OUR IRISH LETTER

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 35, 31 August 1905, Page 9

OUR IRISH LETTER

(From our own corresipondeßit.) Dublin, June, 1905...

The education war is going on briskly here in Ireland. The question, in a nutsihell, lies between two parties : on the one side, the Catholic hierarchy and clergy (behind whom the country is solid), who desire to see their flocks remain Christians- in whose hearts will remain firmly implanted that old-fashiomed, but very wholesome belief that man is created for a higher destiny than to live a brief span here on earth. In the other camp we have the party now, unfortunately, growing daily stronger in the world, whose great end •and aim seem to bo the subversion of all religion. .Into the 'hands of this latter party many, \ery many are playing, who would be shocked and indignant if told so much in plain words. But they are doing so, and some Catholics are, unthinkingly, working hard to trie same end. The most extraordinary efforts are now made to entice young Catholics into Trinity College, the latest proselytising device being an offer from Sir John Nutting, who was head of a great Dublin bottling store connected with Guinness and Co. Sir John Nutting offers a certain number of scholarships in Trinity College, DulßHin, to Hoys and girls from Ihe intermediate schools, and, strange to say, these scholarships are open to forms as How as middle grade students ! That is to say, boys ana* girls who have passed a very narrow and merely crammed-for examination, not even in the highest grade of intermediate school curriculum, are offered prizes end may become graduates of the once brilliant Trinity Collclge. What is the meaning of this % It is that far and away the greater number of successful intermediate pupils come from the Catholic unendowed schools of Ireland and from the Irish middle classes that ha\e hitherto been the backbone of Catholicism in this country, and it is hoped that these bribes will draw such crowds of these youths into Trinity College that the rest* of the Catholics will not ha\e an excuse for a just demand of a University of their own. To try and meet this new plan for tampering with the faith of our Catholic \outh, the Bishops, the heads of Colleges, and some— let us hope they may be many— of the Catholic laity are establishing scholarships that can only bo held in Catholic colleges. The Yale of Ovoca. The first part of this letter was written as I was about to start for ' Rebel Wexforcl ' and for a part of tho county never \ isrited by me before, often as I had heard of pretty Newtownbjarry and its neighborhood, watered by the beautiful rher Slaney. To reach this neighborhood a traveller from Dublin journeys through some of tho richest cou/ntry in Ireland . the Vale of Shangaraagh, Bray, Wicklow, pausing awhile in that ' sweet Vale of Ovoca, 1 Moore has made so famous by writing his sweet, lcnmg lines, wisely describing nothing, Ijjut leawng each one to make a picture tor himself, according to that which is loneliest in his own fancy. Which suggests the thought that were painters united to send m to a gallery pictures painted from the ideals suggested by reading Moore's lines, what a gallery of varied landscapes we should have. Ami what is tho reality of that sweet Vale of Ovoca ? Well— it describes the poem. It shows you no grand scenic effect, no rushing cascades, no alpine peaks blue as the skies they seem to pierce, no foaming torrent, no castle perched on hoary rock, no shepherds piping to their flocks, no-thing grand, nothing striking, "bjut just a sweet spot to rest in, to stretch at ease when you come there, city-tired or world-weary ; stretch there, beneath the trees, and rest, rest, first looking round lazily, dreamily, resting, resting, till, perhaps, you fall asleep and liave a 1< n^ refreshing dream that you are in Tir-na-n -Oig, that Tir-na-n.-Oig is precisely the scene your waking eyes last dwelt on ; that tho music in Tir-na-n.-Oig is always a rippling, murmured accompaniment to trfrush, blackbird, or robin, sometimes to all three; that Tir-na-n.-Oig is a sweet, o/uiet valley enclosed between thickly-wooded hills, and winding in a'nid out to suit the vagaries of a cool, shallow river which flashes in tiny cascades over boulder and sterfping-sitione, so that a wanderer by its banks can cross and re-cross at will wherever the sight of a cooler nook far in in the woods, or a piece of velvet turf, sunny and soft beneath tho foot, tempts him to pass from 'blank to ba>nk, like a child (longing to take every

pleasure. The sky is always stwiiixy in -the Vale of O\'oca, at least, often as I have seen it, it has always been so, and therefore I have firm faith 'io. its everlasting blue. The trees are ever vMd green ' (for no one ever goes to the Vale in winter), relieved by dashes of ffplden gorse and yellow broom and the fresh lilac of rhododendrons that persist in bursting into bloom even in well clipped hedges. The very fact of the pretty mers shallowness makes it doubly fresh to look at because it is so rapid that it bursts into little white wavelets over the stones in its rocky bed, while here ami there patches of strand, ochre-tinted or silvery grey, gno a sunny coloring wherever they are seen Far up the glen the very iron mines that lend this russets coloring are a pretty picture in themselves, so framed are the rocks and yellow banks in luxurious trees and flowers, while on every side ome sees suggestive openings in the woods and amongst the hills that make the city dreamer-still resting with such a thorough sense of rcst-bogwi lazily to form plans for endless excursions into these cool depths when he shall awake refreshed and young again, in that sweet Tir-na-n -Oie This is Moore's Vale of Ovoca. M.B.