is country. By
the time he had left College and was called to the Bar (1837) he had
disciplined himself by thought and study, and was a very different
being from the dreamy and backward youth described for us by the candid
friends of his schooldays. A dreamer, indeed, he always was, but he had
learned from Bishop Butler, whom he reverenced profoundly and spoke of
as "the Copernicus of ethics," that there is no practice more fatal to
moral strength than dreaming divorced from action. Some concrete act,
some definite thing to be done, was now always in his mind, but always,
it may be added, as the realisation of some principle arrived at by
serious and accurate thinking. He had acquired clear convictions, his
powers of application were enormous, he had a boundless fertility of
invention, and was manifestly marked out as a leader of men. It is
interesting to go through the pages of Davis's Essays and to note how
many of his practical suggestions for work to be done in Ireland have
been taken up with success, especially in the direction of music and
poetry, of the Gaelic language, and of the study of Irish archaeology
and the protection of its remains. But a new Davis would mark with
keener interest the many tasks which yet remain to be taken in hand.

His connection with the Bar was little more than nominal; from the
beginning, the serious work of his life seemed destined to be
journalism. After some experiments in various directions, he, with
Gavan Duffy and John Blake Dillon, during a walk in the Phoenix Park in
the spring of 1842, decided to establish a new weekly journal, to be
entitled, on Davis's suggestion, _The Nation_. Its purpose, which it
was afterwards to fulfil so nobly, was admirably expressed in its
motto, taken from a saying of Stephen Woulfe: "To create and foster
public opinion in Ireland, and to make it racy of the soil." Davis's
was the suggestion of making national poems and ballads a prominent
feature of the journal--the feature by which it became best known and
did, perhaps, its most impressive, if not its most valuable, work. His
"Lament for Owen Roe," which appeared in the sixth number, worked in
Ireland like an electric shock, and woke a sleeping faculty to life and
action. Henceforth Davis's public life was bound up with the _Nation_.
Into this channel he threw all his powers. What kind of influence he
exerted from that post of vantage the pages of this book will tell.

Davis was naturally a mem