2^6 



The Review of Reviews. 



September 1, 1906. 



concerned. But in the inner soul of hiim, although 

 there was always the burning Flame, there was also 

 in a way curious to observe a not less constant 

 pence. He had a cheery faith in God and a love 

 for his fellow-men which prevented the Flame from 

 consuming the joy of life. He was probably, take 

 him ail in all, a much happier man than most of 

 those upon whom the world has heaped most lavishly 

 its material gifts. For he had a saving gift of 

 humour, a kindly and charitable disposition, and on 

 the whole active and vigorous health. He had a 

 beaver-like instinct or passion for industry which 

 gave him constant joy in his work. He had the 

 healthiest of appetites for reading, and he enjoyed 

 his literary diet. He wrote rapidly and he enjoxed 

 writing. He was full of healthy human instincts 

 which brought him inio genial relations wdth his 

 fellow-men. While ever a fighter, he knew as well 

 as most the fierce rapture of the fray, and being an 

 optimist by nature, he never doubted but that in 

 the end the rascals would have the worst of it. And 

 after all if you constantly feel that the supreme 

 scoundrel is certain to be worsted in the end, even 

 a cell in Portland Prison becomes quite support- 

 able. 



Michael Davitt had more than an abstract faith in 

 the coming of a better and a brighter day. He had 

 the comforting consolation of knowing that he had 

 been called of God to assist in bringing about the 

 coming of better times. No man was less of a 

 fanatic than Davitt. No man was less priest-rid- 

 den. But no man could have practised more faith- 

 fully the precepts of his faith. Davitt was essen- 

 tially a religious man. He was frequently at war 

 with the policy of Rome. One of his last manifes- 

 toes was a vigorous denunciation of the educational 

 tactics of the Irish hierarchy. But his faith was 

 far too deeply rooted to be affected by the ipse 

 dixils of ecclesiastics. Although a sincere Catholic, he 

 never obtruded his convictions upon anv "heretic." 

 having, indeed, by nature more sympathy with them 

 than w-ith their persecutors. He got on well with 

 all manner of men. Jews, Greek Churchmen, Boers 

 of the veldt, revolutionaries of all kinds and Eng- 

 lish Conservatives, Russian bureaucrats and Ameri- 

 can bosses— Davitt foregathered with them all. In 

 nothing was this more manifest than in his liking 

 for the Russians, and his intense disgust, which he 

 never hesitated to express, at the supercilious and 

 Pharisaic way in which the Russian Government is 

 usually criticised in the English press. No mistake 

 could be greater than to confound him with the ruck 

 of revolutionary declaimers against the autocracy. 

 He thought the Russian Government was much more 

 sympathetic with the peasant than the Government 

 of Great Britain, and as he had travelled much in 

 Russia he did not speak without knowledge. 



Davitt, sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude 

 in 1870, was released on ticket-of-leave in 1878. 

 He was let out by a Tory Government, just in time 



to go to America and secure Irish-American support 

 for the formation of the Land League. Returning 

 to Ireland, he summoned a demonstration at Irish- 

 town on April 28th, 1879, in which the banner the 

 Land for the People was boldly unfurled. The 

 birth of the Land league took place within sight 

 of the place where the Flame had been kindled by 

 the e\ictor thirty years before, which had ever since 

 lived and breathed and moved among men in the 

 person of Michael Davitt. Upon the landlord and 

 the e\ictor the curse had come home to roost. The 

 heather was on fire, and in a few months all Ire- 

 land was in convulsions. 



This is not the place to tell the story of the Land 

 war in Ireland. Suffice it to say that in less than- 

 three years Michael Davitt was locked up again, 

 this time by a Liberal Government, and sent back 

 to finish his term of penal servitude in Portland. 

 It was too late I The work was done. But Michael 

 Davitt needed rest, and his post graduate course was 

 arranged for him with the same forethought as be- 

 fore. He was liberated before the second year was 

 out, and his second imprisonment was little more 

 than a compulsory holiday. He spent his time in 

 writing " Leaves from My Prison Diary,'' part of 

 which he threw into the shajDe of lectures to his pet 

 blackbird, Jo. The following familiar passages 

 from the preface to his book, and from its closing 

 chapter, are as characteristic of Davitt as anything 

 he ever wrote: — 



I was remitted to Portland Prison on the 3rd of Feb- 

 ruary. 1881. Sliortly afterwards, througrh the kindness of 

 the Governor, a young blackbird came into my possession. 

 For some months I relieved the tedium of my solitude by 

 efforts to win the confidence of my companion, with the 

 happiest results. He would stand upon my breast as I lay 

 in bed in the morning and awaken me from sleep. He 

 would percli upon the end of my plate ajad share my por- 

 ridge- His familiarity was such that on showing him a 

 small piece of slate-pencil, and then placing it in my 

 waistcoat pocket, he would immediately abstTract it. He 

 would i>erch upon the end of my slate as it was adjusted 

 Ijetween my knees, and watcliing the course of the pencil 

 as I wrote, woultl make the most amusing efforts to peck 

 tlie marks from off the slate- He would fetch and carrj" " 

 as faithfully as any well-trained dog. Towards evening he 

 would resort to his perch, the post of the iron bedstead, 

 and there remain, silent and stili, till the dawning of 

 another day. when his chirrup would again be heard, like 

 the voice of Nature, before the herald of civilisation, the 

 clang of the prison bell at five o'clock. 



It was a lovely morning in the autumn of 1881, and the 

 infirmary garden in Portland Prison was aglow with the 

 bloom of the late summer flowers which the Governor had 

 kindly permitted me to sow in tlie early portion of tlie 

 year. The English Channel, which often lulls the weary 

 Portland prisoner to sleep by the storm-chorus of ita 

 waves as they dash against the rocks underneath the 

 walls, lay in unruffled calm- From the headland upon which 

 the great convict e-stabli.shment stands could be seen the 

 picturesque shadows which the Dorsetshire cliffs flung out 

 upon the bosom of the sea. Away beyond the coastrline 

 appeared harvest-fields and homesteads, melting into the 

 distance, and ?o sadly sus'gestive of what imprisonment 

 was not— liberty, home, and friends — conjuring up that 

 contrast between the manacled and the free which con- 

 stitutes the keenest mental pain in the punishment of 

 penal servitude- 

 It was a day which would fill one's whole being with a 

 yearning to be liberated — a day of sunshine and warmth 

 and beauty, and the moment had arrived when my resolu- 

 tion to give freedom to mv little feathered " chum " coii'd 

 no longer be selfishly postponed. I opened his door with 

 a trembling hand, when qnick as a flash of lightning h« 

 rushed from the cage with a wild scream of delight, and in 

 a moment was l)eyond the walls of the prison ! The in- 



