The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-06-04
From the Washington Post.

From the Washington Post.
 A THOUSANDS of Americans will be (SH glad to learn that, after 60 years,
 the people of Dublin, Ireland, have at last honored themselves by honor ing the name and memory of James Clar- ence Mangan. No one who is acquainted with the history of Ireland since the dark days of 1S49 when Mangan was car ried victim of starvation and expos ure as much as of cholera, to his grave in Glasnevin, will fail to appreciate the significance of the unveling ceremony.
 When we think of Mangan we seem to see him going down to the lowly house in Copper alley where some of his relatives dwelt, his settled expres- sion of melancholy on his fine-cut fea- lures and large bundles of papers bulg- ing under his threadbare coat. Or again we see him perched immovable on his ladder in the libraray of Trinity college, boring over a musty tome, day dream ing maybe, or perhaps shaping the ideas for one of his immortal poems. Or we see him, after a protracted spell of being much bemused in drink, sober now for an hour or two, and, with tears in his eyes, promising his friends to re- form and lead a new life, and then leaving them and straightway falling once more victim to his one besetting sin:
 And he fell far through that pit abysmal.
 The gulf and grave of Maginn and
 Burns,
 And pawned his soul for the devils
 dismal
 Stock of returns.
 It Is but right to say that he only pawned his soul, and that at the end he fully redeemed the pledge.
 Despite his irregular habits Mangan contr1ved in his comparatively short life of. six-and-forty years to do a vast amount of literary work and incidentally to master Spanish, Italian German and French By profession he was in turns a scrivener, a lawyers clerk, and copyist, but literature was his vocation. Beginning with contributions to tho Comet and to the daily papers, he pass ed on to the Dublin Penny Journal and the Dublin Penny Satirist. His period of most continued productivity lay between 1884 and 1s42 During these few years he contributed to the Dublin University Magazine some articles on German poetry and several transIations from Ger man poets, afterward, in 1s45, brought out under the title of "A German Anthol- ogy'
 When the Nation newspaper was founded as the organ of the young Ire- flanders by Duffy. Davis and Dillon, In lS42, Mangan became an accredited con tributor. He was one of the brightest stars in that brilliant galaxy of writers whose equals in point alike of number and excellence have scarcely ever ciuster- ed around a single weekly paper. Mangan was caught up in the spirit of the age in Ireland, and his poetry, from being as heretofore cosmopolitan in range, be- came intensely and pervadingly national in tone. It is this national poetry that has inshrined him forever in the hearts of his fellow countrymen. How many Irishmen have felt their pulses leap and their breath come faster as they read the concluding stanza of his Dark Rosaleen' (Dark Rosaleen meaning. of course, Ireland):
 Oh! the Erne shall run red
 With redundance of bloodi
 The earth shall rock beneath our tread,
 And flames wrap hill and wood, And gun-peal and slogan cry
 Wake many Q glen serene,
 Ere you shall fade. ere you shall die,
 My Dark Rosaleen!
 My own Rosaleen!
 The Judgment Hour must first be nigh Ere you can fade, ere you can die,
 My Dark Rosaleen!
 He had his romance, too, this poor drudge of quill driver, this pariah of the Dublin slums. But the lady of his love proved unkind, or at least fickle, and in MitcheIs striking phrase, she whistled poor Mangan down the wind. Listen to the pathos he puts into his lament for this wreck of his hopes.
 saw her once, one little while. and then
 no more,