FATHER MATHEW AT HOME.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 698, 10 April 1852, Page 4

FATHER MATHEW AT HOME.

HIS BURYING GROUND. Thackeray, in his work entitled “Sketches in Ireland,” gives an account of Father Mathew, his first meeting with him at Cork, and the impressions that meeting produced upon him. The temptrance apostle, like the sketcher, came to Cork for the purpose of witnessing the fair of the Irish Agricultural Society, and partaking of a grand dinner in honour of the occasion. 1 here had been a dinner in honour of the same occasion the day before, at which our author, but not his reverence, was present. We leave the writer to tell the sequence in his own words : —“On the day we arrived at Cork,and as the passengers descended from ‘the drag,’ a stout handsome, honest looking man, of some two-and-forty years, was passing by, and received a number of bows from the crowd around. It was Father Mathew, with whose face a thousand litlie print shop windows had already rendered me familiar. He shook bands with the master of the carriage very cordially, and just as cordially with the master’s coachman, a disciple of temperance, as at least half Ireland is at present. The day after the famous dinner at MacDowall’s, some of us came down rather late, perhaps in consequence of the events of the night before—(l think it was Lord Bernard’s quotation from Virgil, or else the absence of the currant jelly for the venison, that occasioned a slight headache among some of us, and an extreme longing for soda water) —and there was the Apostle of Temperance seated at the table, drinking tea. Some of us felt a little ashamed of ourselves, and did not like to ask somehow for the soda water in such an awful presence as that. Besides, it would have been a confession to a Catholic priest, and, as a Protestant, I am above it.

The world likes to know how a great man appears even to a valet-de-chambre, and I suppose it is one’s vanity that is flattered in such rare company, to find the great man quite as unassuming as the very smallest personage present; and so like to other mortals, that we would not know him to be a great man at all, did we not know his name, aud what he had done. There is nothing remarkable in Mr. Mathew's manner, except that it is exceedingly simple, hearty, and manly, and that he does not wear the downcast demure look which, I know not why, certainly characterises the chief part of the gentlemen of his profession. Whence comes that scowl which darkens the faces of the Irish priesthood ? I have met with a score of these reverend gentlemen in the country, and not one of them seemed to look or speak frankly, except Mr. Mathew, and a couple more. He is the only man, too, that I have met in Ireland, who, in speaking of public matters, did not talk as a partizan. With the state of the country, of landlord, tenant, and peasantry, he seemed to be curiously and intimately acquainted—speaking of their wants, differences, and the means of bettering them, with the minutest practical knowledge. And it was impossible in hearing him to know, but from previous acquaintance with his character, whether he was whig or tory, Catholic or Protestant. Why does not Government make a privy councillor of him? that is, if he would honour the right honourable body by taking a seat among them. His knowledge of the people is prodigious, and their confidence in him as great ; and what a touching attachment that is which these poor fellows show to any one who has their cause at heart —even to any one who says he has I Avoiding all political questions, no man seems more eager than he for the practical improvement of this country. Leases and rents, fanning improvements, reading societies, music societies—he was full of all these, and of his schemes of temperance above all. He never misses a chance of making a convert, and has his hand ready and a pledge in his pocket for rich and poor. One of his disciples in a hvery coat came into the room with a tray. Mr. Mathew recognised him, and shook him by the hand directly ; so he did with the strangers who were presented to him—and not with a courtly popularity-hunting air, but as it seemed, from sheer hearty kindness, and a desire to do every one good. When breakfast was done—(he took but one cup of tea, and says that, from being a great consumer of tea and refreshing liquids before, a small cup of tea, and one glass of water at dinner, now serve him for bis day’s beverage)—he took the ladies of our party to see his burying ground—a new and handsome cemetery, lying a little way out of the town, and where, thank God ! Protestants and Catholics may lie together without clergymen quarrelling over their coffins.

It is a handsome piece of ground, and was formerly a botanic garden ; but the funds failed for that undertaking, as they have for a thousand other public enterprises in this poor disunited country, aud so it has been converted into a hortus siccus for us mortals. In the midst is a place for Mathew himself—honour to him living or dead I Meanwhile, numerous stately monuments have been built, flowers planted here and there over dear remains, and the garden in which they lie is rich, green, aud beautiful. Here is a fine statue, by Hogan, of a weeping genius that broods over the tomb of an honest merchant and clothier of the city. He took a liking to the artist, his fellow townsman, and ordered his own monument, and had the gratification to see it arrive ftom Rome a fear weeks before his death. A prettier thing even than the statue is the tomb of a little boy, which has been shut in by a large and curious grille of ironwork. The father worked it, a blacksmith, whose darling the child was, and he spent three years in hammering out this mausoleum. It is the beautiful story of the pot of ointment, told again at the poor blacksmith’s anvil ; and who can but like him for placing this fine gilded cage over the body of bis poor litlie one? Presently you come to a French woman’s tomb, with a French epitaph, by a French busband, and a pct of artificial flowers in a niche • —a wig, and a pot of rouge, as it were, just to make the dead look passably well. It is his manner of showing his sympathy for an immortal sou! that has passed away. The poor may be buried here for nothing ; and here, too, once more, thank God ! each may rest without priests or parsons scowling hell-fire at his neighbour unconscious under the grass.