When some one spoke of Fox's attachment to France, Burke answered-" Yes, his attachment has been great and long; for, like a cat, he has continued faithful to the house after the family has left it."

Burke gave a vehement denial to Boswell's contention that Croft's Life of Young' was a successful imitation of Johnson's style: "No, no, it is not a good imitation of Johnson. It has all his pomp, without his force; it has all the nodosities of the oak without its strength; "-then, after a pause," it has all the contortions of the Sibyl-without the inspiration."

Burke, when proceeding with his historic impeachment of Warren Hastings, was interrupted by Major Scott, a small man. "Am I," the orator thundered indignantly, "to be teased by the barking of this jackal while I am attacking the royal tiger of Bengal?"

THOMAS N. BURKE.

(1830-1883.)

THE Rev. Thomas N. Burke-" Father Tom Burke "-was born in the picturesque old town of Galway in 1830. At an early age he determined to devote himself to the priesthood, and when he was seventeen years old he went to Italy to pass through the necessary years of study and novitiate. After five years spent in this preparation he was sent to England, and there ordained a priest of the Dominican order of friars. After four years of missionary work in Gloucestershire, he was sent to his native land to found a house at Tallaght, County Dublin, in connection with his order. He remained for about seven years in Ireland, and then again he was ordered to Italy, becoming superior of the monastery of Irish Dominicans at San Clemente, Rome.

The death of Cardinal Wiseman in 1865 drew Dr. Manning from Italy, and Father Burke was selected to succeed him as the English preacher during the Lenten services in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. Those services used to be attended by large and critical audiences, the congregation consisting often in great part of Protestant tourists whom the holy season attracted to the Eternal City, and the office of preacher was accordingly bestowed only on those who were regarded as the ablest exponents of the Roman Catholic creed. Having held this distinguished position for five years in succession, Father Burke once more returned to Ireland. In the next few years, and indeed for many years before, he was the most popular and the most frequent preacher in Ireland, and the competition for his services was consequently keen. Whenever a church was to be opened, or an orphanage to be built, or a school to be rescued from debt, Father Burke was asked to speak; and those incessant though flattering demands upon him resulted more than once in breaking down a not very robust physical system.

Dispatched on a religious mission to the United States in 1872, he arrived at the moment when Mr. Froude was engaged in his famous anti-Irish crusade. Father Burke delivered a series of lectures in reply to the attacks of the English historian. Those lectures, as well as many of his sermons, have been republished in volume form. He died in 1883.

A NATION'S HISTORY.

From a lecture on the 'History of Ireland as Told in her Ruins.'

In the libraries of the more ancient nations, we find the earliest histories of the primeval races of mankind written upon the durable vellum, the imperishable asbestos, or sometimes deeply carved, in mystic and forgotten characters, on the granite stone or pictured rock, showing the

desire of the people to preserve their history, which is to preserve the memory of them, just as the old man dying said, "Lord, keep my memory green!"

But besides these more direct and documentary evidences, the history of every nation is enshrined in the national traditions, in the national music and song; much more, it is written in the public buildings that cover the face of the land. These, silent and in ruins, tell most eloquently their tale. To-day "the stone may be crumbled, the wall decayed"; the clustering ivy may, perhaps, uphold the tottering ruin to which it clung in the days of its strength; but

"The sorrows, the joys of which once they were part,
Still round them, like visions of yesterday, throng."

They are the voices of the past; they are the voices of ages long gone by. They rear their venerable and beautiful gray heads high over the land they adorn; and they tell us the tale of the glory or of the shame, of the strength or of the weakness, of the prosperity or of the adversity of the nation to which they belong. This is the volume which we are about to open; this is the voice which we are about to call forth from their gray and ivied ruins that cover the green bosom of Ireland; we are about to go back up the highways of history, and, as it were, to breast and to stem the stream of time, to-day, taking our start from the present hour in Ireland.

What have we here? It is a stately church-rivaling— perhaps surpassing-in its glory the grandeur of bygone times. We behold the solid buttresses, the massive wall, the high tower, the graceful spire piercing the clouds, and upholding, high towards heaven, the symbol of man's redemption, the glorious sign of the cross. We see in the stone windows the massive tracery, so solid, so strong, and so delicate.

What does this tell us? Here is this church, so grand, yet so fresh and new and clean from the mason's hand. What does it tell us? It tells us of a race that has never decayed; it tells us of a people that have never lost their faith nor their love; it tells us of a nation as strong in its energy for every highest and holiest purpose, to-day, as it was in the ages that are past and gone for ever.

NATIONAL MUSIC.

From a lecture on 'The National Music of Ireland.'

Wherever we find a nation with a clear, distinct, sweet, and emphatic tradition of national music, coming down from sire to son, from generation to generation, from the remotest centuries-there have we evidence of a people strong in character, well marked in their national disposition-there have we evidence of a most ancient civilization. But wherever, on the other hand, you find a people light and frivolous-not capable of deep emotions in religion-not deeply interested in their native land, and painfully affected by her fortunes-a people easily losing their nationality, or national feeling, and easily mingling with strangers, and amalgamating with them-there you will be sure to find a people with scarcely any tradition of national melody that would deserve to be classed amongst the songs of the nations.

Now, amongst these nations, Ireland-that most ancient and holy island in the western sea-claims, and deservedly, upon the record of history, the first and grandest pre-eminence among all peoples. I do not deny to other nations high musical excellence. I will not even say that, in this our day, we are not surpassed by the music of Germany, by the music of Italy, or the music of England. Germany for purity of style, for depth of expression, for the argument of song, surpasses all the nations to-day. Italy is acknowledged to be the queen of that lighter, more pleasing, more sparkling, and, to me, more pleasant style of music. In her own style of music England is supposed to be superior to Italy, and, perhaps, equal to Germany.

But, great as are the musical attainments of these great peoples, there is not one of these nations, or any other nation, that can point back to such national melody, to such a body of national music, as the Irish. Remember that I am not speaking now of the labored composition of some great master; I am not speaking now of a wonderful mass, written by one man; or a great oratorio, written by another-works that appeal to the ear refined and attuned by education; works that delight the critic. I am speaking of the song that lives in the hearts and voices of all the

people; I am speaking of the national songs you will hear from the husbandman, in the field, following the plough; from the old woman, singing to the infant on her knee; from the milk-maid, coming from the milking; from the shoemaker at his work, or the blacksmith at the forge, while he is shoeing the horse.

This is the true song of the nation; this is the true national melody, that is handed down, in a kind of traditional way, from the remotest ages; until, in the more civilized and cultivated time, it is interpreted into written music; and then the world discovers, for the first time, a most beautiful melody in the music that has been murmured in the glens and mountain valleys of the country for hundreds and thousands of years.

Italy has no such song. Great as the Italians are as masters, they have no popularly received tradition of music. The Italian peasant—(I have lived amongst them for years)—the Italian peasant, while working in the vineyard, has no music except two or three high notes of a most melancholy character, commencing upon a high dominant and ending in a semitone. The peasants of Tuscany and of Campagna, when, after their day's work, they meet in the summer's evenings to have a dance, have no music; only a girl takes a tambourine and beats upon it, marking time, and they dance to that, but they have no music. So with other countries. But go to Ireland; listen to the old woman as she rocks herself in her chair, and pulls down the hank of flax for the spinning; listen to the girl coming home from the field with the can of milk on her head; and what do you hear?-the most magnificent melody of music. Go to the country merry-makings and you will be sure to find the old fiddler, or old white-headed piper, an infinite source of the brightest and most sparkling music.

How are we to account for this? We must seek the cause of it in the remotest history. It is a historical fact that the maritime or sea-coast people of the north and west of Europe were from time immemorial addicted to song. We know, for instance, that in the remotest ages the kings of our sea-girt island, when they went forth upon their warlike forays, were always accompanied by their harper, or minstrel, who animated them to deeds of heroic bravery. Even when the Danes came sweeping down in their galleys