being without doubt or cavil one of the noblest emotions of the human
heart, has often been the begetter of inspired prose. Our own great war
has not yet produced many fine utterances, and I go back to-day to a
contemporary of Sir William Napier for one of the noblest outbursts of
eloquence expressive of a burning patriotism that has ever been poured
forth.

Someone in the days when Wellington was alive had alluded in the
House of Lords to the Irish as "aliens," and Richard Sheil, rising in the
House of Commons, lifted up his voice for his country in an impassioned
flight of generous eloquence.

Sir Henry Hardinge, who had been at the battle of Waterloo, happened
to be seated opposite to Sheil in the House, and to him Sheil appealed
with the deepest emotion to support him in his vindication of his
country's valour. None will in these days deny that our fellow-citizens of
Ireland who went to the war displayed a courage as firm and invincible
as our own:--

"The Duke of Wellington is not, I am inclined to believe, a man of
excitable temperament. His mind is of a cast too martial to be
easily moved; but, notwithstanding his habitual inflexibility, I
cannot help thinking, that when he heard his countrymen (for we
are his countrymen) designated by a phrase so offensive he ought
to have recalled the many fields of fight in which we have been
contributors to his renown. Yes, the battles, sieges, fortunes,
that he has passed ought to have brought back upon him, that from
the earliest achievement in which he displayed that military
genius which has placed him foremost in the annals of modern
warfare, down to that last and surpassing combat which has made
his name imperishable, the Irish soldiers, with whom our armies
are filled, were the inseparable auxiliaries to his glory.

"Whose were the athletic arms that drove their bayonets at Vimiera
through those phalanxes that never reeled in the shock of war
before? What desperate valour climbed the steeps and filled the
moats at Badajos! All! all his victories should have rushed and
crowded back upon his memory--Vimiera, Badajos, Salamanca,
Albuera, Toulouse, and last of all the greatest! (and here Sheil
pointed to Sir Henry Hardinge across the House). Tell me, for you
were there. I appeal to the gallant soldier before me, from whose
opinions I differ, but who bears, I know, a generous hea