offerings
than the things you ask him to reject, and, again I ask, why should you
not?

It may be demanded: where are the writers to supply these captivating
books? Let me ask, Where, in 1840, were the writers who were exciting
universal enthusiasm in 1843? Like them, the men of the future are
consciously or unconsciously preparing for their task; they are waiting
the occasion--occasion which is the stage where alone great achievements
are performed. I could name, if it were needful, a few writers not
unworthy to succeed the men of '43, but their work will speak for them. I
prefer to say that if there were not one man of genius left of the Irish
race, there are already materials sufficient to furnish useful and
delightful books for half-a-dozen years.

With a memory running back over six decades of reading, I confidently
affirm that there are scattered in magazines and annuals, in luckless
books neglected in the hurry of our political march, in publications the
very names of which are forgotten by the present generation, Irish stories
of surpassing interest, fit to win and fascinate young Irish readers,
which would not degrade or debase them, but make them better men and
better Irishmen. And in the other domains of intellect, Irish writers
living in or belonging to a country where unhappily there was no market
for books, carried their work to periodicals where it has lain interred
for generations. How many rare and interesting books there are of which we
have lost all trace and memory! I put lately into the hands of a friend of
large intellectual appetite half-a-dozen little volumes of which he had
never heard. "This," I said, pointing to the first, "was written by a
Presbyterian minister, who describes with infinite humour the relations
between the squire and the peasant a hundred years ago, and it is almost
as true to-day as it was then. The writer was hanged as a rebel in '98 by
the very squire whom he had depicted, but his little book is read with
enthusiasm to this day by northern farmers who call themselves Orangemen
and Unionists. This second volume, I said, is the first poem written by
Bulwer Lytton, and the hero is an O'Neill who rallied his nation against
England. Here's a brochure on the Land Question, published in America
fifty years ago by a poor exiled Irishman, which anticipates the alarming
proclamation of first principles by Fintan Lalor and Henry George, and it
is as unknown in Ireland as the lost boo