The most remarkable feature of St. Michan's, however, is a peculiar preservative effect from the soil in the crypt upon the bodies that are buried there. They mummify before decay sets in and turn into a leathery brown, similar to the mummies of Egypt. The vaults are filled with remains that have lain there for centuries. Among them is the body of one of the kings of Leinster, and beside him is the corpse of a baby, from whose tiny wrists white ribbon has been hanging since its funeral in 1679. Every corpse in the crypt is mummified in the same way, and it is the only place in Dublin where this phenomenon occurs. Nor is there any satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. The vaults are absolutely dry. The popular theory is that a subtle gas arising from the peaty soil suspends nature's law of decay.
There will always be a controversy among Irishmen as to whether Edmund Burke or Daniel O'Connell was the greater man. They were so different in their characteristics that it is difficult to draw a comparison. O'Connell was not a native of Dublin. He was born at the humble village of Cahirciveen, in County Kerry, one of the most forlorn, impoverished, and hopeless sections of the west coast. He was the son of an exile who fled to escape arrest and entered the service of France, and from him O'Connell inherited an intense prejudice and hatred of everything English and Protestant. He was educated in Cork for the priesthood, but changed his mind and was called to the bar when he was twenty-three years old. He immediately made a reputation, and by the time he was thirty was regarded as the ablest advocate in Ireland, without an equal in oratory. Probably no man ever surpassed him before a jury.
O'Connell is regarded by many as the ablest of all Irishmen, but, as I have said, this claim is disputed in favor of Edmund Burke. He was equally strong as a politician and undertook the cause of Catholic emancipation in his very youth. In those days all Catholics were disenfranchised; they could not hold office or even vote; the schools were closed to them, and a Catholic child could only be taught by a private tutor or governess. Daniel O'Connell organized the parish priests for the movement and was the first to bring the clergy into politics. Through them he organized the people, and regular contributions were collected in the churches to pay the expenses of the campaign.