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| O'CONNELL MONUMENT, DUBLIN.- This splendid national tribute to the Emancipator of the Irish Catholics, stands at the northern end of O'Connell (formerly Carlisle) bridge, and is after the design of the late J. H. Foley, the most widely known, perhaps, of modern Irish sculptors. Mr. Foley died before the work was completed, but his model has been faithfully followed. The statue represents the Irish Demosthenes, pleading for the liberty of his country, before a "monster meetins" of the Irish people. The capacious chest is expanded; the cloak, or mantle-as well remembered in Ireland as Napoleon's gray overcoat in France-thrown back from the broad shoulders, and the handsome, massive head proudly raised in haughty defiance of the national enemy. It, in short, pictures O'Connell as he appeared in the zenith of his power andfame, "when sitting sole on Tara's hill there hung a million on his will!" The back of the effigy is turned, as if in aversion, upon the Nelson monument, which stands near the opposite end of O'Connell (formerly Sackville) street, while the steady gaze is directed toward the point where stand the ancient Irish houses of parliament, now occupied by the Bank of Ireland, on historic College Green. The mobile lips of the majestic figure seem to say, as once said the orator himself-"I am now an old man, and may go to the grave leaving my dearest hope-the independence of Ireland-unfulfilled, but, when I am dead, another generation, with redder blood in its veins, will arise to burst the chains of my country." |
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