"Partners in every peril--in the glory shall we not be permitted
to participate, and shall we be told as a requital that we are
aliens, and estranged from the noble country for whose salvation
our life-blood was poured out?"
A hundred years of strife, misunderstanding, anger, estrangement,
outrages, bloodshed, and murder separate us from this appealing cry
wrung from the beating heart of this inspired Irishman. Is the great
tragedy of England and Ireland that has sullied their annals for seven
hundred years never to be brought to an end? Is there never to be for
us a Lethe through which we may pass to the farther shore of
forgetfulness and forgiveness of the past and reconciliation in the
future?
That you may live to see it, Antony, is my hope and prayer.
Your loving old
G.P.
23
MY DEAR ANTONY,
I gave you in a former letter Burke's famous passage on the fate of
Marie Antoinette--in some ways the most splendid of his
utterances,--and I now am going to quote to you a very great passage
from Thomas Carlyle on the same tragic subject.
Courageous was it of Carlyle, who must certainly have been familiar
with Burke's noble ejaculation, to challenge it with emulation; but in the
result we must admit that he amply justifies his temerity.
The tragic figure of the queen drawn to execution through the roaring
mob inspired Carlyle with what is surely his most overwhelming
product.
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