unarmed and undisciplined. The ranks wavered and weakened; dissension, not opposition, wore him down, and the mighty tribune his heart broken-died at Genoa; left his heart to Rome, his body to Ireland; who can never be forgotten, but who has lost with the fickle multitude his imperial attribute of national veneration. Isaac Butt, who may be said to have followed O'Connell-albeit foul pretenders came meanwhile to delude honester men than themselves, was the son of a Donegal clergyman, the first Professor of Political Economy of Trinity College, Dublin, whose earlier life had been passed as a stout defender of conservative rule. But even in his tilts with O'Connell the nationalist impulse swayed his speech-that nationalism which lives in every Irish heart, although tempered and often alienated by a wholesome dread of the intolerant majority. And what a speech was Isaac's; one of the few men who ever lived who could fascinate even a hostile audience; whose eloquence could flash with the true Celtic fire, though, when the occasion required, he could calmly reason as powerfully as he declaimed. One of the secrets of his power was what is sometimes called magnetism; he had faults, weaknesses, eccentricity as men knew, but over all was that exquisite social charm which can make or mar a career. It was blended with all his acts, it probably both made his career and marred it. He threw away the almost certainty of being Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and probably a peer of the Realm, to follow the call of that noble and generous impulse. He was large-hearted, unselfish, sympathetic to a degree, untiring in his patriotic devotion through storm and sunshine. Few could appreciate him fully, so Irish, so inconsistent were his attributes. Archibald Butler said of him: "He alone who made him was fit to pass judgment on him." His intellect and acquirements were superb; he was the faithful soldier of liberty; and he, too, died of a broken heart-deposed from the power he yearned for, the power to magnify Ireland-hounded to death by men who could not appreciate because they could never possess his personal charm and magnetism and his magnificent acquirements. It did not need the death of Butt to find Parnell ready to step into the breach, to assume the garment of Nessus, the fatal honor of being the leader and the hope of Ireland. This inscrutable Parnell, who was so lately here, and over whose grave such controversies are raging that it seems impossible to catch the impar tial lights and shadows of his history. Most men who study public affairs know something, at least, of his public life, and there are few here who have left the shores of the Emerald Isle for the past five years who can not tell you "all about Mr. Parnell." Yet the men nearest to him in the arduous struggle knew him but little personally; he played them as pawns in the game of politics. As a matter of fact, he made them, and he also ruled them; his wishes were commands—were conveyed as such. He was an aristocrat ab imo pectore, yet he chose for closest ally the vulgar, objectionable, but indomitable radical, Biggar. They hit upon a policy of complete obstruction of the business of Parliament by availing themselves of the usages followed in debate-a mass of precedents built up by men, up to that time, pervaded by the highest sense of respect for the honor and integrity of Parliament. But here was a pretty how-do-you-do. These new men had no bumps of veneration; their cranial development probably showed a decided cavity in that region. They availed themselves of timehonored usage to flout the amenities hitherto observed; they attracted other Irish members to their standard, and they added a new sensation to parliamentary ethics when they discovered that the mass of their countrymen highly applauded any act of contempt shown the prerogative of the speaker of the House of Commons. In days prior to this reign of misrule, a word from the chair quelled any signs of turbulence; now, to be forcibly expelled by the sergeant-at-arms became a badge of distinction to be wired across the ocean, to be written of in the national newspapers as a sure sign that the hero of the episode had not "sold the pass." It came before long that Mr. Gladstone yielded to this assault, and made the memorable statement that when Ireland sent a strong majority demanding Home Rule, the question would rise to the position of practical politics. The answer was not long in coming. The tenant farmers, the back-bone of the constituencies, fixed in their farms by previous legislation and protected by the most secret of ballots, were not afraid to join the borough electors in voting for Parnell's nominees, and long before now Home Rule had been won, but for the defection of Lord Hartington and the Unionist members from the Liberal standard. Parnell had succeeded indeed where the brilliant leaders of other days had failed; he was the world's hero and the pride of Ireland Yet, listen to the wail of the Banshie, that gloomy death-song, that sad and fatal dirge which saluted Grattan and O'Connell and Isaac Butt, though the words are changed: "Blot out his name there, record one lost soul more, One wrong more to man, one more insult to God." The same history, the same triumphs, the same magnificent gifts, the same failure. Truly, the Irish are a "contrary" people; has it not been written, "Unstable as water thou shalt not excel." J. G. HELY, RAIN AND THE RAIN-MAKERS. Until recently it was generally understood that the Almighty had an exclusive patent on the manufacture of rain; and I am still inclined to the old opinion. The age, however, is as wonderful for its real discoveries, rather for its new interpretations and manipulation of natural forces, as for its everlasting panaceas and humbuggeries. Whether the new rain makers are to be embraced among the humbugs or among the true benefactors of the age appears still to be an open question; and yet it seems to me that if the thing really can be done, or, as my good friend, the Hon. R. G. Dyrenforth, puts it, has been done, why there has been time and opportunity enough to have done the thing so thoroughly, so lavishly if you please, that no dry old fogy like myself could have escaped his wetting up to date; sill I know how long it takes in this wondrous age to get even good people to see and feel a good thing, or to admit it when they do see and feel it. And perhaps, after all, many. of the showers that make the down town streets of Chicago so black and dirty, may have come, in a measure from those eternal clouds of steam and smoke that rise day and night from a thousand chimneys. Rain was always a beautiful mystery, yet partially understood The waters, gathered from the oceans and rivers, up into the open spaces of heaven, returned again to water the earth, and thence to the sources whence they came. Of course, there was always a little curiosity and doubt as to who let down the old oaken bucket and how the placid waters yielded to the touch of an unseen hand. In these days we call the daily mystery evaporation, and think that because we have spliced a new word together we have explained it all, and could do better than the unseen hand if only the government would be generous with its appropriations of money and material. I confess myself something of a fatalist, perhaps something of a Christian regarding the manufacture and distribution of rain. So, I am inclined to think that the various sections of our land, get just about the quantity and quality of rain best for them, and I think for instance that to farm out the Dakotas into tree farms -"tree claims"-as well as stock farms was a far more sensible way of coaxing the right quantity of rain into Dakota than it would have been to have kept the Dakotas as a sort of hunting ground for savages and an experimenting place for the Hon. Dyrenforth & Co. In saying this I mean no disrespect towards this worthy gentleman. On my way from the West, last summer, it was my good fortune to meet Gen. Dyrenforth and to talk with him at first hand on the subject of the human manufacture of rain. At first he went over the old story, familiar to every man of observation, that after the great battles of our late war there were usually heavy rain-falls; not necessarily in the immediate vicinity of the recent battle fields, but near enough all the same to suggest a possible, if not probable connection between the smoke and combustion of battle fields and the rain falls that followed. Nobody has ever undertaken to prove, I believe, that such rain-falls were actually caused by the smoke of previous battles; neither has any one, as far as I know, undertaken to prove from atmospheric conditions that such rainfalls after great battles, would certainly have occurred if these battles had never taken place. The truth is, that severe and exact thinking and observa tion on these points are far more difficult and far less remunerative than to engage in so-called scientific experiments at the expense of the Government, that is, at the expense of the people. I must say, however, that Professor Dyrenforth, in his statements to me, was fair and very intelligent. He admitted frankly that in certain of his experiments rain had followed, and in such quantities as to lead him to believe that the rain was produced by his experiments; but just as frankly that in other experiments rain had not followed; hence arose the question: would the rain-falls that came, have come anyway-without the experiments, or were they caused by the General and his explosions? As late as November 4, 1892, I found in a Chicago paper the following account of more recent experiments than those of which Gen. Dyrenforth had spoken to me. "Start for Texas to-day.-Rain-makers will change their experimenting grounds.-Observer's opinions.-Washington, D. C., Nov. 4.-Gen. Dyrenforth and his party leave Washington to-day for some rainless region in Texas or New Mexico, where he says a thoroughly scientific test will be made. "An official connected with the experiments has given a statement of his personal observations of the results of the bombardments Wednesday night. He says that the first explosion at 1:50 a. m. was followed by a lively shower of rain. At 2:45 a. m. another explosion occurred and rain followed within two minutes. No rain followed the explosion at 2:53, but the clouds broke away and the sky cleared. At 3:06 rain followed the explosion within eight minutes. No rain followed after the explosion at 3:44. "He thinks that the experiments succeeded in causing the rain by the explosions, but he says it is not possible to demonstrate the actual effect of the explosions upon the atmosphere sufficient to produce the rain. He believes that it will be possible to secure rain by artificial means. "Maj. Dunwoody of the weather bureau holds an entirely different opinion, He thinks that the rain had no possible connection with the explosions. It was raining at the time over an area of territory 2,000 miles long and 500 hundred miles wide; rain had been forecast for this section, and what little precipitation there was came naturally and not by artificial means. Maj. Dunwoody is of opinion that the experiments will result only in a waste of money and time." I Now I am precisely of Maj. Dunwoody's opinion as regards the waste of money and time, but on somewhat different grounds. am inclined to think with Gen. Dyrenforth, that rain can be manufactured by human explosions of the various chemicals now known to science; and I am inclined to think that many of the rainfalls following so close upon the heels of great battles have been produced by the smoke of battle, but I have no idea that sufficient |