His love of Ireland was free from all attendant hates.

His resentment was never on private grounds, and it was without rancour.

He spent his whole life in opposition, and was not embittered; his mind remained constructive after thirty years spent in criticism.

His experience of political life and of English Ministers had rid him of any credulous faith in mankind; yet his instinct was always to perceive the best in men.

The friend who knew him best in Convention, and who had seen him in his darkest hours then and long ago, said this of him: "He was always an optimist." The speaker did not mean--he could not have meant--that in those last months Redmond was sanguine.