et the expectations raised by his poetry. When he became a
pensioner he seldom wrote, verifying the predictions of his friends. He
exchanged too early in life the department of literature in which he
had made so great a reputation for prose, in which he sought by memoirs,
historical writing, and even controversy, to increase his income, and
establish a new reputation. A passionate love for Ireland pervaded most
of his writings, especially his Irish melodies. He constantly breathed
a fervid wish from his earliest years for her national independence, and
severance from England. Yet when a large portion of his countrymen flew
to arms for that purpose, in 1798, he, although nineteen years of age,
took no part in the struggle: neither did he show any desire to live in
Ireland, but courted English aristocratic society, and served English
party interests. During three years before his death, the brain
gradually softened, and he sunk into childishness. None of his children
survived him. His widow, a charming person, retained a pension of L100
a-year, conferred upon her by the government.

The poetical works of Thomas Moore retain their popularity in many
lands. Not only in England, where he spent by far the greater part of
his life, and in Ireland, where he was born and educated, and whose
popular joys, sorrows, hopes, aspirations, traditions, and prejudices he
sung so sweetly, but wherever the English language is spoken, his fame
is cherished and his verse repeated. Nor is the delight inspired by his
works limited to the language in which they were written. All over the
continent of Europe, among the nations whose language is of Latin
and Celtic origin, his muse inspires deep interest and pleasure. His
extraordinary oriental poem, "Lalla Rookh," has been translated into
Persian, and delights the literary sons of Iran as it erst thrilled
the imagination and heart of all persons of poetic temperament in the
British Isles. In the city of Dublin, a statue has been erected to his
memory, close by the old senate, now used as the Bank of Ireland, and
near the poet's Alma Mater, Trinity College. The statue is a failure,
private partiality and _clique_ interest having stifled public
competition and robbed the great sculptors, and the poet, of the reward
of genius, the city of Dublin of an ornament of which it might have been
proud, and his country of the opportunity of paying a suitable tribute
of respect to one of the most gifted of he