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144(May 1902). Contributors seized upon the Mangan essay as an occasion for
parody. "' Tho,' as Plotinus was fain to utter, ' absence is the highest
form of presence' "wrote "Chanel" in June 1902, recalling Joyce's passage
on "death, the most beautiful form of life." At the end of the next academic
year, Joyce meanwhile having returned from a brief stay in Paris, St. Stephen's
found that the essay "wears uncommonly well" and suggested that it was worth
rereading (June 1903). After his second departure from Dublin, Joyce and
his contemporaries were hailed in Ibsenesque terms. Now that "the old gods
are departing from us," only those who can compare the modern college with
what it was before "can properly estimate the burden of gratitude that should
accompany these master-builders of societies" (November 1904). The next spring,
almost three years after Joyce's last classes at the University, St. Stephen's
indicated that his presence was still felt. In tracing the development of
the Library Conference 2 (April 1905) the college magazine remarked that
"From being a simple-minded unpretentious and comparatively humble gathering
it has developed into a scientific-philosophical home for discussing anything
and anybody from Sophocles to Walter Pater, or from Haeckel to Jimmy Joyce."
THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY8 
 (Map A.) is situated in St. Stephen's-green on the south side. The main
building, easily recognised by the recumbent lion over the door, was the
town house of the famous Buck Whaley, whose many feats earned him an unenviable
notoriety. The lion above the handsome Done doorway was cast according to
Malton by the celebrated Van Nost. The building, in spite of late additions,
is not very suitable for its present purpose, and can be regarded only as
a makeshift, until funds are forthcoming to erect a building which shall
be a fitter home. . 
 2. Organized by the college Sodality in 1901, the Library Conference met
for papers and discussions. Minutes from 1901 to 1906 were printed in A Page
of Irish History (1930), pp. 439—47. Among the notes on sixteen meetings
during Joyce's last year and a half at the University are references to his
participating in the discussions of papers by Arthur Clery (June 16, 1901)
and by J. F. Byrne (February 1, 1902). 
 3. E. MacDowel Cosgrave and Leonard R. Strangways, The Dictionary of Dublin
(Dublin: Sealy, Bryers & Walker, 1895), pp. 145—46.