THE HEART OF O'CONNELL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 237, 16 November 1877, Page 7

THE HEART OF O'CONNELL.

Ik the Church of St. Agatha, attached to the Irish College in Rome, is a large marble slab attached to the wall, on the top of which an angel is represented bearing a heart and another pointing upward. The heart represents the heart of Daniel O'Connell. In the middle is the following inscription :— " This monument contains the heart of O'Connell, who, dying at Genoa on his way to the Eternal City, bequeathed his soul to God, his body to Ireland and his heart to Rome." '

He is represented at the bar of the British House of Commons in 1820, when he refused to take the anti-Catholic declaration, in these memorable words :—": — " lat once reject this declaration ; part of it I believe to be untrue, and the rest I know to be false." He was born August Bth, 1775, and died May, 1874. Erected by Charles Bianconi, Esq., the friend of the immortal liberator, and of Ireland the land of his adoption. The lower part of the slab reflects credit on the generous Bianconi, who, though an Italian, was more Irish than the Irish, and who was never found wanting in generosity ; but it's unworthy of the place and of O'Connell's memory. — Exchange.

• Henrietta Maria. t Poem on Father Caspian's death, published at the time.