ance
from "the Chief." Parnell's home at Avondale was some ten miles from
here, lying in woods beside the Ovoca River; but the Parnell property
stretched up to the slopes of Lugnaquilla, and the dismantled barrack
was used by him as a shooting lodge. Here, in the early days before his
life became absorbed in the masterful attachment which led finally to
his overthrow, he spent good hours; and here the two Redmonds and those
others of his followers who were his companions came to camp roughly in
this strange, gaunt survival of military rule. After Parnell's death
Redmond bought the barrack and a small plot of land about it, and it
became increasingly and exclusively his home in Ireland. It was, indeed,
Ireland itself for him. In it and through it he knew Ireland intimately,
felt Ireland intensely and intensively, not only as a place, but as a
way of being. Ireland to him meant Aughavanagh.

Partly, no doubt, the almost unbroken wildness of his surroundings
appealed to an element of romance in his character, which was strongly
emotional though extremely reticent. Only an artist would have
recognized beauty in those scenes, for in all Ireland it would be
difficult to find a landscape with less amenity; the hill shapes are
featureless, without boldness or intricacy of line. Redmond, a born
artist in words, possessing strongly the sense of form, was sensitive to
beauty in all kinds--yet rather to the beauty that is symmetrical,
graceful and well-planned. A sailor does not love the sea for its
beauty, and Redmond loved Ireland as a sailor loves the sea--yet with a
difference. Ireland to him in a great measure was Aughavanagh, and
Aughavanagh was a place of rest. Ireland is a good country to rest in.
But it would have been far better for Redmond and for Ireland if Ireland
had been the place not of his rest, but of his work.

His work was essentially that of an agent of Ireland carrying on
Ireland's affairs in a strange capital. He spent more of his time in
London than in Ireland, but he was never part of the life of London,
never in any sense a Londoner. He was part of the life of the House of
Commons, for that was his place of work; and when he left it he went to
Aughavanagh as a man returns from the City to his home. This home of his
was in no sense connected with his active occupations. He was no lover
of gardening or of farming; he had none of the Irishman's taste for the
overseeing of stock or land; he enjoyed shooting,