ous hospitality was ungraciously met. An attempt was
made to keep children from a children's party which she had organised.
The move was half-hearted and her energy defeated it, but that the
attempt should be made was such "a facer" as she had never before known.
Like many another ugly thing in Ireland, it originated in that cowardly
fear of public opinion which is to be found on the seamy side of all
revolutions; and it did not stand against her "gallant fight to restore
the old ways, the old friendships."

The old ways, in so far as they meant the old friendships, she might
hope to restore, although the friendship would, half consciously, take
on a new accent; personality would count for more in it, position for
less. But the old relation which authorised a kind-hearted landlord to
feel that his tenants had "deserted him" because they voted against his
wish in an election--that is gone for ever; and gone, at all events, for
the present, is the local leadership of the gentry.

I question whether it is realised that in parting from that leadership
Ireland lost what was in a sense Home Rule. In the "yesterday" of which
I write Ireland was governed in all its parochial and most intimate
affairs by a class or a caste; but that governing class was Irish--Irish
with a limitation, no doubt, yet still indisputably Irish. When that
rule perished, when that class lost its local ascendancy, government
became the bastard compromise that we have known, with power
inharmoniously divided between officialdom and agitators. The law was
framed and administered by officials, often English or Scotch,
possessing no authority except what the law conferred on them. Authority
lay very largely with popular leaders; but leadership and authority
alike were purely personal, depending on a man's own qualities and the
support which they evoked. No man was born to it as of right, and such
authority is far more precarious than the established power of a
governing class. This is a weakness in all democratically-governed
countries, but where there is self-government, the individual, in
entering upon office, acquires the support and the prestige of a
long-established machinery of power. He ceases to be merely the
individual when he becomes part of the Government. For the Irish leaders
this reinforcement to the personal authority has never existed; they
have been at a terrible disadvantage as compared with all other
democratic politicians; and consequen