martial notwithstanding the state prisoner, but happily there is any need to believe Sir Jonah. was thirty-four years old.

of the | did he fail to grasp either the strength never of the English position or to do justice Tone to the force of the English character. Whenever any enthusiastic Frenchman showed a disposition to make light of England, Tone makes it plain that he personally shared the popular prejudice that one Englishman was a match for at least two Frenchmen.

Tone's hatred of England, whether born with him or acquired, was perfectly genuine. "The truth is," he wrote in 1796 in Paris, "I hate the very name of England. I hated her before my exile; I hate her since, and I will hate her always." It was this hatred that made him the man he was, that gave nerve to his actions, and converted his natural restlessness into a well-nigh deadly fixity of purpose.

Whether it is ever right for any one to hate England, and whether Tone, in particular, was justified in hating England as he did, are questions which need not engage our attention, for it cannot be supposed that the man exists who will deny that an eighteenthcentury Irishman had not at least as much right to hate England as any one can ever have to hate a dominant faction.

As a matter of fact, no Irishman of those times made any pretence of caring for England. Could Tone's famous and clear-sighted contemporary, Fitzgibbon, have brought himself to believe that his native land had any decent chance of forcing her way along the paths of peace and prosperity apart from Great Britain, Fitzgibbon himself would have been a United Irishman.

Wolfe Tone was a most formidable rebel, and at no time, save the bitter end, was his task a hopeless one. It would be a mistake to attribute to his unaided energy and undying zeal the armaments before referred to; but he had quite enough to do with these preparations to justify Mr. Goldwin Smith's daring comparison.

Had Hoche succeeded in landing but a moiety of his force, there is small doubt that in the then condition of Ireland he would have obtained such a military possession of the whole country as would have made the task of its recovery tremendous, tedious, and costly. No deadlier blow has been aimed at British pride since the Armada.

It was perhaps lucky for England that Bonaparte, after his return from Egypt, did not take up Hoche's Irish projects. He had vaster but less dangerous ambitions. On Mr. Pitt, however, Tone's efforts made a great impression.

He

A desultory and enormous reader of plays and novels, with an impish huIt is part of the tragedy of Ireland mor, and a facility and felicity of quothat her best and wisest sons have so tation which never deserted him under often been compelled to hold aloof the most terrific circumstances, Tone's from great national movements, not style is throughout literary, and in that from any lack of sympathy, still less sense artificial; but he had a passion from any affection or even liking for for facts and a healthy determination the English party, but solely owing to to see things as they really were. their sorrowful conviction that Ireland, is perfectly free from every kind of much as they loved her, did not contain illusion, delusion, and humbug. within herself the materials out of which could be built up an honorable separate existence. The reflection must always have been a stinging one. But however this may be, Wolfe Tone had no doubts. He believed the thing could be done, if only the luck prospered. This hatred of England was no blinding passion. At no time

He was very much alive to the humorous side of all things, including himself. The diaries are full of entries like this:

"I cannot help this morning thinking of Gil Blas when he was secretary to the Duke of Lerma. Yesterday I dined with Carnot; to-day I should be puzzled to raise a guinea."

This trick of self-ridicule is a danger- But these are the questions which all

ous one. It is no unreasonable de- sensible men will wish to settle for mand that a man who deliberately themselves.

engages in an undertaking which in- If Tone's autobiography and journals volves an appeal to arms should take are read simply for the purpose of both himself and his enterprise seri- preparing a brief to be held by an Adously. Wolfe Tone at the bottom of vocatus Diaboli, many passages apparhis heart was grave enough; his death ently incriminating their writer may be is warrant for this. But he belonged easily found, and made the text of by the order of his mind to the mock- much hostile comment; but that is not ers. "Il se moque de ses émotions au the spirit in which to read any book, moment même où il s'y livre," so M. and by no means such a book as this, Taine says of Heine; and so it was which is the work of a man who was with Wolfe Tone; he cannot help keep-a true humorist as well as a great ing up a running commentary of jokes rebel. and gibes at his own expense, and exposing himself all through his adventures to a fire from the batteries of his own wit. This bewilders many who find it hard to believe that any one should have so little self-respect or so much humor as to make fun out of himself.

Tone's widow, though she had doubtless a good deal to put up with, mourned her husband's loss for seventeen years, when she married one who shared her veneration for Tone's memory. His son grew up to be proud of his father's sufferings in what he was taught to believe was a good cause. Ireland has never forgotten Tone, and probably never will.

Perhaps the oddest thing ever said about Tone is Sir Jonah Barrington's remark that "Mr. Croker of the Admiralty greatly resembled him in personal appearance. "Had Tone," continues Sir Jonah, "had the hundredth part of Mr. Croker's tact and skill in working upward, he might this day have been living and happy."

Barrington, who knew Tone, also expresses the opinion that he was not worldly enough to get on in this life; but I do not think the careful reader of the diaries will be struck by their unworldly spirit, or be disposed to believe that Tone was deficient in either tact or skill.

Mr. Froude, who greatly appreciates the charm of Tone's writings, is confident that at any time Mr. Pitt could have bought him with "a writership," and that Tone's "patriotism was merely personal pique.

a

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL.

From The National Review.

THE GARDEN THAT I LOVE.

WHAT Would it profit one to cultivate garden, if one were not constantly reminded thereby to cultivate oneself, and were not aided by the one in the doing of the other? Partnership with nature admonishes one to be continuously patient, to trust and hope, to have implicit faith in the capacity of time to work wonders, to put up with disappointments and disillusions, and, after repeated failure, cheerfully to try again. In a word, the right cultivation of a garden teaches one equanimity. Equanimity and magnanimity conjoined equanimity as regards oneself, magnanimity in respect of others seem to me to sum up all the virtues. I have asked Lamia to make two devices over the doorway of my study. Over it, within, she is to inscribe the word Equanimitas; over it, on the outside, the word Magnanimitas. "Why in Latin ?" she asks; and it is not possible to make her understand the special savor there is in the vocabulary of a dead language taught one in one's boyhood. But she is going to do as I wish.

out, on due enquiry, that you have not pleased Veronica, last Saturday, to in

treated her fairly.

flict on us a garden party. Knowing Therefore, suspect your own or how we abominate it, she began by somebody's shortcomings rather than cautiously observing that she had asked those of nature, when the harvest of a couple of men to play lawn tennis, in your expenditure falls short. Doing order to gratify me and the Poet. But things in good time, is the main secret these men have wives, or sisters; and of successful gardening, which I did if you ask men's wives or sisters, you not acquire till after sorrowful experi- must ask other men's wives, or sisters, ence of the results of amiable procras- or daughters, to meet them; and then, tination. For want of observation of in turn, other men have to be invited this simple fact, I have had more than to meet all this gathering of sociable one fit of depression, and have been womenfolk. taunted by Veronica with the superiority of some of the flowers in neighboring gardens. Then it is that both equanimity and magnanimity are needed; equanimity under Veronica's odious comparisons, magnanimity towards those who have outshone me.

I dare say you will think that loving a garden is, like every form of love, little better than slavery; and verily it is. But how one cherishes one's chains!

"Do you indeed ?" asks Lamia. "At any rate they give you a pretty long tether. Am I mistaken in thinking you spent February, March, and the better part of April, on the other side of the Alps?"

"My dear fellow," said the Poet, "you might just as well be both equable and magnanimous, for we are in for it. Your sister, you may be quite sure, has asked the entire neighborhood."

"It is all very well for you." I answered testily, "to display equanimity, because you flirt - all poets do- and I do not. I shall have to take a succession of maiden aunts round the garden, as though it were a show, and I the showman."

He was quite right. Veronica had asked the entire neighborhood. There were so many rectors, and vicars, and curates, that you might almost have supposed yourself at Convocation, and There it is. I did so, and I am sprightly spinsters so abounded that I paying for it now. My gardener is a felt my celibacy to be almost a species pattern of conscientious docility and of crime. They clustered round the intelligent solicitude; but he is a gar- oak, Veronica said, as though its redener, and he is human. Upon the spectable age was a sort of chaperonage discriminating prevision of February, for them; and superlatives of admiraMarch, and April, depends the efflores- tion were almost as plentiful as Veroncence of July, August, and September. ica's cakes, peaches, iced-coffee spoons, "And if," continues Lamia, 66 you and I know not what. But I verily will read Daute amid the ruins of the believe she had got all these people Baths of Caracalla, philosophically be- together in order that they might constride a donkey on the slopes of Tus- template her Sheffield plated urns culum, or collect majolica ware for she has now got four of them - and Veronica in the purlieus of Gubbio, not in the least that we might have instead of staying at home like the those lawn tennis games she had prohonest Englishman you pretend to be, fessed to be benevolently projecting you must not let your equanimity be for us. The Poet and I did play all ruffled because your zinneas are this the same, and were reproved afteryear not up to the mark, or because the wards for our selfishness. But then, new annual that was to do such won- as the Poet pleaded, men are "such ders selfish brutes; though, in truth, I spent most of the time in listening to ejaculations of admiration over flowers that were far from reaching my own

"The Cosmos, you mean?"
"Yes; is such an arrant failure."
Yet what a thing is prestige! It

private standard. The garden that I is true, she exercised her sprightly love has somehow acquired a reputa- wit; but I fancy he had been paying tion in these parts; and so, I verily her commonplace compliments, and believe, most of my neighbors would declare it to be a marvel and a show if it was covered with burdocks and darnels. Such, I say, is the force and value of prestige.

orna

sary to "take me down a peg,' "lest I spoke of them, when extolling my gar should become excessively enamoured den to a friend-have attained what of the work of my own hands. The in our non-tropical climate we regard Harpalium Rigidum or prairie flower as a colossal height, and are now in has stems ten feet high, which branch flower, as are all the Cannce. The into clusters of golden dials; and dwarf, bronze-leaved castor-oil-plants though I confess it is a most aggressive have grown taller than I wanted them plant, how is one to dispense with it, to do, having been over-manured; but unless one substitute for it the giant I can see that, dexterously treated, perennial sunflower, which, I dare say, they can be turned to several when one knows it better, will behave mental purposes, in combination with just as usurpingly? The Helianthus, various shrubs and flowers. double and single, are a mass of bloom; But it is the annuals that now conand the phloxes, scarlet, salmon-colored, tribute the greater portion of the splenand white, have done splendidly. The dor, and all the scent, that make the Japanese anemones, both the white, garden that I love at this moment a the pink, and the red, are just begin- succession of sensuous delights. Do ning that delicate but profuse flowering you grow the sweet-smelling nightthey will prolong till they are chidden stock? If not, mind you do. It is a by an austere frost. Some of the modest little plant, bearing an insiggolden-rayed lilies of Japan, the Lilium nificant flower, something like Venus's Auratum, have shed their petals and looking-glass, but as soon as the suntheir incense; but others are still in all light fades from lawn and flower-bed, the pride of their Oriental beauty, and the dew begins to rise from the especially among the tea roses, where I ground, it saturates the air with an took care to plant some of them. The aroma you would think could proceed orange lilies are on the wane, after a only from some strong and tall-growing short life and a merry one, and now plant, such as the Nicotiana Affinis or the tall tiger lilies - Lilium Tigrinum white flowering tobacco, whose habit it Splendens are justifying their pre- is to close its petals and go to sleep in tentious name. Many of the clematis the daytime, and to remain awake all tribe, notably the white and paler- night till well after the dawn. This colored ones, are breaking into bloom; tropical custom it has retained in northothers are flowering a second time. ern latitudes. I plant it anywhere, The Cape hyacinth - Hyacinthus Can- and everywhere, but always under the dicans - bears its dainty white bells on windows of the front of the house, so long, graceful stalks; the torch lily is that its perfume agreeably assails you throwing up the stout, hollow racemes every time you pass. I think the which will gradually taper into flame - South Enclosure, with its long, curving some people call it the flame flower- avenue of almost every flower I grow, with which to light the dying year to at this particular moment bears away its doom. The old-fashioned hydran- the bell. For there one finds gea, which I dearly love, and which Moon-daisies tall, and tufts of crimson may be made, with the addition of iron phlox, to the soil, to bear blue trusses, is not a success in the garden that I love; but Hydrangea paniculata, whose trusses are white, revels in bloom, and is just now a very joy to behold, whether blended with the beautifully discoloring leaves of the pœony, or mixed with the yet more heightened hues of the fading foliage of the azalea. The castor-oil-plants-cod liver oils plants, as one dear, simple creature

And dainty white anemones that bear
An Eastern name, and Eastern beauty

wear;

Lithe, haughty lilies, homely smelling stocks,

And sunflowers green and gold, and gorgeous hollyhocks.

The South Enclosure is a veritable medley of growth and bloom, and I dare say a certain number of things are crushed out of existence, or seriously