first literary distinction.  The character of each was remarkable for some distinctive and bold feature of originality.  I, of course, exclude myself from this description.  I know not to what circumstance I owe the happiness of their trust and friendship.  My habits, my education, my former political connections, disqualified me for such association.  Since first I took my place among them, seven or eight years have now rolled by.  They have been years of severest trial, years of suffering and sorrow, years of passion and prejudice and calumny, years of rude and bitter conflict, years of suspicion and acrimony, and finally of defeat and shame; still, in that eventful course of time, to me at least, there has occurred no moment wherein I would exchange the faintest memory of our mutual trust, unreserved enjoyment and glad hope for the hoarse approval of an unthinking world.  There was no subject we did not discuss together; revolution, literature, religion, history, the arts, the sciences—­every topic, and never yet was there spoken among us one reproachful word, never felt one distrustful sentiment.  Our confidence in one another was precisely that of each in himself; our love of one another deeper than brotherly.  When we met, which was at least weekly, and felt alone, shut in from the rude intrusion of the world, how we used to people the future with beauty and happiness and love.  Little did we dream that those for whom we toiled, and thought, and wove such visions of glory, would shun and scorn, and curse us.  But had that bitter cup, which afterwards we were forced to empty to the dregs, been then presented to us, there was not one of us who would not have drunk it to the last drop; drunk it willingly and cheerfully, without further hope or purpose than our own deep conviction that we owed the sacrifice to truth.

Those who took immediate part in the proceedings of our circle before the State Trials, were Thomas Davis, John Dillon, Thomas MacNevin, Michael Joseph Barry, Charles Duffy, David Cangley, John O’Hagan, Denis F. MacCarthy, Denny Lane, Richard Dalton Williams, with one or two others whose names I cannot mention.  To this list was afterwards added Thomas Francis Meagher, Richard O’Gorman, John Mitchel, Thomas Devin Reilly, and Thomas Darcy M’Gee.  I do not include several distinguished men who lived in the provinces with whom we communicated, and from whom we received sympathy and sustainment; and I omit others who took a leading part, in deference to the position they are now placed in.

[Illustration:  John Blake Dillon]

With the first section above named, originated the idea of publishing the Library of Ireland.  It was proposed, discussed, and determined on one evening, at the house of Thomas MacNevin, while some one sat at the piano, playing the lovely Irish airs, of which the soft strains of Davis suggested the conception to William Elliot Hudson.  The music was as true to the Celtic genius as the lays of Davis to its character