Arriving at Kilkenny, he joined the confederacy, as has been related.
From this time the war of the Confederate Catholics was carried on with varying success until the cessation of 1646, and then until the peace of 1648, when the Confederates united, but too late, with the Marquis of Ormond to stop the march of Cromwell.
She sang of Love--the love whose fires Burn with a pure and gentle flame, No passion lights of wild desires Red with the lurid glow of shame.
She sang of angels, and their wings Seemed rustling through each soft refrain; Gladness and sorrow, kindred things She wove in many a tender strain.
She sang of Heaven and of God, Of Bethlehem’s star and Calvary’s way, Gethsemane--the bloody sod, Death, darkness, resurrection-day.
She sang of Mary--Mother blest, Her sweetest carols were of thee! Close folded to thy loving breast How fair her home in heaven must be!
I was very stupid in my youth, and am still far from being sharp. I could not master knotty questions like other boys; so this natural deficiency had to be supplemented by some plan that would facilitate the acquisition of knowledge. The advantage to be derived from a garrulous preceptor, whose mind was stored with all sorts of learning without dogmatism or hard formularies, were fully appreciated by my parents. John O’Neil was a very old man when I was a boy, and he was just the person qualified to impart an astonishing quantity of all sorts of facts, and perhaps fancies. I hold him in affectionate remembrance though he be dead over twenty-five years, and rests near the remains of his favorite hero, O’Connell, in Glasnevin Cemetery. When he became the chief architect of my intellectual structure, I thought him the most learned man in the world. On account of my dulness, he adopted the method of sermonizing to me instead of giving me unintelligible lessons to be learned out of books. I took a great fancy to him, because I found him exceedingly interesting, and he evinced a strong liking for me because I was docile. We became inseparable companions, notwithstanding the great discrepancy in our years. His tall, erect, lank figure and lantern jaw were to me the physiological signs of profundity, firmness, and power, and his white head was the symbol of wisdom. Our tastes--well, I had no tastes save such as he chose to awaken in me, and hence there came to be very soon a great similitude in our respective inclinations. I was like a ball of wax, a sheet of paper, or any other original impressionable thing you may name, in his hands for ten years, after which very probably I began to harden, though I was not conscious of the process. However, the large fund of knowledge that he imparted to me crystallized, as it were, and became fixed in my possession as firmly as if it had been elaborately achieved by a severe mental training. After I went to college he was still my friend, and rejoiced in my subsequent successes, and followed me with a jealous eye and a sort of parental anxiety in my foreign travels, and even in death he did not forget me, for he made me the custodian of his great heaps of literary productions, all in manuscript, embracing sketches, diaries, notes of travel, learned fragments on scientific and scholastic topics, essays, tales, letters, the beginnings and the endings and the middles of books on history, politics, and polemics, pieces of pamphlets and speeches, with a miscellaneous lot of poetry in all measures. He was a great, good man, who never had what is called an aim in life, but he certainly had an aim _after_ life; and yet no one could esteem the importance of this pilgrimage more than he did. He would frequently boast of being heterodox on that point. “You will hear,” he would remark, “people depreciating this life as a matter of little concern. Don’t allow their sophistry to have much weight with you. The prevalent opinions which are flippantly spoken thereon will not stand the test of sound Christian reasoning. That part of human existence which finds its scene and scope of exertion in this life is filled with eternal potentialities. You have heard it said that man wants but little here below. Where else does he want it? Here is where he wants everything. Then do not hesitate to ask, but be careful not to ask amiss. When the battle is over, it will be too late to make requisitions for auxiliaries. If you conquer, assistance will not be wanted; if you are defeated, assistance cannot reach you. The fight cannot be renewed; the victory or defeat will be final. This life is immense. You cannot think too much of it, cannot estimate it too highly. A minute has almost an infinite value.