Soon after he and his friend ceased to write for that paper; but not until satisfied by the experiment that a journal devoted to Ireland, guided by truth, and sustained with earnest ability, would supersede the whole jaundiced literature of the metropolis, and create a new era in the progress of the country’s civilisation and ambition.  They immediately busied themselves to establish such an organ.  Charles Gavan Duffy, late editor of the Belfast Vindicator, entered into the spirit of the enterprise, and after an evening’s ramble in the Park, during which the terms and the principles of the paper and the spirit in which it should be conducted were canvassed, the publication of the Nation was determined on.  Mr. Duffy was convicted for having written a libel in the Vindicator, and his friends earnestly advised him to compromise the matter with a view of bringing more powerful energies to the same task in a wider field.

The first number of the new journal appeared on the 12th of October, 1842.  It had been announced under auspices calculated to ensure its success, but its unexpected ability, the ground it broke in the national policy, and the vast intellectual resources it developed eclipsed the prestige under which it was deemed necessary to usher it into existence.  It was at once a proof of greater powers than the country had yet witnessed, and a prophecy of a different fate from what she hoped for.  The aims, the logic, the very language of factious diplomacy were eschewed.  It seemed as if a light had streamed down from heaven, fresh from God, to give the people hope, comfort and assurance.  The genius of Davis seized the opportunity as though he were His deputed messenger in the great work of regeneration.  For the first time men awoke to the consciousness of what they were or might be.  Harnessed to the triumphant car of one gigantic intellect, they had forgotten the dignity of their own nature, and were astonished to find how transcendant its resources and sufficient its strength.  The publication of the Nation was really an epoch which marked a wonderful change, and from that day forth self-reliance and self-respect began to take the place of grateful but stultified obedience and blind trust.

The change became more marked as the publication proceeded.  In speech, article, song and essay, the spell of Davis’s extraordinary genius and embracing love was felt.  Historic memories, forgotten stories, fragments of tradition, the cromlech on the mountain and the fossil in the bog supplied him substance and spirit wherewith to mould and animate nationality.  Native art, valour, virtue and glory seemed to grow under his pen.  All that had a tendency to elevate and ennoble, he rescued from the past to infuse into the future.  His songs, so soft and tender, and yet so redolent of manliness and hope, inspired the ambition to compose a minstrelsy as wild and vigorous as themselves.  They were read and learned and sung with an avidity and pride heretofore unknown.