Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1912-05-02
NOW UP TO DUBLIN
Must Decide What Kind of
Capital 1t Will Be.
EXPECT REVIVAL OF ARTS
Twentieth Century Will Give Ireland
It's Greatest Chance.
FREE TO DO AS SHE WILL
Men of Talent in Letters and Other |
Lines Were Forced to
Emigrate.
Special Correspondence Of The Star.

Special Correspondence of The Star
LONDON, April Is, 1912.
The certainty of the home rule bill be-
coming law has caused the people of Dub
lin to take thought about their capital
and English curiosity is especially aroused
as to how the Irish people will use the
coming time to effect a concentration of
energies on Ireland herself, so as to make
the country a more pleasant and profita-
bic one to live in, feat only to be secur-
ed by setting the arts among the neces-
saries of life. 1t is a capital city's bust
ness to do its nation this service. If the
function be fulfilled, the city cannot just
ly be accused, now Dublin constantly
Is, of being non-producing and parasitic.
Already it is acknowledged that the
Quickening stir in Irish art and letters
which has made itself felt of recent years
has prepared the way for that moral and
intellectual ascendancy which ought by
right belong to countryS chief town,
and the complex energies which go to
make nation. indeed in secular as well
as higher achievement. even now owe
more to this renaissance than appears
upon the surface as yet.
But all this IS only beginning. What
renewing Dublin. once established in the
real status of capital, will do with
itself to make the most of its best is
the interest of all Ireland's growth
But one may hope for the best, if only
from the strong position Dublin occupies,
to begin with by the mere fact of being
twentieth century Dublin. IL is the cen
trail fact of new situation. With this
priceless national benefit accruing at
once, that ii tends to abolish the in
Vulnerable Irish persons who would have
liked the latter end of the eighteenth
century to go on forever. Old Dublin's
brilliance takes time expatiating upon it
that would be better employed in polish
ing up the new.
Will Have Her Chance.
The twentieth century is Ireland's CEN
utry in which to do what she will with
herself. Formerly she could only do
what she could. and that was always too
little or too much.
Everything was partial, segregated, be-
longing to one another class or creed
or aggressive racial claimants. Few
were the links of sympathy to link things
up Nor was your old Dublin's feeling
for the things Of culture by any means
so sincere or large or deep or mellow
rs many persons would like to believe
who have made no close investigation
into this interesting but often disap-
laudation of times gone by has never SO
much blinded itself to the full inward
ness of the facts of the case.
Many citizen of elder-Georgian
Dublin built himself a huge handsome
house for no more esthetic or amiable
motive than to make his next-door
neighbours abode look like a stable.
And the first effective teaching of art
in old Dublin was relegated to a stable
in a tumbledown court at the back of
Dame street This street, a s implied by
its very name. was then Dublin's leading
thoroughfare of fashion and society
and the building edging it of the most
nd vnff no - hot
Club house, the famous gambling re-
sort from which pseudo aristocratic
cheaters al cards were not seldom to
be seen being flung from upper win
dows out into the street among
mobocracy who grinned and bore it
rather too long.
Livelihood Hard to Earn.
Moreover. memoirs and private letters
dating back to then are replete with
pitiable detail about how difficult a liveli-
hood was earnable by professional min
listers of intellectualsm. Also complaint
was general that foreign practitioners alb
sorbed the cream Of what patronage
was going, while the native-born had to
emigrate or starve. Some undeniably
eminent foreigners of years-long resi-
dence in Dublin starved there, too, at the
end. West. born at Waterford, who re-
turned to Ireland from Paris in it's most
uFLiidiiI udyS Wnen ne haQ been pupil
there of Boucher and Vanloo, and for the
youth of Ireland's sake went into a
stable to teach art, was one Of the finest
draughtsmen in all Europe
Even as William Hogarth and Joshua
Reynolds. his contemporaries. proved to
the world that at last Englishmen knew
how to paint, SO this West proved that
an lrfshman could draw as well as any
man. But his pupils mostly drifted
abroad, some to become foundation MEM
bers of the English Royal Academy, and
West, stalled in the DANES court stable,
went out of his mind.
So with the most conspicuous Irish
artists of those generations, including
that other great Corkman, Daniel Mac
lise, whose centenary last year passed
as unnoticed in his adopted England, as
in his own country.
He was part of the old wholesale emil
grafton of Irish intellectuals to reinforce
the mentality of the outlanders Again
Bishop Berkeley, the Irish philosopher
and virtuoso, is Well known to have in
itiated art teaching in America in the
early eighteenth century. and John Sin
gleton Copley, the United States first
able historic painter, was the son of a
Limerick man. L. ii. MOORE.
The Virginia Reel
From the New York Sun.