periority cannot last: the Crest-Wave
passes from one to another, and in the nature of things can never
remain in any one for longer than its due season. It is as
certain that it will pass sometime from the regions it fills with
strength and glory now, as that it will sometime thrill into life
and splendor the lands that are now forlorn and helpless; and
for my part, seeing what the feeble dying away of it, or the far
foam flung,--no more than that,--raised up in Ireland once, I am
anxious to see the central glory of it rise there; I am keen to
know what will happen then. It will rise there, some time; and
perhaps that time may not be far off.--Oh if men could only look
at these national questions with calm scientific vision,
understanding the laws that govern national and racial life!
There would be none of these idiotic jealousies then; no
heart-burnings or contempt or hatred as between the nations;
there would be none of this cock-a-doodling arrogance that
sometimes makes nations in their heyday a laughing-stock
for the Gods. Instead we should see one single race, Humanity;
poured now into one national mold, now into another; but
always with the same duality: half divine, half devilish-idiotic;
--and while making the utmost best of each mold as they came
to inhabit it, the strong would find it their supreme business
to help the weak, and not exploit or contemn them. But it will
need the sound sense of Theosophy,--knowledge of Reincarnation,
the conviction of Human Brotherhood,--to work this change
in mankind.

Well; now to the things that brought Ireland down. In 795 the
Norwegians began their ravages, and they seem to have had a
peculiar spite against the monastery-colleges. That at Armagh
was sacked nine times in the ninth, and six times in the tenth
century. In the same period Glendalough was plundered seven
times; Clonard four times; Clonmacnois five times betnveen 838
and 845, and often afterwards. These are only samples: there
were scores of the institutions, and they were all sacked, burnt,
plundered, and ravaged, again and again. The scholars fled
abroad, taking their precious manuscripts with them; for which
reason many of the most valuable of these have been found in
monasteries on the continent. The age of brilliance was over.
For a couple of centuries, the Norwegians, and then the Danes,
were ruining Ireland; until Brian Boru did their quietus make at
Clontarf in 1014. Before the country