It is a pleasant fact for all Southern people, of Irish descent, to remember that the four grand lyric poems of the South were written by Irishmen, or men of Irish parentage. “Dixie” was the work of Dan Emmet, “The Bonnie Blue Flag” that of Harry McCarthy, “The Conquered Banner” came from Father Ryan, and “Maryland, My Maryland,” whose beauty has thrilled the souls of thousands, was, as we know, written by James Ryder Randall. In a letter received by the writer not long ago, Mr. Randall says that on his father’s side he is of Irish descent, thus giving us in our Southern airs a quartette of Irish talent. Mr. Randall was born in Baltimore in 1839, received the principal part of his education at Georgetown, D. C., where he went to school from his tenth to his seventeenth year. Here he obtained a fine classical education, but owing to delicate health could not entirely finish his course. His work in life has been chiefly editorial, and at different times he has been connected with the newspapers of Augusta, New Orleans and Baltimore, and has never devoted himself exclusively to literature. In 1861 James Ryder Randall was, though very young, a professor at Poydras College upon the Fausse Rivière of Louisiana. Only a stripling, just from school, with a soul full of poetry and romance, the condition of the South, the first gun at Fort Sumter, the scent of the battle afar, thrilled his ardent heart, and “one sleepless night in April, in a second story room of Poydras College, seated at a little old wooden desk,” he wrote the lyric poem that has been called the “Marseillaise of the Confederacy.” The song, set to music of an old college melody, “Lauringer Horatius,” by its passionate appeal, caught the attention of the Southern heart, and was sung in field and camp, in cottage and palace. It was first set in print in the _New Orleans Delta_. [Illustration: JAMES RYDER RANDALL] Mr. Randall wrote also a number of other beautiful poems, among them being “The Sole Sentry,” “Arlington,” “John Pelham,” and “The Cameo Bracelet.” “The Unconquered Banner” was written in reply to Father Ryan’s “Conquered Banner,” and its beauty and spirit can be seen by even a few lines: “Men die, but principles can know no death, No last extinguishment of mortal breath. We fought for what our fathers held in trust; It did not fall forever in the dust.” Hardly less noted at the time of publication than “Maryland, My Maryland,” was the poem “There’s Life in the Old Land Yet.” In a late paper from Columbus, Ohio, we find the following from Atherton Hastings: