SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY AND CARLYLE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XX, Issue 19, 26 February 1892, Page 13

SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY AND CARLYLE.

(From the National Prett.)

The most interesting feature to Irish readers of the number of the Contemporary for January, jaat issue!, is the first article of a series by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, beaded " Conversations and Correspondence with Thomas Carlyle." The numerous letters anl descriptions with which the article ia filled do much to make clear the position of Carlyle in regard to Irish affairs, and are in many respects better indications of the real characteristics of the Sags of Chelsea than many of the letters given to the world with much greater pretensions. Duffy was introduced to Carlyle by Frederick Luoaa, and went to bis house in company with John O'Hagan and Pigot, the young Irelander. Sspeaking of the visit Mrs Carlyle said :— " Mr Duffy quite took my husband's fancy, and mine also to a certain extent. He is a writer of national songs, and came here to • eat his terms ' With the coarsest of human faces, decidedly as like a horse's as a man's, he is one of the people that I should get to think beautiful, there is so much of the power both of intellect and passion in his physiognomy. As for young Mr Pigot, I will here, in the spirit of prophecy, inherited from my great ancestor, John Welsh, the Covenanter, xnaks a small prediction. If there be in his time an insurrection in Ireland, as these gentlemen confidently anticipate, Mr Pigot will rise to be a Robespierre of some sort ; will cause many heads to be removed from the shoulders they belong to ; and will ' eventually ' have his own head removed from his own shoulders. Nature baa written on that handsome but fatal-looking countenance of his, quite legibly to my prophetic eye, 'Go and get thyself beheaded, but not befora having lent a hand towards the greit work of immortal smash.' " The following eloquent passage is qaoted from a letter which Sir Charles Duffy attaches importance to, as showing the keen interest which Carlyle took in every hoaest attempt to raise Ireland from her misery : — " Justice to Ireland — justice to all lands, and to Ireland first A3 the land that needs it most — the whole Eugliah nation (except the quacks and knaves of it, who, in the cad, are men of negative quantities and of no force in the English nation) do honestly wish you that. Do not believe the contrary, tor it is not true ; the believing of it to be true may give riae to miserable mistakes yet, at wbicb one's imagination shudders. Well, wben poor old Ireland has succeeded again In making a man of insight and generous valour, who might help her a little out of her deep confusions— ought I not to pray and hope that lie may shine as a light instead of blazing as a firebrand to his own waste and his country's 1 Poor old Ireland, every man of that kind she produces, it is like another stake set upon the Rouge-et-Noir of the Destinies — ' Shall I win with thee, or shall I lose tbee too — blazing off upon me as the others have done 1 ' She tries again, as with her last guinea. May the gods grant her a good issue ! " I bid you, with many kind wishes, good speed, and am, very truly yours, T. Carlyle." Carlyle appeared to have read the Nation regularly, and to have delighted in its " manfulnesp, veracity, good sense, and dignity." Amongst the most interesting portions of correspondence are the letters which relate to the visit in 1846 of Mr W. B. Forster, about whom Carlyle wrote most cordially to Duffy. During Duffy's imprisonment Carlyle wrote him his moat affectionate sympathy in a letter, from which we take the following passage :—: — "If this bit of paper do reach you within your strait walls let it be an assurance that you are still deir to me ; tbat in this sad crisis which has now arrived, we here at (Jaelsea do not find new cause for blame superadded to the old, but new cause for pity and respect, and loving candour, and for hope still, in spite of all I The one blame I fiver had to lay upon you, as you well koow, was that, like a young heroic all trusting Irish soul, yon had believed in the prophesying of a plausible son of lies preaching deliverance to your poor country ; and believing, had, as you were bound in that case, proceeded to put the same in practice, co9t what it might cost to you. Even in this wild course, often enough denounced by me, I

have to give yon this testimony, that your conduct was never other than noble ; that whoever might show himself savage, narrowminded, hateful in his hatred, 0. G. Duffy always was humane and dignified and manful ; nty, often enough in the midst of those mad tnmnlts, I had to recognise a voice of clear modest wisdom and courageous veracity, admonishing ' repealers ' that their true enemy was not England aftrr all, that repeal from England, except ac. companied by repeal from the devil, would and could do nothing for them ; and thi6 most welcomo true voice, armst 1 the only such I could hear in Ireland, was the same C. G, Duffy's. Courage, ray friend, all is noc yet lost I "