m under
which the Irish movement is now conducted, that Mr. Davitt, who does not
pretend to be a Parliamentarian, and owes indeed much of his authority
to his refusal to enter Parliament and take oaths of allegiance, does
not hesitate for a moment to discipline any Irish member of Parliament
who incurs his disapprobation. Sir Thomas Esmonde, for example, was
severely taken to task by him the other day in the public prints for
venturing to put a question, in his place at Westminster, to the
Government about a man-of-war stationed in Kingstown harbour. Mr. Davitt
very peremptorily ordered Sir Thomas to remember that he is not sent to
Westminster to recognise the British Government, or concern himself
about British regiments or ships, and Sir Thomas accepts the rebuke in
silence. Whom does such a member of Parliament represent--the
constituents who nominally elect him, or the leader who cracks the whip
over him so sharply?

I have to-day been looking through a small and beautifully-printed
volume of poems just issued here by Gill and Son, Nationalist
publishers, I take it, who have the courage of their convictions, since
their books bear the imprint of "O'Connell," and not of Sackville
Street. This little book of the _Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland _is
a symptom too. It is dedicated in a few brief but vigorous stanzas to
John O'Leary, as one who

"Hated all things base,
And held his country's honour high."

And the spirit of all the poems it contains is the spirit of '48, or of
that earlier Ireland of Robert Emmet, celebrated in some charming verses
by "Rose Kavanagh" on "St. Michan's Churchyard," where the

"sunbeam went and came
Above the stone which waits the name
His land must write with freedom's flame."

It interests an American to find among these poems and ballads a
striking threnody called "The Exile's Return," signed with the name of
"Patrick Henry"; and it is noteworthy, for more reasons than one, that
the volume winds up with a "Marching Song of the Gaelic Athletes,"
signed "An Chraoibhin Aoibbinn." These Athletes are numbered now, I am
assured, not by thousands, but by myriads, and their organisation covers
all parts of Ireland. If the spirit of '48 and of '98 is really moving
among them, I should say they are likely to be at least as troublesome
in the end to the "uncrowned king" as to the crowned Queen of Ireland.

As for the literary merit of these _P