are neither few
nor slight. But, whatever fate may be in store for these islands, and
for the political unity we so justly prize, we may at least
confidently predict that no revolution in human affairs can now
destroy the future ascendancy of the English language and of the
Imperial race. Whatever misfortunes, whatever humiliations the future
may reserve to us, they cannot deprive England of the glory of having
created this mighty Empire.

Not Heaven itself upon the Past has power.
But what has been, has been--and we have had our hour.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] _Autobiography_, ii. pp. 234, 235.

[4] Mr. Bayard.

[5] See the enumeration of these endowments in Gladstone's _State and
Church_, Ch. IX.

[6] See Cairnes' _Political Essays_, 49-50, 56.

IRELAND IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY

The kind of interest which belongs to Irish history is curiously
different from that which attaches to the history of England and to
that of most of the great nations of the Continent. In very few
histories do we find so little national unity or continuous progress,
or such long spaces which are almost wholly occupied by perplexed,
petty internal broils, often stained by atrocious crimes, but turning
on no large issue and leading to no clear or stable results. Except
during the great missionary period of the sixth and seventh centuries,
and during a brief portion of the eighteenth century, we have little
of the interest that arises from dramatic situations or shining
characters, and in few countries has the highest intellect been, on
the whole, so slightly connected with the administration of affairs.
To a philosophical student of politics, however, Irish history
possesses an interest of the highest order. It is an invaluable study
of morbid anatomy. In very few histories can we trace so clearly the
effects of political and social circumstances in forming national
character; the calamity of missed opportunities and of fluctuating and
procrastinating policy; the folly of attempting to govern by the same
methods and institutions nations that are wholly different in their
characters and their civilisation.

The idea which still floats vaguely in many minds that Ireland, before
the arrival of the Normans, was a single and independent nation, is
wholly false. Ireland was not a nation, but a collection of separate
tribes and kingdoms, engaged in almost constant warfare. In this
respect, however, she resembled many countries whi