t to continue its malefic purpose by a system of education "so
bad that if England had wished to kill Ireland's soul when she imposed
it on the Sister Isle she could not have discovered a better means of
doing so" (M. Paul Dubois). And the same authority ascribes the
fatalism, the lethargy, the moral inertia and intellectual passivity,
the general absence of energy and character which prevailed in Ireland
ten or twelve years ago to the fact that England struck at Ireland
through her brain and sought to demoralise and ruin the national mind.

Thank God for it that the effort failed, but it failed mainly owing to
the fact that a new generation of prophets had arisen in Ireland who
saw that in the revival and reform of national education rested the
best hope for the future. They recalled the gospel of Thomas Davis and
the other noble minds of the Young Ireland era that we needs must
educate in order that we may be free. They sought to give form and
effect to the splendid ideals of the Young Irelanders. A new spirit
was abroad, and not in matters educational alone. The doctrine of
self-help and self-reliance was being preached and, what was better,
practised.

The Gaelic League, founded in 1893 by a few enthusiastic Irish
spirits, was formed to effect an Irish renascence in matters of the
mind and spirit. It was non-sectarian and non-political. Its purpose
was purely psychological and educational--it sought the preservation
of the Irish language from a fast-threatening decay, it encouraged the
study of ancient Irish literature and it promoted the cultivation of a
modern literature in the Irish language. Its beginnings were modest,
and its founders were practically three unknown young men whose only
special equipment for leadership of a new movement were boundless
enthusiasm and the possession of the scholastic temperament. Douglas
Hyde, the son of a Protestant clergyman, dwelt far away in an
unimportant parish in Connaught, and, while still a boy, became
devoted to the study of the Irish language. Father O'Growney was a
product of Maynooth culture, whose love of the Irish tongue became the
best part of his nature, and John MacNeill (now so well known as a
Sinn Fein leader) was born in Antrim, educated in a Belfast school and
acquired his love for Irish in the Aran islands. It is marvellous to
consider how the programme of the new League "caught on." Some
movements make their appeal to a class or a cult--to the young, the