Washington sentinel., 1856-05-31

may seek to escape the personal castgauon
due to every public slanderer, by converting
them into sanctuaries of insult and defamation
1t win not do to allow such characters immunity
in the high places of our government. Better
thatthe Senate chamber should witness every
day merited aaggellation like that OF which
Mr.. Sumner was the victim, than that delam-
ing and insulting tongues like his should have
a free charter to exercise themselves with i'm.
punity in that conspicuous and exalted theatre
of the Republic. fff
From the Irish News
The Irish Represent tatives--Past ana
III Present.
! A distinguished American visiting Europe
some few years since, in speaking on an occa-
sion half public, half private, told with touch.
ing effect, as q proof'ofs the deep love which
Irisbmen, however distant, bear their father
country--that he had watched one evening,
band of immigrants returning from a days
labor, in the West, aud as they broke into one
Of those wild, melancholy songs, which belong
to the national music, never though he had
travelled in many regions, had the softest
strains that hoated round the revels of the
East; thrilled the heart with such mingled
agony and rapture, as did that simple song-a
memento, perhaps, of want and poverty and
q
her children, but still memento of their ma
tive land lnts3ts p.a1 4ss 7s
And so it is. Though driven from the ma
tive forest, and scattered to pasture over every
portion Of the earth, the deer even turn to the
fountain from which they first drank, and catch
every echo that comes from the old places,
softened and sweetened by the distance. 1t is
this feeling which prompts us from time to
timeto present on our page reflection of
things in our own dear land, as they pass.
Both Bacon and Talleyrand, wise men in
their way, have a maxim that--the friend
who is faithfully fast to his first friend, may be
relied on by his second. Irishmen will not
love America the less that they love Ireland
more. 1t is well, too, that Irishmen should
really understand how politics at home, clouded
from clear vision by the dust which personal
and party prejudice and conflict have thrown
up-really stand With this view, we purpose to
present, by way of opening, series Of pictures
of the present representation of Ireland, which
drawn by a hand cunning in the subject and
unsteadied by a quiver Of personal or party
prediction, may be relied on--as, if not glow
ing, at least truthful photographs. ae.,
Those who have visited the beautiful churches
abroad, in an hour when the sacred Host is
absent, and the ever wakeful lamp which stands
its sentinel is extingushed, must have marked
the lonely and melancholy air that hangs around
the place. The rapture of alteration, the con-
ISOLATION of sorrow which lis inspiring presence
mparts. is lost-and adreary, chilling coldness
is over all. So is Ireland, with that Parlia-
ment, which gave her life, and from whose pres
ence her children gathered inspiration, borne
to another land. Il would need, indeed, cold
heart to look without emotion on that spot
where Grattan stood and Curran spoke, and
Plunkett threw his thunders with giant arm.
Money changers now violate nations temple,
and the deserted city Of Bruges, with its mobiles
fled-its trade gone-its streets dripping and
mouldy, presents not more cheerless look than
the wasted city which wines and covers around
that temple. Ireland's glories are those of the
past, and its beauty that of monument It's
occasional wretched fits of gaiety sound like
convivial enjoylRents in a poorhouse or
sepulchre. .air.e,a
In the absense of that which in every country
gives it sustenance, Irish Parliamentary elo-
quence has been gradually growing DINNER,
until it may now be said to be wholly extin-
guished. With the elevation of Mr. Keogh to
the Bench, and the departure Of Mr.. Duffy, who,
though not an orator, had a national love and
enthusiasm which supplied its place, the last
scintillations which had even the material of
growing into light, have gone out The abest
Parliamentary speaker of the Irish representa-.
tives now in the House of Commons is Mr..
Cairns, of Belfast, and he is an English lawyer,
with English legal aspirations, and more re-
markable for his compact accumulation of facts
and closeness and vgor of their application,
than for any more shining order of eloquence.
For some time after the plumber Of the Irish
Parliament, Plunket and Grattan sustained in
the British House the Irish reputation for elo-
I,,t A. r. IL -
which they were transplanted, was equal to those
which sprung from themsop the parent earth.
The trees still stood proudly alongside their
tallest fellows in the forest to wsich they were
conveyed, but they lacked, once uprooted that
sap and vigor which gave strength to their
trunk, and beauty to their bough. The wild,
dishevelled. glory of Grattan and the prophet
like air and attitude with which he threw forth
his inspirations the. first time he stood in the
British Parliament, are most graphically pic
tured by Pitt, upon whom his eloquence pro-
duced an electrifyipg impression. And Pun
ket's speech on Catholic Emancipation, in re-
ply to Peel, with its sentence upon sentence
sweeping over the ground, close and crushing
as rush Of cannon balls, was giant piece Of
Parliamentary artillery. But neither of these
efforts we're equal to the splendid struggle of
both for the life of that parent, upon whose
bosom they had drank the inspiring theme.
The one died broken and detected the other,
like SO many antEnglish Hannibals, found
a Capua in the British treasury, and subdued
his snew in soft recline upon the rosy cushion
Of the bench.
Scarcely had these two lights been extin-
guisbed, when there arose above the Parlia-
mentary horizon two other Irish lun,inaries
of scarce lesser brilliancy, though Of different
order whoclaim column In this brief prelimi-
nary sketch of the decline and fall of the Irish
representation toits present stricken state.
The Emperor Of Russia has issued the fol.
lowing manifesto on the subject Of his ap-
preaching coronation:
"We, Alexander III, Emperor and Auiocrat
Of all the Russias King Of Poland, &c, make
known by these presents:
"Wben we ascended our ancestral throne Of
7. - T r -