d the Department thus working together will, I hope, be able to get
the people of the selected districts to effect an improvement in their
domestic surroundings which will act as an invaluable example for other
districts to follow. But in order that this much needed contribution to
the well-being of the peasant proprietary, upon which all our thoughts
are just now concentrated, may be assisted with the enthusiasm which
belongs in Ireland to a consciously national effort, it is hoped that
common action with the Gaelic League may be possible, so that this force
also may be enlisted in the solution of this part of our central
problem, the rehabilitation of rural life in Ireland.

It is, however, on more general grounds that I have, albeit as an
outside observer, watched with some anxiety and much gratification the
progress of the Gaelic Revival. In the historical evolution of the Irish
mind we find certain qualities atrophied, so to speak, by disuse; and to
this cause I attribute the past failures of the race in practical life
at home. I have shown how politics, religion, and our systems of
education have all, in their respective influences upon the people,
missed to a large extent, the effect upon character which they should
have made it their paramount duty to produce. Nevertheless, whenever the
intellect of the people is appealed to by those who know its past, a
recuperative power is manifested which shows that its vitality has not
been irredeemably impaired. It is because I believe that, on the whole,
a right appeal has been made by the Gaelic League that I have borne
testimony to its patriotic endeavours.

The question of the Gaelic Revival seems to be really a form of the
eternal question of the interdependence of the practical and the ideal
in Ireland. Their true relation to each other is one of the hardest
lessons the student of our problems has to learn. I recall an incident
in the course of my own studies which I will here recount, as it appears
to me to furnish an admirable illustration of this difficulty as it
presented itself to a very interesting mind. During the years covering
the rise and fall of Parnell, when interest in the Irish Question was at
its zenith, the newspapers of the United States kept in London a corps
of very able correspondents, who watched and reported to their
transatlantic readers every move in the Home Rule campaign. An American
public, by no means limited to the American-Irish, devoure