MAGE TO BODENSTOWN.

(_From our Reporter_.)

On Sunday last the annual pilgrimage to the grave of Theobald Wolfe
Tone took place to Bodenstown churchyard. This year the numbers who
attended exceeded those of last year, about a thousand coming from
Dublin and another contingent from Tullamore, Clare, and Athlone. The
procession formed outside Sallins station was a most imposing one,
being made up of St. James' Brass Band and the Lorcan O'Toole Pipers'
Band and the Athlone Pipers' Band, the National Boy Scouts, the
Daughters of Erin, and members of the Wolfe Tone Memorial Clubs.

At the graveside demonstration, Mr. Thos. J. Clarke presided and said
it was a gratifying thing that numbers of their fellow-countrymen were
to-day swinging back to the old fighting line and taking pride in the
old Fenian principles. He introduced Mr. P.H. Pearse, B.A.

Mr. Pearse then came forward and delivered an eloquent and impressive
oration, first speaking in Irish. Speaking in English, he said they
had come to the holiest place in Ireland, holier to them than that
sacred spot where Patrick sleeps in Down. Patrick brought them life,
but Wolfe Tone died for them. Though many had testified in death
to the truth of Ireland's claim to Nationhood, Wolfe Tone was the
greatest of all that had made that testimony; he was the greatest of
Ireland's dead. They stood in the holiest place in Ireland, for what
spot of the Nation's soil could be holier than the spot in which the
greatest of her dead lay buried. He found it difficult to speak in
that place, and he knew they all partook of his emotion. There were
no strangers there for they were all in a sense own brothers to Tone
(hear, hear). They shared his faith, his hope still unrealised and
his great love. They had come there that day not merely to salute this
noble dust and to pay their homage to the noble spirit of Tone, but
to renew their adhesion to the faith of Tone and to express their
full acceptance of the gospel of which Tone had given such a clear
definition. That gospel had been taught before him by English-speaking
men, uttered half-articulately by Shan O'Neill, expressed in some
passionate metaphor by Geoffrey Keating, and hinted at by Swift in
some bitter jibe, but it was stated definitely and emphatically by
Wolfe Tone and it did not need to be ever again stated anew for any
new generation. Tone was great in mind, but he was still greater in
spirit. He had the clear vision of the pr