quite unnecessary repetitions of the same idea in varied phrases. I told him that he was criticising, as if it were a blemish in the poem, peculiarities which belonged to Celtic literature, which were reproduced by Ferguson with singular skill and success. The vagueness of which he complained was certainly not a characteristic of the poem; it opened with a savage directness which it never lost. Browning maintained an attentive critical silence, but to my surprise did not utter an opinion. When we left I walked away with Browning and promised to visit him next day.
In political business at home there is no avoiding a public dinner, and I was entertained at a dinner at St. James's Hall, which revived in a curious and significant way the main incidents of my life. A generation earlier, I had founded the Nation, in concert with two friends. One was in his grave, but the other, John Dillon, sat by my side. I was tried with O'Connell and others in 1843, and one of the group, Sir John Gray, was there. Later came a time of trial and danger, and D'Arcy M'Gee, one of my closest associates in that trial and danger, who, in whatever else he had changed, had at least remained steadfast in his kindness to me, was also there. In the conflicts with the State which followed, if I came triumphantly through, I owed the result largely to the skill and legal acumen of a learned friend, Sir Colman O'Loghlen, who sat near me. In 1852 I entered Parliament, to test the principles of Independent Opposition, and to obtain through them a recognition of the just rights of Irish tenantry; all who survived of that party sat around me, augmented by the recruits who came into Parliament later to sustain the same principle. And by a happy accident, some of the men who were my colleagues in the Parliament of Victoria, happened to be in London and swelled my welcome home. An old speech is commonly as wearisome as an old dream, but there was an incident on this occasion worth noting. Mr. Lowe, who was opposing a Reform Bill then in progress, had recently in Parliament disparaged the democracy of Australia by suggesting that the payment of a shilling fee frightened them from acquiring the franchise. I took this occasion to remark that Mr. Lowe was much mistaken in the motive. The applicant was required to
