to give a national and steady direction to Irish intellect and enterprise—­Hogan, in Italy, Maclise, in London, and others like them, who were bravely struggling and nobly emulating the highest efforts of the genius of other lands, were vindicated, encouraged and applauded by his pen.  Among the sterner natures, who urged their way through the stormy elements of agitation, his accents, though low and diffident, commanded the deepest attention and most lasting memory.  While thus engaged, compassing by his “circling soul,” every sunward effort and immortal tendency of the country, death came, sudden and inexorable, and struck him down in his day of utmost might.  His last work on earth was the brief dedication of the memoir of Curran, and edition of his select speeches, which he had prepared, to his friend, William Elliot Hudson.  This he wrote during a pause of delirium, and soon afterwards passed to a brighter world.  He died on the 16th of September, 1845, when yet but thirty-one years old.  How sincere and deep was the public grief, no pen can ever tell.  In the mourning procession that followed his hearse there was no parade of woe, but every eye was wet and every tongue silent.  If ever sorrow was too deep for utterance, it was that which settled above the early grave of Thomas Davis.

During the summer, no effort of the Association rose above the hacknied level of the usual weekly meetings and the repetition of the same stale grievances, except a gathering of Tipperary at Thurles, which took place on the 23rd of September.  This was the largest of the monster meetings:  but, although the crowd was enormous and the shouting loud, it seemed without purpose or heart.  During the preparations for that meeting I had to encounter difficulties of the most extraordinary kind.  First, the meeting was opposed by certain influential clergymen; and when they found themselves too feeble to resist, they transferred all their opposition to me.  There is no petty cavil they had not recourse to, to thwart and discourage, and even when all had succeeded I was treated with personal discourtesy and annoyance at the public dinner.  The seeds of strife, afterwards destined to bear such deadly fruit, had already begun to manifest themselves, and petty calumnies were insinuated in the name of religion and morality.  From that great meeting the crowd retired quickly, and, almost as instantaneously, its effect faded from the public heat.  All that remained was soreness and distrust.

No event worth a memory marked the close of 1845, or the first months of 1846.  The Colleges Bill had passed, without a single important amendment, and a Roman Catholic priest accepted the nomination of Government, as president of one of the institutions.  Some of the prelates, too, were said to be favourable to the colleges, even as they were then constituted, and the divisions supposed to exist among them were imparting their acridity to the deepening distractions of the time, when an event occurred—­the advent of the Whigs to office—­which broke up the great confederacy on which the hopes of the nation were staked.