GLASNEVIN: ITS HISTORY AND ITS LESSON.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 214, 1 June 1877, Page 9

GLASNEVIN: ITS HISTORY AND ITS LESSON.

And, speaking of Glasnevin, my visit there, to assist at the interment of a dnar friend, reminds me to jot down a few notes that must interest all your readers, and, I trust, most American citizens. During the Penal Laws, with the alienation of our churches went the cemeteries which held the sacred ashes of our forefathers, so that doad as well as alive we were persecuted. Catholic burial was denied us in a large portion of the country, and in the city of Dublin alone the aggregate fees extracted yearly by ministers, clerks, sextons, bellrin^ers and gravediggers amounted, according to the reports of the Catholic Association, in 1823, to .£20,000 for mere right of burial without Catholic services or rites. O'Connell threw his mighty mind into the galling, monstrous tyranny, and determined to emancipate the dead even before the living. His reports and speeches in the Catholic Association roused the people to find a remedy. He demanded funds, and they came forth. In 1828 two Irish acres of land were purchased at Golden Bridge, on the south side of the city, near Kilmainham, consecrated and opened as a Catholic cemetery. Emboldened by their success, a plot of nine statute acres was taken on the north aide, by the Toika, in 1832, the foundation of the present magnificent cemetery of Prospect, Glas-

neyin. Strange, indeed, is the history of the site. The cemetery on the south and the Botanic Gardens on the north side of the Tolka had been Church lands belonging toMary'sAbbey.but which were alienated by Henry VIII., of " blessed memory." The Protestant bishop of Kild&re obtained a large portion of these valuable lands, on easy terms, from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and from him the cemeteries' committee purchased or rented them, thus falling back, after nearly three centuries of spoliation, to Catholic hands. Round here resided or tarried Dean Swift, Dean Delany, Tickell, Parnall, Addison, while Swift acted as his own compositor in setting up, in Dalville, overlooking Glasnevin bridge, the Drapier's Letters. A. little lower down the stream was the famous battle-field of Clontarf, within the grounds of Holy Cross College, where brave Brien fell, Good Friday, 1014. In the village churchyard of Glasnevin sleep the remains of Robert Emmet — " Oh breathe not hi 3 name, let it sleep in the shade, where cold and unhonoured his relics are laid." The nine acres gradually expanded until the cemetery now in. eludes over one hundred acre 3. An act of Parliament in 1845, incorporated the committee, an act that fixat recognized the territorial titles of the Catholic bishop 3. The average interments annually, in Glasnevin and in Golden Bridge, amount to 8,000, and the aggregate interments to the close of 1876 reach the enormoaa number of 305,831, being considerably in excess of the whole living population of the city of Dublin. O'Connell, thus, emancipated the dead as well as the living, and there he sleeps under the noble Round Tower, visible twenty mile 3at sea, in the centre of the Catholic Necropolis of his own creation. Round him repose many Irish worthies: Curran, Steele, Gray, Dillon, Mangan, Hog*n, O'Donovan, O'Curry, Bishop O'Connor, Drs. Yore and Spratt, and scores of devoted priests and good and patriotic laymen. The income of the committee is about .£3,000, and each year they vote nearly jE2,000 towards Catholic education of the poor. No cemetery in the world surpasses Glasnevin in Christian aspect, while few approach it in order, arrangement, and neatnes3. While there are few large or expensive monuments, and, properly speaking, only two public ones, those to O'Connell and Curran, perhaps no cemetery in the world exhibits such a number of tasteful and elegant Christian memorials. If the stranger seeks one of O'Connell'a noblest monuments let him stand in the centre of the magnificent and touching Necropolis with its 300,000 bodies awaiting resurrection, — and we answer him, Circumspice. And, if he desires subjects for thought, let him look across the Tolka and see the residence of Lindsay^^e last Protestant Bishop of Kildare, inhabited by the Nuns of St. B rigid, patronea3 of that diocese and of Ireland ; the church disestablished, and O'Connell and 300,000 Catholics in the consecrated soil of the ancient lands of St. Miry's Abbey. — Catholic Review.