Patrick J. Walsh

Catholics believe in things seen and unseen. And what they see today from the bishops is horrific.

Unsettled questions of Ireland’s past and hope for its literary future.

Most every day I walk by the Granary Burying Ground in Boston, past the graves of the “victims of the Boston Massacre” and find myself musing on the events of March 5, 1770. On that cold, otherwise calm moonlit night, musket fire erupted in King Street. Three men were killed immediately. Two died…

As a schoolboy, I remember leafing through the pictures of a history text and being captivated by an engraving of General Edward Braddock and his army marching in file along a newly cut path through the American wilderness. Behind every tree and rock crouched Indians and French troops waiting to…

American Cicero

Finding Ireland

At the Massachusetts Historical Society's library, an American classic lies open before me: Henry Adams's The Education of Henry Adams, privately printed in 1907. A century ago Adams sent copies of this text to his close friends for comment. This edition belonged to Henry Adams. In the margins,…

HALF MACE, CARNA, Connemara, County Galway situated in the wild west of Ireland lies well beyond the pale of Trinity College, Dublin far to the east. Numerous small fields divided by loose rock walls are the main features of this hilly and treeless terrain. How stark a contrast is the Gaeltacht…

James Fenimore Cooper

AFTER THE FIRST harvest of Plymouth colony in 1621, Governor Bradford established a special day of Thanksgiving for prayer and celebration. Other colonies later adopted this feast day. Today it's a national holiday; a day unique to the American experience and perhaps the richest part of our…

Selected Poems

White Savage

Walking into the Owen Gallery on New York's 75th Street in April 1999, John Clubbe saw a gorgeous portrait of Lord Byron hanging on the gallery wall. It left him utterly astonished. Clubbe stood transfixed, staring at Byron's face. A Byron scholar for 40 years, he knew all the major portraits of…

On July 4,1845, Henry David Thoreau built a cabin at Walden woods in Concord and challenged what he called the "restless, nervous, bustling, trivial 19th century." His full message delivered in Walden is as refreshing and revolutionary as when it was first published. Sadly, Walden is more often…

On Matters Southern

From Witchery to Sanctity

Empires at War

Kennedy Versus Lodge