most fearless army of priests that ever fought for the spiritual and
temporal interests of the people,--men of large physique and iron
constitutions, who spent ten hours a day on horseback, despised French
claret, loved their people and chastised them like fathers, but were
prepared to defend them with their lives and the outpouring of their
blood against their hereditary enemies. Intense in their faith, of
stainless lives and spotless reputations, their words cut like razors,
and their hands smote like lightning; but they had the hearts of mothers
for the little ones of their flocks. They had the classics at their
fingers' ends, could roll out lines from Virgil or Horace at an
after-dinner speech, and had a profound contempt for English literature.
In theology they were rigorists, too much disposed to defer absolution
and to give long penances. They had a cordial dislike for new devotions,
believing that Christmas and Easter Communion was quite enough for
ordinary sancity. Later on they became more generous, but they clung
with tenacity to the Brown Scapular and the First Sunday of the month. I
am quite sure they have turned somersaults in their graves since the
introduction of the myriad devotions that are now distracting and
edifying the faithful. But they could make, and, alas! too often perhaps
for Christian modesty, they did make, the proud boast that they kept
alive the people's faith, imbued them with a sense of the loftiest
morality, and instilled a sense of intense horror for such violations of
Church precepts as a _communicatio cum hereticis in divinis_, or the
touching of flesh meat on a day of abstinence. I believe I belong to
that school, though my sympathies are wide enough for all. And as in
theology, I am quite prepared to embrace Thomists, and Scotists, and
Molinists, Nominalists and Realists in fraternal charity, so, too, am I
prepared to recognize and appreciate the traits and characteristics of
the different generations of clerics in the Irish Church. Sometimes,
perhaps, through the vanity that clings to us all to the end, I play the
part of "laudator temporis acti," and then the young fellows shout:--

"Ah, but, Father Dan, they were giants in those days."

And the tags and shreds of poor human nature wave in the wind of
flattery; and I feel grateful for the modest appreciation of a
generation that has no sympathy with our own.

Then, down there, below the water-line of gray heads is the coming