but by the intrinsic value of its men and women that a country
becomes powerful and memorable. The true admeasurement, as we may learn
from the inspiring story of small nations, is not geometrical but
metaphysical. Little Athens gave philosophy, literature, and art to
mankind; little Rome imposed her will on all the peoples of the known
world; in modern times little Portugal, with a population which sometimes
fell short of the population of Munster, undertook great enterprises, made
memorable discoveries of new territory, and established in Asia and Africa
settlements, which, after troubled centuries, still survive. The little
Netherlands, with no more men than Portugal, held its own against the
most powerful monarchy in Europe, and planted new Netherlands in distant
countries. Florence almost alone created and fostered the Renaissance
which after desolate ages

"--------blessed mankind
With arts anew, and civilised the world."

But these are the commonplaces of history, compared to the story of the
single city of Italy, which, with one arm, "held the golden East in fee,"
and with the other drove back the conquering Turk, bent on the destruction
of Christendom. Or, for an example, that not men but mind is the
conquering force, turn to the barren mountains of Switzerland, where free
institutions were first planted by a handful of husbandmen and hunters,
less than occupy one Irish county, and to-day a federated league of two
and twenty separate republics enjoy substantial prosperity and ideal
liberty, though they muster fewer men than still occupy the two sides of
the Boyne. No; trust me, you have men enough, if they be endowed with the
gifts and disciplined by the culture, which make the destiny of nations.

It would be vain to deny that national quarrels are the most intractable
of our troubles. The Celt is placable and generous in private
transactions, but for public conflicts he has an unsleeping memory. Some
of these quarrels are nearly as old as the Flood. The late Martin Haverty,
who wrote a meritorious history of Ireland, was once discovered by a
friend in a perturbed and angry mood, which he explained by the fact that
he had been reading a record of ill-usage his ancestors sustained from the
invaders. "The slaughter of the Milesians by Strongbow?" queried his
friend. "No," said the historian, "I speak of the slaughter inflicted by
the villanous Milesians on my ancestors the Tuatha De Danaans." No one ca