mamma and the two girls, with two friends of my own sex. Carriages, bouquets, dinner, five-and-twenty pounds. Since that time I have devoted myself steadily to business in the afternoon.' I must have greatly altered, for Blake positively asserts he would not in the least recognise me, a bronzed and bearded man having replaced the pallid student of his experience.
"The O'Donoghue called on me. He is a remarkably handsome young fellow, dressed with great care, in fact a dandy; but not, I fear, a man of originality or resources. He thanked me for putting him up for Clonmel (in 1855), but said his O'Connell relations were wroth with him for consenting to stand against John, and worse than that at my nomination. He represents the extreme wing of Nationalists at present, in concert with G. H. Moore. He talks very agreeably, and I am told speaks in Parliament with considerable effect, but he has nothing to say that suggests hope or confidence. He told me he went over to Boulogne to meet John Mitchel, with a view to closer concert between Irish and American- Irish Nationalists; but nothing came of it, because of MitchePs distrust of G. H. Moore, and Moore, I understand, distrusts Dillon, and meantime life fades away and nothing is done. Alas and alas! for the once proud people of Banba. O'Donoghue spoke of the Fenians. Stephens, he said, called on him and asked him to join them. In reply he requested to be told what number of men and what quantity of arms, ammunition, and money they had accumulated, Stephens said he would be placed upon the Supreme Council and furnished with this information if he became a Fenian; if not it would be impossible to disclose to him the secrets of the Organisation. O'Donoghue suggested there was one thing Stephens might do without disclosing these secrets: let him muster ten thousand men in any place were he (O'Donoghue) could inspect them, and he would recognise the solid strength of the Organisation and negotiate with it; but this was never done.
"I had a good talk on recent Australian affairs with Childers and Clarke, breakfasting with the latter the other day. They admit that Australia is very imperfectly understood at home, of which there were some curious instances
