Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

"Abbot Academy has real estate valued at forty thousand dollars. Its apparatus, library, furniture, etc., are valued at ten thousand dollars. Its productive and available funds are valued at $33,636. This valuation was made two years ago; and it is now safe to say that the whole property of the institution, including real and personal estate, amounts to no more than ninety thousand dollars. The number of books in its library is 2,630. The number of its books relating to the fine arts is 233. The number of its art illustrations is 3,284. Still it has no convenient rooms for its books, pictures, casts. They are highly valuable, but are scattered in different and obscure places. It has a good cabinet of specimens illustrating conchology. Where is the cabinet? A large part of it I have never seen. It is kept in the boxes in which it was sent to the academy. Where is the scientific apparatus? Where is it?

"The rooms for the pupils are not large enough. Two students live by day and by night in one small chamber. The passages between the rooms are too narrow. The recitation rooms are too small and not well ventilated. The teachers have no adequate support, and could readily obtain much larger salaries for far less work in other institutions. For such reasons the academy asks for an enlarged endowment. It needs $150,000 for its new buildings. Thus far it has received promise of only $36,000. If it receive a generous increase of funds it will flourish; if it does not, it will not flourish as it should. Other institutions will attract its scholars. We cannot expect that future instructors will have a spirit of self-denial equal to that of its present and past instructors.

"After his 7th of March speech, Daniel Webster said to the Bostonians, 'You have conquered your climate, you have now nothing to do but to conquer your prejudices.' He meant that New Englanders had overcome the laws of nature, which had provided them with little except ice and granite; and nothing was left for them to conquer except their prejudices against the system of slavery. Now the teachers of Abbot Academy have conquered themselves, and there is nothing left for them to subdue except the laws of nature. They cannot subdue these laws. They cannot resist the attractions which other institutions have received from large funds, commodious dormitories, and suitable lecture-rooms and halls. The two Misses McKeen have devoted a high degree of skill and energy to the upbuilding of this institution; but they have had a superior ancestry. They inherited strength and fortitude. They descended from the sturdy men and women who settled Londonderry, New Hampshire.

"James McKeen of Londonderry was connected by marriage with James McGregor, the first minister of that town, who was a remarkable man. He was asked to leave his New Hampshire parish and go to the First Presbyterian Church in New York city. He declined. Londonderry was a more promising field for usefulness than New York. Londonderry has since succumbed. By the aid of the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean, New York has gone ahead.

"A traveller walking through Fifth Avenue and then through the roads of Londonderry can detect the superiority of New York with the naked eye. Unless Abbot Academy receive a larger and richer endowment than it now has, it will be to other institutions what the New Hampshire township is to the commercial emporium of our land.

"Why not allow our academy to decline? What special reasons are there for giving a new impulse to it? We ask for our new buildings because our academy is the oldest incorporated institution in the land for the higher culture of young ladies exclusively. Its age gives it a title to support. The antiquity of a school is a rich treasure to it. Scores of matrons, teachers, missionaries, have been trained in this school, and have performed signal services in our Western settlements, in Constantinople, in Japan, and in other distant parts of the world. The affections of these pupils are still entwined around this ancient academy. Again, we need our new buildings as monuments to the past services of teachers who have adorned and honored the school. Their example of faithful work and of exemplary self-denial ought to receive a visible and fitting memorial.

"Still another reason is that the endowment for which we ask will encourage future instructors to imitate the example of their predecessors. I have been conversant with many schools, I have not known one in which the principles of mental and moral philosophy, of the English and the Latin language, and of the fine arts have been more thoroughly and faithfully studied than in Abbot Academy. We do not expect there will ever be a theatre or an opera in the neighborhood of our academy; but we do expect that if we can obtain the pecuniary aid which we need, our school will be the resort of ladies who will devote themselves with zeal and care to the study of science, and more than all to the study of the word of God."

Professor Churchill then spoke in a very forcible and interesting manner of the aims of Abbot Academy, its wish to emphasize the home as well as the school. In a second article upon the institution it is hoped his remarks will be given in detail in connection with a more extended consideration of the aim to which he referred. Mr. Hartwell, for Messrs. Hartwell and Richardson, then explained the principal points of their plans, drawings of which were hung upon the walls. He concluded by expressing the heartiest interest in the academy and a most earnest wish for the success of the good plans in its behalf. Mr. Porter read a letter from Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, a portion of which follows:--

Abbot Academy has no superior. Its graduates go forth fitted
for life's true work. The education they have received has been
admirably adapted to form both mind and heart. It has had the
social, intellectual and spiritual elements in due
proportion.... I have sent six daughters to Abbot Academy and
do not fear to compare the result as seen in their training,
with the results attained in any other institution of our land,
provided the persons selected are of equal natural gifts. The
missionary work of Abbot Academy has been wide in extent and
noble in character, both at home and abroad; and should be
understood by friends of missions. It cannot be spared; its
work, its history, its example, make it one of our choicest
schools for the education of women, and I pray God it may be
abundantly, richly endowed.

Mr. Edwin Reed of Cambridge, who married an Abbot Academy graduate, after felicitous compliments to the school, made a graceful, sparkling speech, from which we quote,--"The wise, judicious, painstaking administration of affairs there goes always to the roots of character, and gives us:--

'The perfect woman, nobly planned
To warn, to comfort, and command.'

One uniform spirit of devotion to the highest good of all presides there, and impresses itself on every pupil. Indeed, I am not sure, if I had my way and could educate but one of the sexes, that I would not take the girls, and give them the colleges of the land, in preference to the present occupants. This would be hard on the boys, but, if I should 'turn the rascals out' and put their sisters in, it would be for this reason, great men always have great mothers. No great man ever lived who did not derive the native strength of his character directly from the mother who bore him. Mothers impress their qualities on their sons, and to get a generation of great men at the earliest possible moment, I would adopt the order of nature and secure first a generation of great mothers."

Dr. McKenzie spoke affectionately of the academy and its toilsome growth, saying that almost every object in the school had its history. He referred to the great force of the demands made by schools and colleges, and said that it was a sign of health and vigor when a school asked for better accommodations, because it had wider opportunities for usefulness. Mr. Porter proposed a committee to attend to the matter in this section, as follows, Rufus S. Frost, James White, Edwin Reed, C. F. P. Bancroft, Mrs. Daniel Chamberlin, Miss Annie Means, Miss Caroline A. Holmes, Miss Josephine Wilcox and Mrs. Laura A. W. Fowler. The committee was subsequently enlarged by adding the names of Rev. Edward G. Porter and Miss Mary E. Fowle. After the business the meeting adjourned to the dining-room, where Mrs. Chamberlin had thoughtfully and kindly provided a delicious entertainment, which fitly ended the delightful afternoon.

The Rev. Phillips Brooks acknowledged his kinship to the founder of Abbot, and in substance said: "No institution so takes on personality as a school. I see the various colleges almost as if they had features, and we may have some such feeling regarding Abbot Academy. Then there is so much in the quality of an old institution, if it keeps abreast of the times. The period of the founding of Abbot was an interesting one. It was a time when old ideas were being left behind and a new thought was just taking the place of the old. Great processes, which have not yet begun to fulfil themselves, had just begun to appear. No one can think of the academy without feeling grateful for that religious character which it is easier for an old school to keep than for a new one to acquire. Then, too, there is an advantage in its location, for there is much economy and much value in the educational atmosphere of a town like Andover."

The plan provides for four buildings; the main or central one, where the family life will be carried on, connected by corridors with the smaller French and German Halls, and containing, not only parlors, school offices, dining-rooms, and suites for teachers and pupils; but a beautiful library, a spacious reading-room, and upon its third floor, commodious music-rooms shut off from each other and the corridors by walls and doors of such construction that sound cannot pass through. French and German Halls furnish each a family sitting-room cheery with open fires and charming with artistic finish; suites for pupils and teachers, but neither kitchen nor dining accommodations, as all meals are to be taken in the main building. To this purpose the western front of the lower or basement story has been devoted. The young ladies coming from the language houses pass by separate staircases to their own dining-room on the north and south side of the central one, where the English-speaking pupils sit. These side dining-rooms can be shut off or thrown into the central apartment at will, and in this way freedom for the foreign language is secured and the whole number of pupils centralized; a more economical arrangement than the present one of three separate kitchens. Indeed, apart from economy, and outside the great advantage this plan affords to the students of French and German, the Faculty of Abbot Academy emphatically prefer the division of the school into distinct families; the cottage system insuring in their opinion much greater certainty of health, and opportunities for the direct personal influence important in the development of character. The fourth building is the academy, where prayers and recitations will be conducted, and where public gatherings will be suitably accommodated. The three living-houses are arranged for one hundred and twenty-five pupils only, two pupils occupy single beds in one bedroom and sharing a parlor. The architecture is after the eleventh century Romanesque; the material brick, with freestone trimmings, and the effect of all simple, suitable, dignified.

FOOTNOTES:

[C] Abbot Academy, then called Abbot Female Academy, was incorporated Feb. 26, 1829; Moravian Brothers established schools for girls, Bethlehem, Pa., 1749; Rev. Joseph Emerson opened seminaries for girls in Byfield, Saugus, and Wethersfield, 1815; charter obtained for Adams Academy, Derry, N. H., 1823; Miss Lyon's seminary, Ipswich, 1828; Bradford Academy limited its work to girls, 1836; Mount Holyoke, 1835; Vassar College, Smith College, and Wellesley College later, but dates are uncertain, as confusion results from lack of definiteness as to whether they represent the year of founding, opening, or incorporation.

[D] Miss Sarah Abbot, Founder of Abbot Academy, Andover, was born in Andover, Oct. 3. 1762; married Nehemiah Abbot, first Steward of Andover Theological Seminary, often called Divinity College; died in 1848, in the house on Andover Hill, occupied for many years by the family of Dr. Samuel C. Jackson, and now the residence of Prof. E. J. Hincks; buried in the cemetery of the South Church, Andover.

THE ORIGINAL NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE.

BY REV. EDGAR BUCKINGHAM.

The magazine which first bore this title was established in the year 1831, by Joseph T. and Edwin Buckingham. There were not at that time many monthly periodicals in the country; it was long before the days of the _Atlantic_ and _Putnam's_. The _New-England_ originated in the desire of my brother Edwin, who, at that date, was just twenty-one years of age, to rise to a higher position than that of editor of a daily paper. He had been for some years connected with my father, first, as assistant editor of the _New England Galaxy_, and then of the Boston _Courier_. People estimate very differently now the position of the editor of one of our city dailies; but at that time, though such an editor had an influence and a very great one, he could not be said to rule so far in political and social life, and to be so nearly supreme, as he has since become through the talents and labors of the Bennetts, of Greeley, of Raymond, of Thurlow Weed, and of Samuel Bowles. It is true, Mr. Bryant, of the _Evening Post_, was already at his station, so was Joseph E. Chandler, of Philadelphia; and Gales and Seaton, of the _National Intelligencer_; and Nathan Hale also, of the Boston _Advertiser_, exerted an important influence, wherever that paper was read. But an editor now addresses every day ten thousand or a hundred thousand readers, where fifty years ago the issue of his paper was limited to little more than a thousand copies. My brother Edwin felt, apparently, that to be editor of a monthly magazine would bring him into closer connection and intimacy with the leading men of literary eminence throughout the country, and so the magazine was originated by him and by my father on his account.

Edwin was an accomplished writer at that early day. He had not learned the art at school; for he left school altogether when he was fourteen years of age. At that early period of life, he entered into the printing-office of the _New England Galaxy_, learning to set type, and, shortly, came to have charge of the making up of the paper. My father often said that the best school education one could get was at the compositor's stand. Edwin early began to write for the paper, and I remember, now, with what admiration an article of his on "Massachusetts" was read more than sixty years ago, and while he was yet a boy. The _Galaxy_ was sold in 1827; and my father and brother gave themselves up more particularly to the editorship of the _Courier_. Before Edwin was twenty-one, he spent some winters in Washington, as special correspondent of the newspaper; and while there attracted no little attention from the great men of the nation. He was a young man of active habits, and during the trial of the Whites, at Salem, for the murder of Joseph White, in 1830, at which Mr. Webster made one of his most powerful efforts as a lawyer and advocate, Edwin reported the proceedings. He drove down to Salem in the morning, and back at night with the proceeds of his daily labor, over the cold and foggy marshes of Lynn. Then he took a cold, from the effects of which he never recovered. He used the severest remedies, and, in October, 1832, he sailed for Smyrna; after spending some months there in a home where friendship and kindness did all that nature and skill could accomplish, and finding all means ineffectual, he started for home to die; but a few days before reaching his native land he breathed his last. His remains were committed to the deep in May, 1833. A cenotaph at Mt. Auburn commemorates his birth and death. It bears the inscription of being placed there by "Boston Mechanics." Edwin believed in the mechanic arts, and in what are called laboring men. He had himself been of them. It was fitting also his monument should be reared at Mt. Auburn; it was one of the first stones erected there. He had been himself greatly instrumental in carrying to success the project of turning "Sweet" Auburn, as it had been called, into a cemetery where the ashes of the loved and illustrious might be gathered for a final resting-place.

The Magazine started well, and may be said to have been wholly successful, compared with other literary undertakings of the day, and with the just expectations of the proprietors. My father and brother had capable, willing, illustrious helpers. The first article of the first number was by Dr. Frothingham, of Boston, than whom no more elegant scholar, no finer writer was to be found in New England; Hon. Edward Everett contributed a playful article of some length to the same number. Hon. George S. Hillard, long known also in Boston for his fine scholarship, contributed a long review of the "Chanting Cherubs," a greatly admired piece of sculpture by Horatio Greenough then on exhibition in Boston. Hon. William Austin of Charlestown contributed a most ingenious and interesting story, not surpassed by fiction of the present day. Among the contributors to the first number were also Dr. Samuel G. Howe, and Hon. Timothy Walker of Cincinnati; Rev. Leonard Withington of Newbury, Mass., a gentleman who lived long and quietly in that secluded village, but wielded a vigorous pen, and had a very thoughtful mind; his contribution was of a very kindly and wise article on the religious character of Lord Byron,--an article well worth republication as an introduction to any complete collection of the works of that great poet. One would say such a combination of the literary strength of Massachusetts was a good setting off for a new magazine.

The gentlemen above named, all or most of them, continued their contributions for other months and years. In addition to these whose names I have given, there were in succeeding numbers articles from Richard Hildreth, the historian, Park Benjamin, the poet, John G. Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Professor Longfellow, Miss Hannah F. Gould, Dr. W. B. O. Peabody, of Springfield, Dr. Andrew P. Peabody, long known and honored and loved in his position in Cambridge as guardian and friend of the young men in college. But the list would be too long to enumerate all the fine scholars and eminent writers who gathered to make up the NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE. My father and brother were very successful in securing the labors especially of young men,--my brother, because he was young himself,--my father, because always he was quick to discern rising merit, and ready and earnest to help forward young men to success and eminence. The list above given is that mostly of men who at that time were still in early youth.

The fifth volume of the Magazine, in July, 1833, records my brother's death and the solitude of the senior editor. The number is prefaced by a picture of my brother, which shows him as a handsome young man, at the age of twenty-two; but the lithograph cannot give his fair complexion, the clearness of his large blue eyes. It was accompanied by an elegiac poem, by Charles Sprague, well known then, and not forgotten since, as one of our most finished poets, and one of our most pathetic writers. The work that then devolved upon my father, not only as editor of a daily paper, but as a man of public activity and usefulness, member as he was for many years of the Legislature, chairman of committees, to whose reports he devoted an immensity of labor, was sufficient to require him to give up the Magazine. Besides its more strictly literary articles, contributed mostly by others, though my father wrote some of the literary articles himself, the Magazine presented every month a review of the public proceedings of Congress and of many of the State governments, the most of which, I think, were prepared by himself, and usually a long series of obituary notices. These last were of citizens of different parts of the country, and came undoubtedly from different hands. But of people of distinction, citizens of Boston, who died from 1831 to 1835, my father's pen probably produced almost all of the eulogies. The warmth of his friendship, his readiness to see all good, to forgive all imperfections, his skill as a writer, made such articles from his pen exceedingly interesting and admirable.

In December, 1834, my father wrote his valedictory, and on the first of January, 1835, announced that the proprietorship had passed into the hands of Dr. Samuel G. Howe and John O. Sargent, Esq. In looking over the papers of the seven volumes, which filled out my father's editorship, very many articles are found of the highest merit,--as the names of the contributors given above would assure the reader; and if some of inferior worth are at times mingled with them, they probably had some interest at the time they were written; and the Magazine on the whole would be pronounced, I suppose, worthy of general commendation.

* * * * *

It is the Nemesis of pedantry to be always wrong. Your true prig of a pedant goes immensely out of his way to be vastly more correct than other people, and succeeds in the end in being vastly more ungrammatical, or vastly more illogical, or both at once.--_Cornhill Magazine._

IRISH HOME RULE AGITATION:

ITS HISTORY AND ISSUES.

BY REV. H. HEWITT.

By far the most thorny problem of British statesmanship at the present moment is the persistent and pressing demand made by the Irish people through the Irish press and their representatives in Parliament for the repeal of the Union and the recognition of their right to national self-government. Incessantly, earnestly, eloquently, the question has been agitated for the past dozen years or so. Adroitly and skilfully it has been manipulated by some of the most brilliant, sagacious, and resolute agitators Ireland has ever known. Slowly but steadily it has grown, passing from stage to stage with ever-brightening prospect of ultimate success, until it has now become the aspiration, we might almost say, the one, quenchless, all-absorbing passion of the Irish people. The consequence is that the first calm moment after a most exciting and vigorous electoral contest, during which "the fire out of the bramble" has devoured many "cedars of Lebanon," the two great parties in the State find themselves face to face with a difficulty which, even for the most zealous aspirant to place and power, robs the honors and emoluments of office of more than half their charm. Neither Liberal nor Conservative will care to incur the displeasure of the Queen and the implacable wrath of the English aristocracy--both Whig and Tory--by consenting to the political divorcement of Ireland, and to what would be regarded as the disruption of the empire. For it is felt, not without good reason, that the indirect and ultimate consequences of the severance would be far more serious than any direct and immediate effects. The efforts of popular statesmen, in recent times, have been mainly directed toward the maintenance of the prestige of the Crown. This was the sole motive of Lord Beaconsfield's "spirited foreign policy." It was the one consideration that made the "Imperial Titles Bill," and the imperial measures of which it proved to be the too significant prelude, so immensely popular in London. So sure was he of the strength and predominance of this patriotic sentiment in England that he made his appeal almost exclusively to it, in asking in 1880 for a fresh lease of power. The occasion was critical, he said. "The peace of Europe, and the ascendency of England in the councils of Europe" depended upon the verdict the country was now called upon to give. The policy of the party opposed to his own was declared to be a "policy of decomposition." But the concession of self-government in the form demanded by the Irish Parliamentary party, whatever might be the political necessity pleaded in justification of it, would be certain to be interpreted in England, in the colonies and dependencies of the British empire, and by all foreign States, as a sure omen of the decline of the British Crown. To us it is utterly inconceivable that the Queen, who is profoundly conscious of her power, keenly sensitive as to her royal dignities, rights, and prerogatives, and proud, as she has reason to be, of her long and prosperous reign, should ever consent to a policy of dismemberment, by whatever political party proposed. The Conservatives cannot afford to purchase the influence and assistance of the Irish vote at the price Mr. Parnell has fixed and is every way likely to insist on. They would have to belie the best traditions of the party, and discredit the cardinal principles of their once powerful and still deeply revered chief--the late Lord Beaconsfield--to whom Home Rule meant "veiled rebellion," and presented a danger "scarcely less disastrous than pestilence and famine." The Liberals are equally unlikely to risk the integrity and unity of the party by the concession of a claim which even an advanced Radical like Mr. Chamberlain has condemned as unwarrantable, unwise, and impossible to be granted. Still this and nothing less than this is the hope and expectation of the great majority of the Irish people. This and nothing less will be the demand of the Irish leaders as soon as Parliament assembles at the beginning of the ensuing year.

In order to a clear and correct understanding of the position of Irish affairs at the present juncture, and of the nature and ground of the Home Rule demand, it will be necessary briefly to sketch the history of the agitation's genesis and growth. It is all the more necessary to do this as there are few political or social problems, even in England itself, more grievously misunderstood and wantonly misstated. It is truly surprising how much confusion, ignorance, and irrational antipathy may be nursed and maintained by an excited state of public feeling and a partisan and prejudiced press. Mr. Justin McCarthy complains with some bitterness that "people found their deepest sympathies stirred by the sufferings of cattle and horses in Ireland, who never were known to feel one throb of compunction over the fashionable sin of torturing pigeons at Hurlingham." And the words he quotes from a letter addressed to the _Times_ of Dec. 3, 1880, by the illustrious General Gordon, after a visit to the much afflicted country, show with equal clearness the sad condition of affairs in Ireland, and the apparent incapability of the English public to realize it. "I have been lately over the south-west of Ireland," he wrote, "in the hope of discovering how some settlement could be made of the Irish question, which, like a fretting cancer, eats away our vitals as a nation." After the bold and, as some would think, unstatesmanlike proposal, "that the government should, at a cost of eighty millions, convert the greater part of the south-west of Ireland into Crown lands, in which landlords should have no power of control," Gordon concluded, "I must say, from all accounts and my own observations, that the state of our fellow-countrymen in the parts I have named is worse than that of any people in the world, let alone Europe. I believe that these people are made as we are, that they are patient beyond belief, loyal, but at the same time broken-spirited and desperate, living on the verge of starvation, in places where we would not keep our cattle.... Our comic prints do an infinity of harm by their caricatures. Firstly, the caricatures are not true, for the crime in Ireland is not greater than that in England; secondly, they exasperate the people on both sides of the Channel, and they do no good. It is ill to laugh and scoff at a question which affects our existence."

To Gordon's appeal on behalf of Ireland no one was more ready to listen with sympathy than the Prime Minister himself. The claims and grievances of the people whose magnanimous endurance, self-restraint, and patience had so excited Gordon's admiration and called forth his warmest words of praise, the great Liberal statesman had never been slow to recognize. Ireland has not always been willing to be grateful to him; but he has always striven to be more than just to her, and has more than once incurred the odium and reproach of the aristocracy of England, and even the disaffection of many of his followers, in his truly heroic "attempts to mitigate the miseries of the Irish people." When he surprised the country by his sudden and unexpected dissolution of Parliament in 1874, he had certainly done something to earn the gratitude and confidence of Ireland. He had disestablished the Irish Protestant Church. He had passed a Land Act, which at the time (1870) was regarded as a valuable contribution to the settlement of the land problem, aiming, as it did, first, to give the tenant some security of tenure where, as in the majority of cases, he had been practically unable to plead any rights as against the landlord; second, to encourage the making of needful improvements throughout the country; and, thirdly, to promote the establishment of a peasant proprietorship. In the attempt to confer a third great boon on the discontented nation in the shape of the Irish University Education Bill, he and his administration went to pieces on the immovable rock of Protestant prejudice.

Of course the provisions of the Land Act, while they occasioned some fretting and exasperation among the land-owners, who are in the habit of regarding every effort of legislation for the benefit of their tenants with a fixed sense of calamity, failed entirely to satisfy the more aggressive and eager of the Irish Parliamentary party. The Land Act had not taken its place upon the statute book before a meeting of representative Irishmen was called in Dublin with the view of framing some scheme of Home Government, and organizing measures for its advocacy in Parliament, and in the towns and cities of Ireland. In the course of discussion, one of the speakers used the words "Home Rule," and they were formally and forthwith adopted as the war-cry of the Nationalist party.

For the first five years the new organization made little headway. Its leader, Mr. Isaac Butt, was an able man--a lawyer of some distinction and a Protestant--but he was not a man to set the Thames on fire; he was not the man to control the fierce and fiery young politicians that had begun to flock to the standard of the National cause. With unromantic dutifulness to his place and his party, he annually brought his motion for Home Rule before the notice of the House, and was supported by some fifty or sixty members and a few sympathetic Radicals, but the Conservative government and its solid majority were of one mind on the matter. Mr. Butt died in 1879, and Mr. Shaw succeeded to the leadership, but on the organization of the Land League in the same year, he was quietly shunted in favor of Mr. Parnell, who, as the _Corypheus_ of the party, has so far displayed great skill, coolness, and self-command, and has been rewarded in Ireland by regal ovations, and by the suggestive title of the "uncrowned king."

Mr. Charles Stewart Parnell, who was declared by one of the speakers at a recent meeting of Irish citizens held in Faneuil Hall, and more recently by Mr. J. B. O'Reilly in the _North American Review_, to be of American birth, is really a man of English descent. One of his ancestors was the poet Parnell. Another, Sir Henry Parnell, afterwards created Lord Congleton, was the associate of Lord Grey and Lord Melbourne in the reform movement of 1829-32. He was a graduate of Cambridge University, and a Protestant in religion. By birth, by training, and by creed, he seemed to be of all persons the most unsuited to the task in which he has been so eminently successful. "In 1871, after some years of travel in America, among other places, he settled down on his estate at Avondale, in Wicklow, within whose boundaries is to be found Moore's Vale of Avoca, with its meeting waters." Like many who in spite of early failures have afterwards risen to distinction, Mr. Parnell's first public appearance was a great disappointment to himself and his friends. Before the electors of Dublin he completely broke down in his first attempt at public speaking, and the great city which has since showered upon him the highest honors it can give, rejected him. In 1875, he entered the House of Commons for the first time as member for Meath. For the first few years of his Parliamentary life he was mainly distinguished for the skill and unwearied persistency of his tactics as an obstructionist, though he also succeeded in carrying useful amendments to such measures as the Factories and Workshops Bill and the Bill for the Abolition of Flogging in the Army and Navy.

The Land League organization gave him just the kind of political machinery he wanted, though the credit of its creation belongs more to Michael Davitt and John Dillon than to him. It soon became immensely popular in Ireland, and, for a time, its orders and decrees superseded the established law of the land, with the seeming result of replacing social order and tranquillity by a condition of widespread anarchy, confusion, and lawlessness. It is only fair to say, however, that the Land League meetings did not create but only revealed the misery, distress, and discontent of the Irish rural populace. The country had recently suffered from a severe visitation of famine. Evictions for non-payment of rent had been steadily increasing for several years past. In 1877 the number stood at 463; in 1878 it swelled to nearly 1,000; at the end of 1880 it had actually reached 2,110. A bill was introduced by one of the Irish members with a view to mitigating the rigors of the law as regarded the impoverished tenantry. The government refused to adopt the measure, but sought to meet the case by framing a remedial scheme of their own which was introduced under the name of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill. This bill, which was vigorously assailed from opposite quarters in the Commons, was unceremoniously rejected by the Lords, who denounced it as a flagrant encroachment on the rights of property. It must ever be regretted in the interests of mere humanity that Mr. Gladstone's government did not compel the recalcitrant peers to abandon their attitude of defiance in regard to that much-needed piece of ameliorative legislation. The House of Lords takes nothing so ill as open and avowed conflict with a powerful and popular ministry. In such a case the issue is never doubtful. And if the ministry had shown a determination to nail their colors to the mast, the Lords would have lost no time in unfurling a flag of truce. As it was, their practical acquiescence in the rejection of the bill consummated the rupture between the Irish party and themselves. The speeches of the chiefs of the Land League grew fierce, and at times violent, in their denunciation of Her Majesty's ministers. Mr. W. E. Forster, especially, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, a man of invincible resolution and ineradicable prejudices, and yet withal a man of much rugged kindliness of nature, became the victim of incessant interrogation and attack in Parliament, and the object of an unrelenting and quenchless hate in Ireland.

At one time the tone and temper of leading agitators were all that could be desired. "Abstain," said Mr. Davitt, "from all acts of violence, repel every incentive to outrage. Glorious indeed will be our victory, and high in the estimation of mankind will our grand old fatherland stand, if we can so curb our passions and control our actions in this struggle for free land, as to march to success through privation and danger without resorting to the wild justice of revenge, or being guilty of anything which could sully the character of a brave and Christian people." Later on Mr. Davitt's feelings were less calm and his language less measured, mild and sober; as when, for instance, he pictured to his excited auditors "the wolf-dog of Irish vengeance leaping across the Atlantic to redress and avenge the wrongs of Ireland." Mr. John Dillon went further still, and ventured to intimate in a speech delivered at Kildare the advisability of military drill and general preparation for a resort to arms should the necessity arise.

Among the various means, legitimate and otherwise, adopted by the League for the accomplishment of its ends, was that form of social ostracism now familiarly known as "boycotting." Captain Boycott was an Englishman, employed as agent of Lord Earne, and occupied a farm at Ballinrobe, near Lough Mask. Emboldened by the powerful protection of the League, Lord Earne's tenants had refused to pay the stipulated rents, and Boycott served notices of eviction upon them. Whereupon not only the tenants on the estate but the population for miles on every side of him resolved not to have anything to do with him in any shape, whether of barter, business, or intercourse, nor was any one else permitted to relieve his isolation, or do him or his family any service, or supply him with any necessity of life. The Orangemen of Ulster organized and went armed to his relief, and under the protection of a small band of soldiers and police, his harvests were gathered in, and his produce conveyed to the nearest available market. Boycott went to England for a short time, and on his return to Lough Mask at once extricated himself from his painful and perilous position by giving up his agency. His unexpected surrender, strange to tell, brought about a complete revulsion of feeling among the dwellers of that wild and lovely district. He now became as popular as he had before been obnoxious. In the course of a speech delivered at a mass meeting of from fifteen to twenty thousand men at Waterford, in September, 1883, Michael Davitt said, "It was better for all concerned that the truth should be plainly and bluntly told, in order that English quack statesmen might be saved the trouble of proposing half measures to satisfy the Irish people.... Let the landlords of Ireland resign their unpopular positions, follow the example of Captain Boycott, and nobody would molest them, but if they did not, they would be grievously surprised by and by, for they would make the discovery which Captain Boycott had made, that the English government would find that it did not pay from an Imperial point of view to support a worse than useless class against the Irish nation. The 'lifeboat for the landlords,' as Lord Derby had once called the Land Act (1881), rescued them from the rocks upon which they were hurled by the waves of the Land League, but they had not reached the shores of safety yet. There were other breakers ahead that would do more damage to their rotten system than the storm of the Land League. When the laborers and the artisans of Ireland or of England and Scotland were enfranchised, was it to be supposed that the educated millions of industry would allow the national patrimony--the land--to be any longer the property of a useless class? In the language of scripture, the landlords would be asked to give an account of their stewardship, for they could be no longer stewards."

While, however, the Land Leaguers were jubilant at the success of their movement, the government were preparing to take strenuous measures for its suppression. Its leaders, Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon, Mr. T. D. Sullivan, Mr. Sexton, along with the Treasurer, Mr. Egan, and the Secretary, Mr. Brennan, and several others, were prosecuted by the Crown on the charge of inciting to outrage. The prosecution, however, broke down, as everybody expected it would, through disagreement of the jury.

When Parliament assembled in January, 1881, the policy announced for Ireland was, as usual, one of concession and coercion. There was to be a Land Act, and there was to be a Bill which would give the Lord-lieutenant "power by warrant to arrest any person reasonably suspected of treason, treasonable felony, or treasonable practices, and the commission, whether before or after the Act, of crimes of intimidation, or incitement thereto." The conflict over the latter bill, which was first introduced, made the House of Commons more like a bear-garden than a place of rational deliberation and debate. Even Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone became exasperated, and charged back upon their assailants with an energy and violence quite unwonted. Mr. Gladstone's speech in particular aroused the House, angered the Irish members, and proved to be the prelude to a prolonged conflict with systematic obstruction, which went on for some time, night and day, without break. Even Mr. Parnell for the moment lost all self-command, entered into an angry conflict with the Prime Minister, defied the ruling of the Speaker, and was expelled the House, as Mr. Dillon had been the evening before. Some thirty others of the National party followed his example of defiance with a similar result. At the close of February the Coercion Bill was sent up to the Lords, and on the beginning of March received the Queen's assent. The end of July saw the third reading of the Land Bill in the Commons, after long and wearisome debate. The Lords amended it to death, and sent it back to the Commons--the poor and pithless shadow of its former self. Restored to life in the Lower House, it was again presented for the acceptance of the peers. Again they struck at its vitality, but the Commons said, _Nulla vestigia retrorsum_. A thousand popular platforms and almost the whole provincial press called upon the government to be firm; mass meetings in London and other large cities and towns clamored for the abolition of the House of Lords and the extinction of hereditary rule. Eventually the courage of the peers gave way, and the Land Bill of 1881 became law.

The closing months of the year saw the Land League chiefs in Kilmainham Prison. Mr. Gladstone on his visit to Leeds, early in October, had met with a reception more than royal from the folks of Yorkshire. For two or three days special trains from every part of that densely populated county poured into the great emporium of the cloth-trade thousands of enthusiastic admirers eager to catch a near glimpse of the foremost statesman of the age as he rode from point to point through the barricaded streets. In one of the speeches made during the visit, he had strongly reprobated the policy and proceedings of Mr. Parnell. At a meeting in Wexford, a few days after, Mr. Parnell replied with some bitterness. A few days more brought the exciting news of the arrests by the Irish Executive. The situation was desperate. The imprisoned leaders at once issued a manifesto calling upon the tenantry of Ireland to withhold payment of rents. This was a direct violation of the law, as well as a great political blunder, and the government at once seized the occasion as a fitting opportunity for suppressing the Land League and the advanced Nationalist press. In the session of 1882 there appeared a manifest indisposition on the part of a majority of the cabinet to give further sanction to the policy of Mr. Forster in Ireland. The imprisoned Home Rulers were released from Kilmainham on conditions which he thought perilously lenient, and he resigned, as also did Earl Cowper. The entry of the new Lord-lieutenant, Earl Spencer, on the 6th of May, into the Irish capital, promised well; but the assassin had bargained with the fates for the day, and before the sun had ceased to shed his bright beams on the green grass and budding trees of Phoenix Park, a scion of the noble house of Devonshire and his companion in office had been immolated on the altar of Irish vengeance before the eyes of the new viceroy as he stood in the window of the viceregal lodge. The civilized world was horror-struck. Ireland expressed her profound regret at a transaction which was thought to have been planned and executed by some designing foe. Messrs. Parnell, Dillon, and Davitt hastily met to disclaim any sympathy with the crime and to denounce the criminals. The rest of the story is now familiar and needs not be retold. The government was known to have been contemplating a milder _regime_ for Ireland; but the disastrous incident of the 6th of May drove them back upon their former policy. A Crimes Bill was passed, followed by a measure of alleviation, known as the Arrears Bill, with the view of keeping the scales of justice even. In the middle of August the exhibition of Irish Art and Manufactures was opened in Dublin, and the unveiling of the statue of O'Connell, in Sackville Street, was part of the programme of the ceremonies. On the following day, Messrs. Parnell and Dillon received the freedom of the city, and Mr. E. D. Gray, M. P., proprietor of _Freeman's Journal_, and High Sheriff of Dublin, was committed to Richmond gaol for contempt of Court.

Whatever necessity may be pleaded for such measures as these, they only had one result, namely, the steady advancement of the Irish National cause. Dynamite explosions in London, Glasgow, and elsewhere, troubles in Egypt and the Soudan, complications with Russia as to the Afghan frontier, left little time for attention to Irish affairs during the last years of the existence of the Liberal ministry. The Irish Nationalist leaders had convinced themselves that they owed no gratitude to the government, and could hope for nothing from the Liberal party, except "chains, imprisonment, and death," to cite the words of Mr. Gladstone's recent reply to the Irish citizens of St. Louis. They had been long biding their time and watching for their opportunity, when suddenly it presented itself. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Childers, in presenting the Annual Budget, "ran a tilt" against the "beer and spirit" interest--a sin unpardonable, for any minister in England. The Budget was defeated, and ministers accepted the hint, rejoicing that, for a time at least, their troubles were ended.

Meanwhile the organization of the Irish National party had been developed to a point of perfection in anticipation of the New Reform Bill. That bill promised nothing in particular either to Gladstone or Salisbury, and it has given to neither any particular advantage over the other. In the counties the Liberal interest has advanced; in the boroughs it has markedly declined. But it promised everything to Parnell, and the fulfilment has been equal to the promise. It is no exaggeration to say that with a compact following of eighty-six he is virtually "master of the situation." But his position, on the other hand, is undoubtedly very critical. It is one which few men are likely to envy; it is one which not one in a thousand is competent to fill. Will he be equal to it? Where Grattan--sagacious, eloquent, high-minded and sincere--so signally failed, is Parnell likely to succeed? To-day his party is united, enthusiastic and strong, but when the hour for compromise and concession arrives, will the unanimity be maintained? Does Mr. Parnell himself know how much to ask, how little he ought to take, and where to draw the limit of compromise? Repeatedly Mr. Gladstone has invited Irish leaders to bring forward some definite scheme, and let the country know what they meant by "Home Rule." The cry, as a party watchword, has served admirably--seldom has a couple of words served so well--because, as expressing Irish National aspirations, it meant everything in general and nothing in particular; but the moment is at hand when it will be necessary to reduce it to a definite and feasible scheme of domestic government and policy. When that moment comes, will the prince of obstructionists in St. Stephen's prove himself equally capable as a constructive statesman on College Green? Should Mr. Gladstone find himself in a position soon after the opening of Parliament (he is not in a position now) to enter into practical negotiation with Mr. Parnell, may not the latter discover, as many an able and successful leader of men has done before him, that the next sad thing to a great defeat is a great victory? It is no secret that the demand Mr. Parnell, as the head of the Irish Nationalist party, is commissioned to make on behalf of Ireland, is a demand for national self-government almost, if not quite, amounting to national independence: it is equally well known that no British statesman would ever think, in the present state of public sentiment, of countenancing such a claim. For ourselves we do not venture to forecast the issue of the conflict; for "prophecy is the most gratuitous style of error." We content ourselves with hoping that the settlement may be speedy, pacific, satisfactory, and lasting.

ELIZABETH.[E]

A ROMANCE OF COLONIAL DAYS.

BY FRANCES C. SPARHAWK, Author of "A Lazy Man's Work."