Kentucky Irish American. (Louisville, Ky.) 1898-1968, 1899-11-11
IRISH ORATORY.
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CONTINUED FROM FIRST PAGE.
rhetoric with negligent but colossal
grandeur, with the chisel not of Canova,
but of Michael Angelo" Melting his
hearers at one moment by his pathos, he
convulsed them at the next by his humor
Ne-aetee -eEs-.lse stage surpassed him IN
revealing the workings of the mind
through the windows of the face. his
whole countenance spoke, and he looked
every sentiment as it fell from his lips.
He was really the modern incarnation of
Ogmius, that god of words whom the
Gauls worshiped, for out of his mouth
flowed chains to hold his listeners cap
tive.
The ''great agitator," as O'Connell was
called was born king among men, his
very faults and errors had prncely air.
He championed the cause of humanity
without regard to CLUE, color or condi-
ton. Wherever was heard the cry of
oppression there was also heard the
trumpet voice of O'Connell rousing the
sympathies of mankind, rebuking the
tyrant and uplifting the victim. He
proudly said in one of his speeches, quot
ing Grattan's beautiful sentence, "Grat-
tan sat by the cradle of his country and
followed her hearse; it was left for me to
sound the resurrection trumpet and to
show that she was not dead, but sleep
ing"
JOHN PHILPoT CURRAN,
born about the middle of the eighteenth
century, was approaching the zenith of
his power at the time the great revolution
was convulsing France. He was an ora
tor in every sense of the word, though he
does not rank with Burke or Sheridan.
His wit was so keen-edged and his humor
so rich and inexhaustible that he is re-
membered for them even more than for
the pathos with which he melted his
countrymen, and the lava of invective
which he poured out upon the authors of
their wrongs. Is there to be found a
figure of speech more startling than that
of Currans when he declaims against the
spies brought by England to assist in
convictions from the various prisons
where they had been confined. "Those
catacombs of living death, where the
wretch that is buried a man lies till his
heart has time to tester and dissolve and
then he is dug up an informer." The
stream of Curran's thought flowed red
hot and molten from a mind glowing
with the fire of passionate feeling. The
peroration of his great speech OH univer-
sal emancipation is beautifully conceived:
"a slave can not breathe in England; the
first moment lie touches the sacred soil of
Britain the altar of slavery OH which he
had been offered up sinks into dust; his
soul walks abroad in her own beauty and
majesty, his body swells beyond the
measure of his chains that burst from
around him, and he stands redeemed,
regenerated and disenthralled by the
irresistible genius of universal emancipa-
ton" can only briefly mention
RICHARD LABOR SHELL.
an. orator of considerable merit, who was
so often associated with O'Connell and
yet so utterly unlike him in every re-
pect. He always spoke with an air OF
passion and abandonment which nothing
Apparently but the enthusiasm of the
moment could inspire, yet in reality he
elaborated the great passages of his
speeches with the utmost nicely and
finish. He was patriot in every sense
of the word, and Ireland's woes he made
his own. He held his fingers upon his
country's pulse and knew full we'll the
meaning of every throb of her anguished
heart.
/ cannot more than name Robert EN-
NETT, the patriot, the orator and martyr
TO his cause, whose eloquent and pathetic,
though futile, speech in his own behalf
will live forever like a wreath of inn
mortelles about his memory.
Time and the occasion both cry halt. ]
can not here and now mention the nu-
merous names which stand out in illum-
mated letters upon the pages of Irish his
tory, past and present, as her defenders.
whose eloquent tongues pleading in her
behalf have caught the ear of humanity
and compelled the admiration of man
kind. From address of ]. Carroll Payne.