Davis's suggestion, The Nation. Its purpose, which it was afterwards to fulfil so nobly, was admirably expressed in its motto, taken from a saying of Stephen Woulfe: "To create and foster public opinion in Ireland, and to make it racy of the soil." Davis's was the suggestion of making national poems and ballads a prominent feature of the journal—the feature by which it became best known and did, perhaps, its most impressive, if not its most valuable, work. His "Lament for Owen Roe," which appeared in the sixth number, worked in Ireland like an electric shock, and woke a sleeping faculty to life and action. Henceforth Davis's public life was bound up with the Nation. Into this channel he threw all his powers. What kind of influence he exerted from that post of vantage the pages of this book will tell. 

 Davis was naturally a member of O'Connell's Repeal Association, but took no prominent part in its proceedings, except on one momentous occasion on which we must dwell for a while. The debate was on the subject of Peel's Bill for the establishment of a large scheme of non-sectarian education in Ireland. Of this measure Sir Charles Duffy writes:— 

 "A majority of the Catholic Bishops approved of the general design, objecting to certain details. All the barristers and country gentlemen in the Association, and the middle class generally, supported it. To Davis it was like the unhoped-for realization of a dream. To educate the young men of the middle class and of both races, and to educate them together, that prejudice and bigotry might be killed in the bud, was one of the projects nearest his heart. It would strengthen the soul of Ireland with knowledge, he said, and knit the creeds in liberal and trusting friendship."[3]   

 But O'Connell, though he had previously favoured the principle of mixed education, now saw a chance of flinging down a challenge to the "Young Irelanders" from a vantage-ground of immense tactical value. He threw his whole weight against the proposal, taunted and interrupted its supporters, and seemed determined at any cost to wreck the measure on which such high hopes had been set. The emotion which Davis felt, and which caused him to burst into tears in the midst of the debate, seemed to some of his friends at the time over-strained. But he was not the first strong man from whom public calamities have drawn tears; and assuredly if ever there were cause for tears, Davis had reason to shed them then. More, perhaps, than any man present, he realised the fateful nature of the decision which was being made. He knew that one of the governing facts about Irish public life is the existence in the 

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