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The Graphic : The Graphic. An Illustrated Weekly Newspaper. Saturday, August 7, 1875. Vol. XII. No. 297

(London: The Graphic, 1875)

Folio (405 x 298 mm); contained within a film fronted bag; wrappers discarded; pp. [121-144]; several woodcuts and advertisements. Some foxing and occasional minor soiling. There is a front page illustration captioned "The Civil War in Spain - Carlist fugitives from Villatuerta". Another highlight, coinciding with the centenary commemoration in Ireland, is the full-page supplementary portrait of Daniel O'Connell. The article which accompanies the portrait notes: "In this country it is generally held that O'Connell had reached the zenith of his reputation when the Catholic Emancipation Act was passed, and that his subsequent agitation for Repeal was purposeless and mischievous, and unworthy of his great abilities. Latterly, as above observed, the more fiery spirits among his own countrymen revolted from his teaching, and at the time of his death he was by no means popular. But now after the lapse of nearly thirty years his countrymen naturally forget his shortcomings and dwell only on the great and substantial services which he rendered to them. Both in his faults and his virtues O'Connell was a thorough Irishman, and he possessed in a most eminent degree that faculty with which his countrymen are so richly endowed, the gift of popular eloquence. We take occasion elsewhere to review a collection of his speeches, but it must be remembered that they were mostly delivered from reports uncorrected by the orator. Much of their force vanishes in print, for we have no longer the burly presence of the speaker, the rich voice, the twinkling eye, the impassioned gestures. He was such a master of his excitable hearers that within a few moments he could lash them to wrath with his vituperation, he could melt them to tears with his pathos, he could make them burst into uncontrollable laughter with his broad fun."

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