The Savannah morning news., 1902-03-18
HIBERNIANS BANQUET.
continued from Eighth PAge.)

loo
EN- li, old country, where Mr.. Curran,
was called a convivial deity-so
"ho was his social charm and apti-
beId the same position which Mr..
tuIIgJ-ino occupies here. He composed
rbarter song of the order, called
tn s Monks of the Screw, the first stanza
d which ran:
.wben st. Patrick this order estab-
lished
uo allied us the Monks of the Screw.
IA rules he revealed to our abbot,
~ Guide us in what we should do.
,,'t first he replenished our fountain
Witb liquor the best in the sky:
81 nd he swore on the word of Saint,
That the fountain should never run
dry"
ON later life the famous barrister
lad occasion to appear as counsel be-
ssra Lord Avonmore, one of the mem
bors when both were young,
n this convivial band. Re-
sarring to those times Mr.. Curran
snoke of them as those ambrosial
s. aights those reflections of the GODS
and quoted these appropriate lines:
81 I'VE spent them not in toys or lust or
wine.
Rut search of deep philosophy,
i Wit. eloquence and poetry,
& arts which l loved, for they, my
friend, were thine"
Ireland and Education.
II is exceedingly proper that on ev-
erv occasion where the glories of Ire
iand are celebrated, the cause of learn
ing or education should find voice;
FIR no chapter of remote history en-
bodies more of interest than the won
5srful story of st. Patrick's mission
arv labors and his famous monaste-
rios which were the only universities
If that time. 1t is a familiar story,
and vet deserves to be repeated time
and again.
Here the Chancellor narrated the
history of the Irish cloisters, and of
columbia and Iona.
In later times" said Mr.. Hill, "the
University of Dublin has held an hon
4 ored place among institutions of high
or learning. AS Dartmouth would
Il have been immortal if it had gradua-
/ ted only Webster; and Yale, if it had
4 graduated only Calhoun, so the Irish
University would give a sufficient rea-
son for it's existence if it had gradu-
9ted only Edmund Burke. MIR. JUS
lice Brewer, who has lately edited a
series of the worlds great orators,
gives to Burke the palm of superiority
in that great grouping of eloquenee.
What a vacuum would be made in lit
erature. if the works of Dean Swift,
Sir Richard Steele, Lawrence Sterne,
4 and Oliver Observation-Disclosures all
should be cancelled from its treas
i ures! 1t was an Irishman, Bishop
Berkeley, whose prophetic eye first,
/ Berkeley, whose prophetic eye first
saw the future of this continent.
It was he who in philosophy was the
4 great idealist He forever rebuked the
i Grass materialism of the age by an
argument to prove the unreality of
matter-a metaphysical argument so
keen that materalists who endeavor
to Danish spirit from the catagories of
. reality, find themselves baffled by
4 demonstration of which, whether true
or false we may at least say this--it
4 establishes the non-eXistence of mat.
ter with at least as much cogency as
i the materialists can employ to disprove
the reality of mind. 1t was reserved
4 also for a native Irishman, Hon. James
4 Bryce to draw the first adequate full
length portraiK of this great nation in
his unequaed work, The American
4 Commonwealth
1 treat irish EDUCATION.
IN Great Britain" said Chancellor
Hill, "the universities are directly rep
Il resented in Parliament. Provision is
thus made for the scholar in politics;
for which it is sad to say no provision
whatever is made in our country. Four
times the university of Dublin was
represented in the imperial Parliament
by William Conyngham Plunket. This
great Irshman for some reason is not
so well known on this side of the
ocean as many others. My own par
TALLY would write him down as the
greatest of Irish orators and judges. 1t
4 is historically a well-attested fact that
only three speeches in the English
House of Commons ever changed any
votes on a great issue that had been
Sharply drawn on party lines. Plunkets
speech on Catholic Emancipation was
one of the three. AS the highest Judge
in the Court of Chancery, he had
felicity of phrase which foretokened
the judicial scintillations of Jeremiah
S Black and Logan E. Bleckley What,
for instance, could excel his descrip-
ton of the law of prescription as
founded on adverse possession; a
statement which at once embodies a
beautiful and striking metaphor and is
at the same time as accurate a define
alton Of the law and of the reason on
Which the law is based as if it had
been expressed in the most dry-as- dust
fashion. Time is the great destroyer
Of titles; but is also the great protec-
Tor of possessions; for while Time
holds in one hand a scythe with which
he mows down our muniments of title,
ne holds in the other an hourglass
which measures out those periods of
duration that render those muniments
no longer necessary"
Schemes of Education.
The speaker then took up the sub
Jet of education and discussed it un-
ger the following heads: Agricultural
hQucation, Technical or Industrial
Education, Commercial Education and
liberal Education. He concluded as
loloWs: I'VE are tonight in the
mast of an inundation of champagne
ana an avalanche of cigars. Sitting
Aele amid the flowing wine and the
soclal Wreaths of tobacco, l am re-
minded of reference on a similar oc-
prasioq to that mysterious passage in
isalms which has greatly puzzled the
oCmmentators. 1t is the verse in
which the Psalm writer says ST am be-
.ohe as bottle in smoke" Men
nave always been accustomed to dream
peasant dreams and see happy visions
III the curling clouds of social
s..poI around the banquet board.
Sltanclng here in the city of Savannah,
nose merchants have always been
en OF culture, whose professional
i.en have scattered the flowers of po-
~ iererature over the thorny brakes
'helr daily toll in the city which
s nas always been the best and strong
81 Iriend of the university of the
s,a .e, the vision which feasts my