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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 9, 20 June 1884, Page 18

A new feature of life in Ireland which has grown to considerable proportions through the inspiration of the Parnell movement, and which has hitherto escaped the attention of the outside world, is the growth of the literary spirit among the young men cf that country. In every considerable centre of the population, as Mr. Redmond said recently, libraries and reading-rooms hare been established and literary societies have been organised. Thomas Davis and John Blake Dillon and their associates of the Young Ireland Party tried a similar experiment in 1848, but it was hatdly successful. They had not the proper material to work on. The masses were unlettered. Since their time, the National school system has been perfected, and all the men of Ireland under forty years of age have had good educational advantages. They have very generally profited thereby. The Young Ireland Party gave them a literary taste, and the idea of organisation, which the men of the present day have gracefully and fittingly acknowledged by calling their societies after the leaders of that body, and the central organization in Dublin, the Young Ireland Society.