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| BANK OF IRELAND, FORMERLY PARLIAMENT HOUSE, DUBLIN.- No person of Irish race can look upon the splendid structure shown in the sketch, and which stands on the north side of College Green, without a mingled feeling of pride and sorrow-pride in the glory of its architecture and sorrow for the national tragedy which, in 1801, degraded the Irish Houses of Parliament from their high estate, and subsequently made them the offices of the National Bank of Ireland. "Did public virtue cease to animate the people," exclaimed Thomas Francis Meagher, the great Irish orator and subsequent American general, in 1847, "the Senate House, which, even in its desecrated state, lends an Italian glory to this metropolis, would forbid it to expire!" |
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