The morning star and Catholic messenger., 1875-01-03
TsE MOKNG STAR AND AEssENGER SUNDAY JANUARY

| and less enthusiastic seekers after faded
greatness. His words of praise aud won I.
der appeared to his friends extravagant
| and unmeaning.
Sir Walter Scott aud his friends who &C
| companied him,
! by that lake whose gloomy shore
Skylark never warbles GER
are types of two classes of people in the
higher and educated walks of society. The
one think the other take everything they
see or hear in the present for what il
appears The one trace effects to their
was it set up7 Who first made itf Who
carved this works What skilled hands
| chiseled those nicely cut stones What
mind planned that church, or fashioned
! this arch The other take the effects just
| as they are ii an old ruin or great heap
of stones, then it is worth to them just
what it is worth in the money market.
TTuam News, Nov. 90 J
The cross of Tuam, just set up, will,
from this forth, be seen by many a strang-
or coming to Tuam. To some it will be an
object "f great interest to others it will be
nothing but a simple rude old market cross.
What volume it is to read for those who
can decipher the characters engraved upon
it's form, not alone by the hand of the ar
tist, but by the hand of time.
In the second issue of the Tuam Ne,cs,
-four years ago) we gave the words written
around the base in the ancient Irish char
| acter and language, deciphered and copied
| some thirty five years before by that learn
ed Irish scholar-himself a Protestant
of the Royal Irish Academy. The inscrip-
ton, says Petrie, on the base of the Great
Stone Cross, now lying in the market
place, Tuam, reads as follows -
"a prayer for OHossin for the Abbot by
whom it was made"
A second inscription, ON the opposite
side of tue same base, preserves the name
of the King, Turlough O'Conor, and reads
as follows:
"A prayer for Turlough O'Conor, for the
(successcr Of ST. Jarlath, by whom the
cross was made"
'"That the cross was cotemporaneous with
the church, and was intended as q memorial
of it's founders or rebuilders, there can be no
reason to doubt" says Petrie.
The church, therefore, and the cross were
erected at Tuam previous to the year 1150,
when O'HOssin became Bishop, and be-
tween the year 1928, when he became Alb
bet, and 1850, when he succeeded as Arch
bishop. 1t was erected about the year
113O.
"The cross of Tuam is of great magnifcence
and interest, and may justly be ranked as the
finest monument of its class remaining in Ire
laud."
The head of the figure of the Saviour is
capped with an Irish mural crown.
AS the bones of giants, scattered over
the face of Europe, it is thought, tell the
geologisL that q mammoth race of animals,
belonging to the Pliocene period, hourished
ages ago, SO the pillar towers of Ireland
tell of race of architects in Ireland, and
the cross of Tuam tells that knowledge
of architecture and of sculpture was quite a
common thing before our pretended civili
zers, under Henry H., ever set foot on the
ancient soil of Erin. We know that poetry
and music were as natural to the Irish
home-for in every house there was harp
ist and seannachie-as were the house.
hold and Christian virtues of love of home
and kindred. The fine arts-said to be
Ave in number-poetry, music, aEchitec-
ture, painting (as testified in the life OF
Columba), sculpture, fourished in Ireland.
The knowledge and practice of these arts
show that the people were not only civil
ICED but possessed of an esthetical per-
ception of the beautiful.