MR. GLADSTONE AT ST. MICHAN'S.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 246, 18 January 1878, Page 13

MR. GLADSTONE AT ST. MICHAN'S.

Thews is not in Dublin a more interesting spot than the old church beneath St. Michan's massive square tower, from which eight centuries look down. The people of the district took it with a peculiarly good grace that Mr. Gladstone should have found it out. He arrived about noon. In the vestry he was welcomed by the llev. T. Long. Hector of St. Michau's., There were also there to receive him Lord Monck, Rev. F. W\, Stewart, Rev. W. C, Greene, Miss Long, Mrs. Monahan, Mr. John Parkinson, . churchwarden, and Mi\r Thosj. Greene. Staring Mm iv the face, on the vestry table were two ghastly casts of the< heads of the brothers John ami Henry Sheaics. who were hanged and beheaded at Newgate in "98, and whose bodies lie in the vaults of St. Michan's as uncorrupted as the day they were coffined. Mr. Gladstone seemed eitheri not to know ,the (Story, or not to wish to open up a painful. subject, for ho,passed)at O nce ,tQ lighter topics* ' Rev. Mi-. Long informed Mm, how, old Sfc Michan's is. It was founded as long ago as 1090 by Michanus, a bishop of the old Danish stock of Dublin, whose body lies under the church, and whose monument (a nearly full-length, portrait ©f- the bishop }v mitre ,an.d Pontificials, with his arms crossed upon hio breast,, aU sculptured, in granite, >and by no means rudely) is one of tihe.,mostjin,tcycsting ornament's of the interior. The square towei;, which i shows so boldly among the towers and -piresof Dublin,jandfrom the.summitof which the whole city can be scanned, is bclieved-to be part of' the- original foundation— more or less restored, of course. "It is the characteristic specimen of native architecture I have seen , yet/,' said Mr. Gladstone, and he did not fail to note that* the venerable pile has been defaced of late by a trumpery window quite ou£ ,of,j harmony with the style. There are odd old inscriptions cut in different stones of this tower. Their words and meaning have long ago .passed- out of mind. St. Michan's, said the good rector with pardonable pride, was once the only parish on the north side of. Dublin, and was,a, Prebendary of Christ Church. "The city in the old times Was to,thc south, was it not .' " said Mr. Gladstone. It was only in 10'!)7 that the old parish was carved into three—" New St. Michan's (being as new as the time of the Danes), St. Paul's, and St. Mary's ; and churches for the two latter parishes were ordered to be built by a tax on the inhabitants. The rector turned to the gold and silver church plate laid out on a side-table— a dazzling array for so poor a place as St. Michau's. There was an intricately carved gold communion cup, presented to the church in the last century by Captain William Proby. It is said to have been one of the spoils of the Spanish Armada, and assuredly came from Spain. Then there was a silver-gilt chalice, with the gilding all but rubbed off, dating from 107(5 ; and two gold pattens of the date of l(st>:i. Finally, there was a massive alms-dish of Rolid silver, of the date of 170G, which Mr. Gladstone thought should be of Irish workmanship (and the .suggestion was a compliment, for it was richly wrought). And now we come to the grave of Robert Emmet. Mr. Gladstone stood over it without speaking — assuredly it cannot have been without thinking. It is a rude granite slab, without letter or figure chiselled on it. Its sides me all scarified by pilgrims knocking chips off the slab to carry thousands of miles away as heirlooms. The inscription is not yet written, but the bare stone is a romance, the saddest in a sad history. That there i 1 - really the grave of Robert Emmet appears to be now accepted as certain. Emmet's nephew, a New York judge, who was over here a few years since, declared it to be the family tradition. Wheu one of Mr. More Maddens authority is satisfied so ought we. The story is that after the decapitation in Thomas-street the body was put into a coitin and buried privately in Bully's Acre, the buri.il ground of criminals near the Old Man's Hospital at Kilmainham. That same night it was, cither secretly, or with the assent of the authorities, exhumed and transferred to St. Miehan's graveyard by direction of the Rev. Mr. Dobbyn, who was rector of St. 'Miehan's at the time, and who is c red ifed with a warm sympathy with the principles of the unhappy youth. Other members' ot the Emmet family had been previously buried in this ground, and the reason given why he was not buried in their company is that there was an inscribed tombstone over their graves, and that his own wish was respected that no words should be written on his tomb until the world knows what. His corpse was not the only rebel oue to which in those gloomy da\ s the Her. Mr. Dobbyn gave a resting place. Oliver Bond, in whose house the United Irish Directory were seized iv '5)8. sleeps a little further away with the epitaph on his gravestone, " God's noblest work, an honest man." In the same grave was laid the Rev. William Jackson, the. emissary of the French Directory, who was betrayed by Cockayne, and who took poison, and died iv the dook during his trial. Iv the vaults, too. there are huddled together indistinguishably a group of skeletons vvho.sc heads were (and one of them still is) bound with the crape which was drawn over the rarc-i by the hangman. To whom those ghastly heads belonged who know.- .' Only that they may be supposed to rest more peacefully here than in Bully's Acre. — Wcvldij I1I 1 we man.