for faith and
fatherland, but, as in the United States, they have thoroughly and
loyally thrown in their lot with the new country of which they have
become citizens. Few in number though they are, they are an important
factor in the new Dominion, for their national tradition inspires
them with civic patriotism, and their religion gives them a high
standard of conduct and puts before them, as guides in the work of
life and the solution of the problems of the day, the Christian
principles of justice and charity.

REFERENCES:

Government Census Returns, South Africa; Catholic Directory for
British South Africa (Cape Town, since 1904); The Catholic Magazine,
Cape Town; Wilmot and Chase: History of Cape Colony (London, 1896);
Theal: History of South Africa (5 vols., London, 1888-1893); for the
war period, the _Times_ History of the South African War, and the
British Official History.

IRISH LANGUAGE AND LETTERS

By DOUGLAS HYDE, LL.D., M.R.I.A.

The Celtic languages consist of two divisions, (a) the Gaelic or
Irish division, and (b) the Kymric or Welsh division. Between them
they comprise (a) Irish, Scotch-Gaelic, and Manx, and (b) Welsh,
Armorican, and Cornish. All these languages are still alive except
Cornish, which died out about a hundred years ago.

Of all these languages Irish is the best preserved, and it is
possible to follow its written literature back into the past for some
thirteen hundred years; while much of the most interesting matter has
come down to us from pagan times. It has left behind it the longest,
the most luminous, and the most consecutive literary track of any of
the vernacular languages of Europe, except Greek alone.

For centuries the Irish and their language were regarded by the
English as something strange and foreign to Europe. It was not
recognized that they had any relationship with the Greeks or Romans,
the French, the Germans, or the English. The once well-known
statesman, Lord Lyndhurst, in the British parliament denounced the
Irish as aliens in religion, in blood, and in language. Bopp, in his
great Comparative Grammar, refused them recognition as
Indo-Europeans, and Pott in 1856 also denied their European
connection. It was left for the great Bavarian scholar, John Caspar
Zeuss, to prove to the world in his epoch-making "Grammatica Celtica"
(published in Latin in 1853) that the Celts were really
Indo-Europeans, and that their language was of the highest possible
value