasonable. Nothing has been done against you in America but was done also here against the old Nation. But we minded our work and let it blow by. I have seen the priests everywhere throughout Ireland since I left Newgate, and I would make oath that there are many of the young priests as zealous and true as the best of the Confederates. If there be others, enemies to liberty, they are there, and they or their successors will be there when we are in our graves. Writing against them would effect something by the time you were grey headed perhaps, but not much even then. A wise navigator does not preach sermons against rocks ahead, but takes entirely different precautions.

"You ask me ought you go on with the 'Personal Recol-