^^ Vvoi. Boole*s Account of the late John Walsh of Cork. 



they produce the effect on me.' ' No/ replied Walsh, ' I know 

 well that they would, hut I forhear to utter them/ '' Some time 

 after this Walsh consented to see a Roman Catholic clergyman. 

 To him he revealed the potent spell. It was the argument of 

 the Mctalogia. 



It was at the commencement of an awful period that John 

 W^alsh sought an asylum in the Cork Union. The autumn of 

 1846 and the whole of the following winter and summer will 

 long be remembered in Ireland. The food of a nation had 

 perished, and a desolation unexampled in modern times came 

 down upon the land. At the time of Mr. Walshes admission, 

 the Union house built for the accommodation of 2000 persons was 

 ah'eady crowded. Ere long the number of its inmates exceeded 

 7000, and despite of all endeavours to provide accommodation for 

 the continually increasing throng by the erection of sheds and 

 temporary hospitals, all the avenues of approach were thronged 

 Avith the dying and the dead. Amid this scene of national woe 

 and calamity in the famine year of 1847 poor Walsh breathed 

 his last. He had been for some time before his death insensible 

 and unable to recognize his pupil. I have been informed by 

 Dr. O'Connor that he did not die of the fever which was carrying 

 off the inmates of the Union house at the rate of two or three 

 hundred weekly, but of the paralytic affection under which he 

 had for some time laboured. 



Mr. Walsh was a man of agi*eeable address, and, when treated 

 with the respect which he thought due to himself, of friendly 

 and courteous manners. In the affairs of the world he was a 

 child, and was apt to become the dupe of interested persons. 

 W^ith proper oeconomy he might have saved sufficient to support 

 himself in old age ; but the easiness of his temper, and, I fear, 

 dui'ing the latter years of his life, a too great fondness for social 

 enjoyments kept him poor. The freedom of his opinions upon 

 religion operated also unfavourably upon his temporal interests. 

 I have reason to think, from an examination of his papers, that 

 the looseness of his sentiments upon this subject was not the 

 result of any desire to release himself from the restraints of 

 moral obligation, but of an exaggerated self-esteem, and a too 

 great confidence in his own not very exalted powers of intellect, 

 the source probably of nearly all his errors and misfortunes. To 

 this cause we may attribute the intemperate tone of his remarks 

 whenever he is discussing the merits of those whom the world 

 has consented to make its guides in science. Upon his favourite 

 topic of discourse it is said that he was quite unable to bear con- 

 tradiction. 



Mr. Walsh in his day attracted some attention even in high 

 quarters. The Edinburgh Review, No. 143, p. 192, referring 



