Page:The Irish in Australia.djvu/351

 chair of natural science. The scientific attainments of Professor McCoy are widely known, and the splendid Australasian museum which has been established in Melbourne under his fostering care, whilst being a source of delight and instruction to thousands, is a standing monument to his painstaking industry and his scientific enthusiasm. It is to a Victorian citizen that the Irish race is indebted for the best and most complete collection of national poetry in existence, viz., "The Ballad Poetry of Ireland," in two volumes, compiled by Edmund Hayes, a long-time resident of Melbourne. Conversely, the native-born Australian race is under an obligation to an Irishman resident in their midst—Gerald Henry Supple—for the only national poem of the first order of merit they possess. "The Dream of Dampier" is styled by its author "An Australasian Foreshadowing," and, in its full and flowing verse, there seems to throb the ardent lifeblood of the youngest of the nations; the vision of the future rises before the dreamy gaze of the hardy buccaneer as he skirts the shores of Australia, and he sees in wondrous anticipation the golden glories that were destined to remain hidden for two centuries before being revealed to mortal eyes.

William Carleton, jun., and John Finnamore are two Irish-Australians who have also attained distinction in the field of colonial poetry. The former is the son of the great Irish novelist of the same name. His chief work is entitled "The Warden of Galway." It is a metrical romance founded on a remarkable incident in Irish history—the execution of his own son by an inexorable father, who sacrifices all the feelings of nature in order to vindicate the law. Mr. Finnamore's two well-constructed tragedies, "Francesca Vasari" and "Carpio," have a circle of admirers that increases in circumference with