n of those rough-riding canons
of Armagh, was installed as primate; the Earl of Sussex was recalled
to England; and the new archbishop, unable to contain his exultation
at the blessed day which had dawned upon his country, wrote to Cecil
to say how the millennium had come at last, glory be to God!'

As a picture of Irish savage life this is very good. But the historian
has presented a companion picture of English civilised life, which
is not at all inferior. Sir Thomas Wroth and Sir Nicholas Arnold were
sent over to reform the Pale. They were stern Englishmen, impatient
of abuses among their own countrymen, and having no more sympathy for
Irishmen than for wolves. In the Pale they found that peculation had
grown into a custom; the most barefaced frauds had been converted by
habit into rights: and a captain's commission was thought ill-handled
if it did not yield, beyond the pay, 500 l. a year. They received pay
for each hundred men, when only sixty were on the roll. The soldiers,
following the example of their leaders, robbed and ground the
peasantry. In fact, the Pale was 'a weltering sea of corruption--the
captains out of credit, the soldiers mutinous, the English Government
hated; every man seeking his own, and none that which was Christ's.'
The purification of the Pale was left to Arnold, 'a hard, iron,
pitiless man, careful of things and careless of phrases, untroubled
with delicacy, and impervious to Irish enchantments. The account books
were dragged to light, where iniquity in high places was registered in
inexorable figures. The hands of Sir Henry Ratcliffe, the brother of
Sussex, were not found clean. Arnold sent him to the Castle with
the rest of the offenders. Deep, leading drains were cut through the
corrupting mass. The shaking ground grew firm, and honest healthy
human life was again made possible. With the provinces beyond the
Pale, Arnold meddled little, save where, taking a rough view of the
necessities of the case, he could help the Irish chiefs to destroy
each other.'

To Cecil, Arnold wrote thus: 'I am with all the wild Irish at the same
point I am at with bears and ban-dogs; when I see them fight, so they
fight earnestly indeed, and tug each other well, I care not who has
the worst.' 'Why not, indeed?' asks Mr. Froude; 'better so than hire
assassins! Cecil, with the modesty of genius, confessed his ignorance
of the country, and his inability to judge; yet, in every opinion
which he allowed himself