eking to go upon their way drawn
by the one passion which alone remains to them out of the passions of the
world. We should not blame them, but rather a mysterious tendency in
things which will have its end some day. In England, men like William
Morris, seeing about them passions so long separated from the perfect that
it seemed as if they could not be changed until society had been changed,
tried to unite the arts once more to life by uniting them to use. They
advised painters to paint fewer pictures upon canvas, and to burn more of
them on plates; and they tried to persuade sculptors that a candlestick
might be as beautiful as a statue. But here in Ireland, when the arts have
grown humble, they will find two passions ready to their hands, love of
the Unseen Life and love of country. I would have a devout writer or
painter often content himself with subjects taken from his religious
beliefs; and if his religious beliefs are those of the majority, he may at
last move hearts in every cottage. While even if his religious beliefs are
those of some minority, he will have a better welcome than if he wrote of
the rape of Persephone, or painted the burning of Shelley's body. He will
have founded his work on a passion which will bring him to many besides
those who have been trained to care for beautiful things by a special
education. If he is a painter or a sculptor he will find churches awaiting
his hand everywhere, and if he follows the masters of his craft our other
passion will come into his work also, for he will show his Holy Family
winding among hills like those of Ireland, and his Bearer of the Cross
among faces copied from the faces of his own town. Our art teachers should
urge their pupils into this work, for I can remember, when I was myself a
Dublin art student, how I used to despond, when eagerness burned low, as
it always must now and then, at seeing no market at all.

But I would rather speak to those who, while moved in other things than
the arts by love of country, are beginning to write, as I was some sixteen
years ago, without any decided impulse to one thing more than another, and
especially to those who are convinced, as I was convinced, that art is
tribeless, nationless, a blossom gathered in No Man's Land. The Greeks,
the only perfect artists of the world, looked within their own borders,
and we, like them, have a history fuller than any modern history of
imaginative events; and legends which surpass, as I