to come in to church on Sunday morning, when the
ladies of their families addressed themselves to devotions kneeling,
while the men said their prayers standing, peering mysteriously into
their tall hats--a strange ritual, of which traces may be observed at
the House of Commons, but nowhere else, I fancy, on earth. On week days
they lived an orderly, dignified existence in their big old-fashioned
houses, leaving home little, though the more cultivated among them had
travelled in their youth and knew thoroughly some foreign country. In
their own orbit they had power, leisure, and deference, all of which set
a stamp upon them; individuality had great scope to develop, and an able
man among them was a man made for government. One such stands out in my
memory. Stormy tales were told of his youth, but from himself no one
heard a whisper of these far-off exploits; small, exquisitely neat,
finely made and finely featured, he was courteous and gentle-spoken with
all; but he was of those quiet creatures who breed fear. I cannot
imagine the situation of power of responsibility from which he would
have shrunk, or to which he would have been unequal; neither can I
imagine him anxious in the pursuit of office. That was Parnell's type.
Parnell's strength appears to have lain precisely in that
self-confidence which was a law to itself and which no prestige of fame
or authority could shake or overawe. The men who might have been
Ireland's leaders were men extraordinarily suited for the conduct of
affairs, but as a class they had been thrown out of their natural
relation. Castlereagh, who in his cold efficiency had much in common
with Parnell, accomplished a desperate deed when he made the Union
through them. He committed their honour to justify for all time that
transaction. If those who condemned the Union were not traitors, then
the class from whom it was bought with cash and titles stood convicted
of infamy; and since the heart of Ireland loathed and detested
Castlereagh's work, the whole body of the Irish gentry found themselves
inevitably estranged from the heart of Ireland. On one side was the
interest of a class--and not merely the material interest but the
interest of its honour, which sought a justification in the name of
loyalty; on the other was the interest of Ireland; and the landlord who
chose the side of Ireland severed himself necessarily, as Moore had to
do, from his own friends and kin.

For years now there has been m