fairly on foot than you were called by the
highest authority to commence another, and one of yet greater
magnitude and difficulty, the founding of a University in Ireland.
After the Universities had been lost to the Catholics of these
kingdoms for three centuries, everything had to be begun from the
beginning: the idea of such an institution to be inculcated, the plan
to be formed that would work, the resources to be gathered, and the
staff of superiors and professors to be brought together. Your name
was then the chief point of attraction which brought these elements
together. You alone know what difficulties you had to conciliate and
what to surmount, before the work reached that state of consistency
and promise, which enabled you to return to those responsibilities in
England which you had never laid aside or suspended. And here, excuse
me if I give expression to a fancy which passed through my mind.

"I was lately reading a poem, not long published, from the MSS.
De Rerum Natura, by Neckham, the foster-brother of Richard the
Lion-hearted. He quotes an old prophecy, attributed to Merlin, and
with a sort of wonder, as if recollecting that England owed so much
of its literary learning to that country; and the prophecy says that
after long years Oxford will pass into Ireland--'Vada boum suo
tempore transibunt in Hiberniam.' When I read this, I could not
but indulge the pleasant fancy that in the days when the Dublin
University shall arise in material splendour, an allusion to this
prophecy might form a poetic element in the inscription on the
pedestal of the statue which commemorates its first Rector.

"The original plan of an oratory did not contemplate any parochial
work, but you could not contemplate so many souls in want of pastors
without being prompt and ready at the beck of authority to strain all
your efforts in coming to their help. And this brings me to the third
and the most continuous of those labours to which I have alluded. The
mission in Alcester Street, its church and schools, were the first
work of the Birmingham Oratory. After several years of close and hard
work, and a considerable call upon the private resources of the
Fathers who had established this congregation, it was delivered over
to other hands, and the Fathers removed to the district of Edgbaston,
where up to that time nothing Catholic had appeared. Then arose under
your direction the large convent of the Oratory, the church expanded
by de