llers, and they took to
horse and died fighting against Elizabeth or against Cromwell; and when
an English-speaking aristocracy had their place, it listened to no
poetry indeed, but it felt about it in the popular mind an exacting and
ancient tribunal, and began a play that had for spectators men and
women that loved the high wasteful virtues. I do not think that their
own mixed blood or the habit of their time need take all, or nearly all,
credit or discredit for the impulse that made those gentlemen of the
eighteenth century fight duels over pocket-handkerchiefs, and set out to
play ball against the gates of Jerusalem for a wager, and scatter money
before the public eye; and at last, after an epoch of such eloquence the
world has hardly seen its like, lose their public spirit and their high
heart, and grow querulous and selfish, as men do who have played life
out not heartily but with noise and tumult. Had they known the people
and the game a little better, they might have created an aristocracy in
an age that has lost the understanding of the word. When one reads of
the Fianna, or of Cuchulain, or of any of their like, one remembers that
the fine life is always a part played finely before fine spectators.
There also one notices the hot cup and the cold cup of intoxication; and
when the fine spectators have ended, surely the fine players grow
weary, and aristocratic life is ended. When O'Connell covered with a
dark glove the hand that had killed a man in the duelling-field, he
played his part; and when Alexander stayed his army marching to the
conquest of the world that he might contemplate the beauty of a
plane-tree, he played his part. When Osgar complained as he lay dying of
the keening of the women and the old fighting-men, he too played his
part; 'No man ever knew any heart in me,' he said, 'but a heart of
twisted horn, and it covered with iron; but the howling of the dogs
beside me,' he said, 'and the keening of the old fighting-men and the
crying of the women one after another, those are the things that are
vexing me.' If we would create a great community--and what other game is
so worth the labour?--we must re-create the old foundations of life, not
as they existed in that splendid misunderstanding of the eighteenth
century, but as they must always exist when the finest minds and Ned the
beggar and Seaghan the fool think about the same thing, although they
may not think the same thought about it.

When I asked