The Palace and Park by Phillips, Forbes, Latham, Owen, Scharf, and Shenton

that traverse the sister kingdom. When all the works shall be completed, which owe their construction to his skill, ingenuity, and industry, nearly a thousand miles of railway will be due to his enterprise. William Dargan is not only a railway contractor, but a railway owner, a steam-packet proprietor, a flax grower, and a farmer. Whilst too many of his fellow-countrymen have been engaged in destroying--as far as in them lay--the elements of industry in Ireland, he has laboured to develop her resources, and to rouse the physical energy and the self-respect of all classes. He is a patriot, not a partizan--not an Orangeman, nor a Ribbandman, nor a Repealer, nor a Protestant-ascendancy-man, but a true-hearted Irishman, a useful citizen, a loyal subject. If Sir Robert Peel could have counted a dozen Dargans amongst his coadjutors in Ireland, he would never have had cause to reckon the government of that portion of the United Kingdom, amongst his insuperable “difficulties.” The greatest work of the patriotic Dargan remains to be mentioned. He placed £20,000 at the disposal of the Committee formed in Dublin, for the construction of a Crystal Palace in that city. Before the Palace was ready to receive the contributions of all nations, William Dargan had contributed a much larger sum. He has his reward in the affectionate gratitude of the Irish people--in the approving smiles of his sovereign--in the lasting good wrought by his act in the land of his birth. [This statue, by J. E. Jones, is at the south end of the nave.]