t who has achieved
more than local fame. Other Irishmen who have loomed large in
Australasian affairs are Daniel Brophy, John Cumin, Augustus Leo
Kenny, James Coghlan, Sir Patrick Buckley, Sir John O'Shannessy, and
Nicholas Fitzgerald. Louis C. Brennan, C.B., who was born in Ireland
in 1852, emigrated to Australia when a boy and while working in a
civil engineer's office in Melbourne conceived the idea of the
"Brennan Torpedo", which he afterwards perfected, and then in 1897
sold the invention to the British Admiralty for L110,000. Another
Brennan, Frank by name, is president of the Knights of Our Lady of
the Southern Cross and has been a labor member of the federal
parliament since 1911; a third, Christopher John, is assistant
lecturer in modern literature in the University of Sydney; and a
fourth, James, of the diocese of Perth, was made a Knight of St.
Silvester by Pius X. in 1912. Young Australia and New Zealand may be
as the world goes, but already both have much to their credit in the
domains of music, art, and literature; and here, as usual, the Irish
have been to the fore. In the writing of poetry, history, and fiction
the Celtic element has been especially distinguished. Not to speak of
the writers mentioned elsewhere in this sketch, scores of Irish men
and women have been identified with the development of an Australian
literature which, though delightfully redolent of the land whence it
sprang, nevertheless possesses the universal note which makes it a
truly human product. Many years ago one of the most gifted of
Irish-Australian singers, "Eva"' of the _Nation_, voiced a tentative
plaint:

"O barren land! O blank, bright sky!
Methinks it were a noble duty
To kindle in that vacant eye
The light of spirit--beauty--
To fill with airy shapes divine
Thy lonely plains and mountains,
The orange grove, the bower of vine,
The silvery lakes and fountains;
To wake the voiceless, silent air
To soft, melodious numbers;
To raise thy lifeless form so fair
From those deep, spell-bound slumbers.
Oh, whose shall be the potent hand
To give that touch informing,
And make thee rise, O Southern Land,
To life and poesy warming?"

Mrs. O'Doherty herself, who long lived in that Queensland which she
thus apostrophized, helped in no uncertain way to answer her own
question. So did John Farrell, the author of