Irish gentleman

“ He is amazed at the fearful ingratitude of the poor man, who cannot feel overwhelmed with joy at his benevolent offer. But the gentleman considers he has done his duty, and consoles himself with the reflection that the Irish are an ungrateful race. Of all the peoples on the face of the globe, the Irish Celts are the most attached to their families and to their lands. God only knows the broken hearts that go over the ocean strangers to a strange land. ”

“ Where is the land that has not seen the face of our people and heard their voice? And wherever, even to the ends of the earth, an Irishman is found to-day, his spirit and his sympathy are here. The millions of America are with us—the Irish Catholic soldier on India's plains is present amongst us by the magic of love—the Irish sailor standing by the wheel this moment in far-off silent seas, where it is night, and the Southern stars are shining, joins his prayer with ours, and recalls the glorious image and the venerated name of O'Connell. ”

“ The people stood up respectfully as she came forward, and while each made his or her humble obeisance, a muttered sound ran through them, in Irish, of wonder and astonishment at her grace and beauty; for, whatever be the privations of the Irish peasant, however poor and humble his lot in life, two faculties pertain to him like instincts—a relish for drollery, and an admiration for beauty—these are claims that ever find acknowledgment from him, and in his enjoyment of either, he can forget himself, and all the miseries of his condition. ”

“ High character meant high pride, always ready to give account of itself and strike for its ideals: "Irritable and bold", as one historian has it. They were jealous and quick to anger, but light-hearted laughter came easily to the lips of the ancient Irish. They worked cheerfully, prayed fervently to their gods, loved their women and children devotedly, clung passionately to their clan, and fought at the call with alacrity. ”

“ Those who love Ireland nobly desire for her the highest of human destinies. They would ransack the ages and accumulate wisdom to make Irish life seem as noble in men’s eyes as any the world has known. The better minds in every race, eliminating passion and prejudice, by the exercise of the imaginative reason have revealed to their countrymen ideals which they recognized were implicit in national character. It is such discoveries we have yet to make about ourselves to unite us to fulfill our destiny. ”

“ I have a private coat for Italian Stilettos, I can be treacherous with the Walloon, drunk with the Dutch, a chimney-sweeper with the Irish, a gentleman with the Welsh and true arrant thief with the English. What then is my country to me? ”

“ The generous heart knows no balancing hesitation between the man who deserts his country and the man who defends it; he alone can interpret the hero in whose soul some answering passion flames; and I suppose that the understanding of a commonwealth will best come to him who is most responsive to a variety of human emotions. I think we could do with a change of partialities in Ireland—fewer orthodox predilections of the head, if it might be so, and some illumination from the heart.
A new examination of Irish history is indeed of the utmost importance to our people. ”

“ But in Ireland a bold peasantry has learned to smile and smile and touch the hat, and take the coppers, and provide the political information for which his honor is gasping without so much as turning a hair. It is not really in the Irish blood to take these traveling mountebanks, with their loud suits and louder manners and louder money, seriously or even indifferently. ”

“ The Irishman has many good qualities: he is brave, witty, generous, eloquent, hospitable, and open-hearted; but he is vain, ostentatious, extravagant, and fond of display, light in counsel, deficient in perseverance, without skill in private or public economy, an enjoyer, not an acquirer—one who despises the slow and patient virtues—who wants the superstructure without the foundation, the result without the previous operation, the oak without the acorn and the three hundred years of expectation. The Irish are irascible, prone to debt and to fight, and very impatient of the restraints of law. ”

“ Hardly do we open them to each other. We are, unlike the English, a silent people about the things that affect us most deeply; which is, perhaps, the reason that we are, on the whole, considered to be good company. It is in keeping with the contradictiousness of Ireland that the most inherently romantic race in the British Isles is the least sentimental, the most conversational people, the most reserved, and also that Irish people, without distinction of sex or class, are pessimists about their future and that of their country. ”

“ The eminent people who stand for Ireland in this country are all of them afflicted with a similar lack of cheerfulness. Rouse them, and they can be as bitter and vituperative and aboriginal as any Scotchman of them all; but their ordinary habit is sad, uncertain, and inept, and they do not know how to laugh. Here and there one of them at the Bar, or in the House of Commons, or at a greasy journalistic banquet, does his feeble best to keep up the Irish tradition for smartness and wittiness of remark. ”

“ I am inclined to think that nearly all the blarney that should be in Ireland has for some reason or other taken unto itself wings and flown away. The people are no longer racy of the soil. Even the gentry, who once had the credit of being roguish and devil-may-care to a fault, are become sad and somber and flat of speech. The milk of human kindness in the Irish blood appears, in short, to have gone sour, and in place of the old disposition to humor we have a tendency to cynicism and vituperative remark. ”

“ Were Ireland free to-morrow, we would continue our lives as Americans. Our numbers and interests are so great and so deep here that, paraphrasing the words of your distinguished national leader, we can't spare a single Irish-American. But, nevertheless, we leave others to greet you as a cosmopolitan, as a poet, as a novelist, as a historian; and we speak the welcome of the heart, because we Irish-Americans are proud of you as an Irishman. We know how hard it is for one living under the British Crown to be at once an Irish patriot and a successful man of letters. ”

“ And this is the distinctive feature which divides the Irish pariahs from those of the London East-End. They love each other, and they know how to put that love into words. Their distress, perhaps deeper than English poverty, bears not the same hard, selfish character—tenderness and love are not unknown to them. They try to help and comfort one another in their misery. ”

“ My own dear ones, you will not be ashamed of me at any rate; you all love the cause I suffer for as well as I, and when you pray for me pray also for the brave, true-hearted Irishmen who are with me. Men who do not understand our motives may call us foolish or mad, but every true Irish heart knows our feelings and will not forget us. ”

“ In a letter from myself to Martin, written during a visit to an English country house, I have come upon a reference to it. “They have been reading ‘All on the Irish Shore’ here. It was nobly typical of Colonel D. (an old friend) to read ‘An Irish Miracle’ in silence, and then ask, grimly, how much of it was true. Nothing more. There is wonderful strength of character in such conduct—beyond most Irish people. It is all part of the splendid English gift of not caring if they are agreeable or no. Just think of the engaging anxiety of the middle-class Irishman to be simpatica to his company!” ”

“ A vivid impression of the Irish nobility trying to dazzle London society, and to prove itself more English than the English themselves, while the English great ladies mock at their parvenu extravagance and outlandish ways. The fine lady spends her days in social emulation, while her lord sinks to the company of toadies and hangers-on, until the conscience of the young heir is aroused by a tour in Ireland, and he brings the family back to their estates. The peasants are drawn purely in their relation of grateful and patient dependents. ”

“ A Belfast bank the other day refused the life-long signature on a cheque of a well-known Irish writer because he signed, in English letters indeed, but with his customary Irish spelling of Padraic, and required instead the conventional English Patrick. Who can tell the needless restrictions and trivialities and imposed fashions that check expansion, experiment, and freedom of mind? A dreary emptiness has been stretched over the vivid natures of Irishmen. What is there left for them to love? Is it any wonder they desire something they may call their own? ”

“ I have heard him tell that story with all the natural, indescribable Irish tones and gestures of which written language can give but a faint idea. He excelled in imitating the Irish, because he never overstepped the modesty or the assurance of nature. He marked exquisitely the happy confidence, the shrewd wit of the people, without condescending to produce effect by caricature. ”

“ I have seen an Irishman with ease accomplish twenty-five leagues a day. They march to battle with the bagpipes instead of fifes; but they have few drums, and they use the musket and cannon as we do. They are better soldiers abroad than at home.
The red-haired are considered the most handsome in Ireland. The women have hanging breasts; and those who are freckled, like a trout, are esteemed the most beautiful. ”

“ Elusive as running water is the brogue of the Irish peasant; hardly attained even by those who have known its tune from childhood. They, at least, know how it ought to be, and with this knowledge in their hearts, they have to sit in dreary submission while the stage Irishman convulses the English audience; they must smile, however galvanically, when friends, otherwise irreproachable, regale them with the Irish story in all its stale exuberance of Pat and the Pig, or expound for their benefit that epitome of vieux jeu, the Saxon conception of an Irish Bull. ”

“ He can scarcely set foot in Europe save in the track of Irish wanderers of every age whose fame should be his glory. But the shadow of this distorted notion hangs round him—the shadow of the predominant sharer of all the effort and fortune of his people. ”

“ I am not an Irishman, yet I can feel for you. I hope there are none among you who will read this address with prejudice or levity, because it is made by an Englishman, indeed, I believe there are not. The Irish are a brave nation. They have a heart of liberty in their breasts, but they are much mistaken if they fancy that a stranger cannot have as warm a one. Those are my brothers and my countrymen, who are unfortunate. I should like to know what there is in a man being an Englishman, a Spaniard, or a Frenchman, that makes him worse or better than he really is. ”

“ The wild Irish do say that they haunt the pools; and they do no manner of harm, sir, when you are coming up to them; but when you are past, sir, they jump on your back like to apes, sir,—and who can tackle that manner of fiend? ”

“ Most of our serious experience has been with the Irish gentry, really English and Scotch, who through years have assumed the delightful mannerisms of the people with whom they have lived. We also shoot and hunt with the real Irishman and find him delightful and romantic. His wonderful lies and flattery please us, but we don't for a single instant take him seriously. The great mass of people here think that we ill-treat the Irish. ”

“ Never did a champion leave his followers at his death and decline to more terrible despair. Friend and foe admit his immensity. He was the greatest Irishman that ever lived or seemingly could live. In his own person he contained the whole genius of the Celt. Ireland could not hold his emotions, which overflowed into the world for expression. He rose on the crest of a religious agitation, but, Emancipation won, he had the foresight to associate the Irish cause with the advent of Reform and Liberalism throughout Europe. ”

“ I think the Irish are, after all, the best-mannered people in the world. They are found in every country, as adventurers for honour, and they change neither in character nor manner. They follow foreign fashions, and acquire a foreign language; but in the first they retain their heart, and in the latter their brogue. They are Irishmen always. Count Nugent is high in the favour of the Emperor, has the commission of a field-marshal, and is married to a Neapolitan princess, who is a most accomplished and lovely woman, and related to most of the royal houses of Europe. ”

“ Allow me to express to you, sir, my warm admiration. I did not think that a gallant of this humdrum commercial age could prove such a free spirit. In this humdrum commercial age—"
"I am an Irishman," said I, "and in Ireland we are always humdrum, but we are never commercial, for the reason that we have not the tools."
"Aye," said he, "you must be a great people. Strangely enough, you are the first Irishman I have ever seen, although I have seen many blackamoors. However, I am edified to find you a gentleman of great learning and experience. ”

“ Perhaps the more interesting detail of any picture which attempts to limn the outline of an Irish landscape, is that which unmistakably indicates the unique character of the inhabitant himself.
There may live an Irishman without humour, without sentiment, without “wrongs;” men and women who marry early, without love, and settle down to a hopeless life of dreary toil, too discouraged to even resent the misery of their lot; but, if so, it is in the pages of the novelist. ”