though we possessed at certain periods a relative superiority over other countries, we never attained eminence as a nation." He then goes on to show how people with fewer advantages than the ancient Irish organized solid governments and secured their independence.

The strength of mind and of character which gives a man courage and candor saves him from being a bigot, and gives him a generous liberality of spirit. A zealous man is not necessarily a bigot. We have no right to complain of the scrupulousness, of the steadfastness, with which a man adheres to his creed, or of his devotion to the duties which it imposes, so long as he is faithful to social courtesies and to all natural and divine charities. It is his want of these, and not his belief, that makes him a bigot. The fact is, that, at least in this period of Christendom, bigotry is often more in the blood than in belief; more a thing of temper than of theology. No man could be more firmly attached to his Church than was Dr. Doyle; but this attachment interfered with no honorable affection, with no kindliness of humanity. Some of his most lovingly eloquent letters are to a lady who not only left the Roman Catholic religion, but became an enthusiastic opponent of it. She always had his friendship, and was ever welcome to his presence and to his house. "From my infancy," he says, "I never felt a dislike to any man on account of his religion. I have long had, among my most early and intimate friends, and still have, members of the Established Church and other Protestant communities, in whom I confide and whom I love as much as I do any people upon earth; and if I had to choose a friend to whom I would confide my life or my honor, whether among people high in station or low, I should, at least among those high in station, prefer some of my Protestant friends to any others in the world." This was said, not in private correspondence or conversation, but before the assembled Commons of the British nation. Being told how ill an opinion the clergy of the Established Church had of him, he thus wrote: "They are mistaken. I hate their excessive Establishment; yet I respect them generally as a class of men, eminent many of them for their domestic virtues as well as for their literary acquirements." He condemned as forci

bly as any man could all temporal penalties and punishments in matters of religion. He gives up to reprobation all those who inflicted them and all those who would counsel their infliction, whether in Protestant or Roman Catholic states.

He was a strict man in all the relations of his authority. He was strict as a professor with his pupils. He was strict as a bishop with his priests. He forbade them to go to theatres, to attend races, to enter into field-sports, or to engage in secular employments or pursuits. He would not allow a priest to farm more than fourteen acres of land. He was jealous for the dignity of the priestly character even in externals. He was neat in his own dress, and he was anxious that his clergy should be so in theirs. He disliked a sloven or a clown in the priesthood. He used stimulants very slightly; he did not actually forbid them to priests, but he was extremely averse to the use of ardent spirits. When dying, a niece of his came to see him, and insisted that he should take some claret; but the only bottle that was in the house was one which she herself had brought. He was a strict casuist. The Professor of Ethics in Maynooth maintained that an insolvent debtor, when legally discharged, was not morally bound, in future prosperity, to pay his creditors. Dr. Doyle opposed this doctrine in an able refutation, and showed that an honest debt was a perpetual obligation, from which no really honest man felt himself morally relieved, except by inability to pay it. But however strict the Bishop was with others, he was strictest of all with himself. He would accept no gifts. "They corrupt," he said, "the heart, abase the mind, and pervert the conscience." He was offered patronage for his friends by the Irish government; but he would have none of it. "My kingdom," he replied, " is not of this world. I have no link to bind me to it." A lady had forced on him the present of a carriage, but only in a single instance did he ever enter it. "Whatever," he observes, "people may say of me, they shall never have it to say that I rode in my carriage." "I have not," he writes to a friend, "a coat to my back, not a shoe to my foot, and yet you talk of carriages. . . . . . Coach indeed! I have not even a horse; for my horse became broken-winded, and is now at cure,

so that, with the ex

ception of those animals found in cellars, my whole stock of four-footed creatures consists of a borrowed donkey, which, however, I do not ride." Bishop though he was, he writes to a friend, "I have been trying to make up the price of a new pair of shoes." He was happy through life in this honorable poverty. When a professor in Carlow College in 1814, he writes to one of his family: "I have little to say; if good health, a good fireside, plenty of labor, plenty of money, and a good name be advantages, I enjoy them to the fullest extent." Yet his salary was at the utmost only £25 a year. His charity was unfailing, and his hospitality most generous, although, as a bishop, he was comparatively as poor as when he had been only a professor. He constantly kept a stock of bread and ale on hand for the refreshment of the poor. At Christmas he had oxen killed, and with beef he distributed clothing and blankets. Yet earnest preacher as Dr. Doyle was of personal beneficence, and high example as he was in the practice of it, he was, at the same time, the most strenuous advocate of a legal provision for the poor. Whether for good or evil, the poor-law system of Ireland is in a great measure owing to Dr. Doyle. Both good and evil belong to the system in Ireland, as to all human institutions everywhere; but whether the good overbalances the evil in the poor-laws in Ireland we cannot venture to say; but the state of the country and of the poor seemed imperatively then to demand some method of legally providing for the destitute. And this was the general import of Dr. Doyle's arguments. Whatever vices or abuses have entered into the administration of the Irish poor-laws, the institution of them became inevitable. Owing to extensive absenteeism among the owners of Irish estates, and the inaccessibility to those who remained at home, - for beggars were seldom allowed to enter even their uttermost gates, the whole burden of pauperism was borne by the middle classes, and by classes themselves on the verge of pauperism, or even within it. It was right that property should not be left thus free; if it did not do its duty voluntarily, it was right that it should be forced to do it. And yet it may be questioned whether the penalty it paid at last was not too stern. Lordly mansions became poor-houses, and

some owners of such mansions were afterwards among the pauper inmates of them.

It was not Christmas alone that Dr. Doyle consecrated by special bounty to the poor; he commemorated other festivals in the same manner. He was a cheerful giver, and a gentle one. To whomsoever he might be severe, he was to the destitute as meek in manner as he was merciful in action. He did not mock their poverty by insult or by rudeness; and whether blameless or otherwise, it was a claim to his respect as well as pity. He did not relieve with the hand and wound with the lips. He only desired to know that the want was real, and then he ministered to it, to the extent of his means.

Nor was his compassion to the wants of the body alone; it extended still more deeply to the woes of the soul. Any soul burdened with grief, doubt, or sin had free access to him; its complaint was heard; such counsel or consolation as its case needed was given; and it did not matter whether the soul occupied the most lofty station in society, or the most lowly. When occupied by his episcopal duties, busy in the building of a cathedral, immersed in all sorts of controversies,when his pen was guiding the political opinions of millions, and his fame filled Europe, - he was yet as laborious in the confessional as the humblest of his curates; nay, if a ragged beggar came to him specially, in distress of conscience, the Bishop as willingly gave him audience as he would in like case have given it to a mighty prince.

Strict man though he was, all the affections were powerful in his noble nature. He loved his kindred with all the tenderness of family instinct; he loved his friends with a generous and cordial confidence; he loved his enemies if enemies he had with Christian charity; he loved humanity with a fulness of regard which excluded no man from his pity or esteem; and he loved his country with the utmost passion of a patriot. Strict though the Bishop was, priests would sometimes "poke fun" at him. At a certain visitation, he rebuked a clergyman for irregularities in his parish. "I was much concerned," said he, "to observe, on this day, two of your parishioners fighting like a brace of bull-dogs." "My Lord," replied the priest," the two men whom you observed boxing to-day were

tailors from Carlow; and your Lordship will admit, that, if you could effect no reformation in their lives at Carlow, it is unreasonable to expect that I could do so here, where they are merely birds of passage." "Never did any Christian pastor," writes Thackeray, in his Irish Sketch-Book, referring to Dr. Doyle, "merit the affection of his flock more than that great and high-minded man. He was the best champion the Catholic Church and cause ever had in Ireland ; —in learning, and admirable kindness, and virtue, the best example to the clergy of his religion; and if the country is now filled with schools, where the humblest peasant in it can have the benefit of a liberal and wholesome education, it owes this great boon mainly to his noble exertions and to the noble spirit which they awakened."

We cannot discuss at much length the genius of Dr. Doyle. The most powerful faculty in it was his vigorous understanding. All the other faculties were in subordination to this. Intellect ruled his mind with as rigorous a discipline as he himself ruled his diocese. He was not speculative, soaring, or imaginative; he was mostly on the solid ground, close to his subject; and in public affairs he was always more the statesman than the philosopher. He was a great logician; but logic was his servant, not his lord. The art had become so natural to him, was so identical with the action of his thought, that, as a good speaker or writer does with the rules of grammar, being in full possession of the spirit, he threw away the forms. It was the same with rhetoric. He had thoroughly studied it, as the art of expression; but when he had gained power in the spirit of expression, he cared nothing for the technicalities. Perhaps no writer was ever more free from stiffness or mannerism than Dr. Doyle. This freedom is to be obtained, not only by ability, but by an instinct for the right use of words, trained by exercise and experience. It is also aided by wide conversation with men, with real life, and with history. Best of all, it is cultivated by having interests that heartily engage the mind, and become the stimulants of action. Then language is used unconsciously; it is a medium through which thought passes on to its end, without stopping to examine curiously the nature of the way. A tailor is not at ease in his VOL. LXXIV. - 5TH S. VOL. XII. NO. II.

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