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| PATRICK STREET, CORK CITY.-What State Street is to Chicago, and Broadway to New York, Patrick Street is to the cheery southern metropolis of Ireland. It has a rival in the South Mall, but Patrick Street is ever dearer to the heart of the true Corkman, whether at home or "in climes beyond the sea." The famous thoroughfare has considerable of a crescent formation, and connects on the west with the Grand Parade-another imposing street, which has somewhat of a history, as the place in which the "loyalists" of Cork once set up an equestrian statue of George II. of England-a monarch, by the way, who had never set foot in Ireland, and who is only remembered by the Irish people in connection with the victorious charge of the Franco-Irish Brigade on his son's column of 16,000 men, at the battle of Fontenoy. "Accursed," cried King George, referring to the penal enactments which drove the Catholic Irishmen from their country, "be the laws that deprive me of such soldiers!" Several years ago the statue disappeared one night, and was afterward found in the river Lee! Within recent years, a fine statue of Father Mathew, the renowned Irish apostle of temperance, who had in him the persuasive power of a St. Patrick, and whom Cork profoundly honors as a sage, has been set up in Patrick street, and is an object of veneration to all beholders. |
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