What land is more richly blessed by nature with water, whether we consider it as a beautifier, or as a drudge, or as a fishing field? The fisheries, inland and seaward, are unequalled. No country in the world has such an avenue of approach as the St. Lawrence. To wind one's way through the Thousand Islands is to wander amid enchanting beauty. It is an Irish poet who writes "There are miracles, which man, Cag'd in the bounds of Europe's pigmy span, What variety and beauty is there up Lake Superior! Cross the continent, and you may sail along the coast for a week in a vessel of two thousand tons, threading " an interminable labyrinth of watery lanes and reaches," winding endlessly amid a maze and mystery of islands, promontories, and peninsulas for thousands of miles, the placid water undisturbed by the slighest swell from the adjoining ocean, and presenting at every turn an ever-shifting combination of rock, verdure, forest, glacier, and snow-capped mountain of unrivalled grandeur and beauty."† Those capacious and tranquil waters, capable of carrying a line of battle ship, seem gentle, as if on purpose to suit the frail canoes which skim in safety over the unrippled surface. In such a country, where the laws are equal, with everything which can stimulate industry, everything which can stir the heart, it would be an extraordinary thing if the Irishman did not rise to a high level. Here, all that his fathers ever struggled for he has. He is a controlling part of the present; he is one of the architects of the future, and he has nothing to do with the disasters of the past, only so far as they teach him lessons for the present. Nothing to do with the glories of the past, save to catch their inspiration. On those disasters and those glories it will now be my duty briefly to dwell. * Moore. + Lord Dufferin. I am convinced, from what I saw in the States, and from all I have heard, that the position of the Irishman in Canada is better than in the States. FUNCTION OF HISTORY. ས 7 CHAPTER II. No source of education open to a people ought to be so ruitful as the story of their own country. But, if it is to teach and correct and inspire, it must be true. The muse of history is the purest of all the Nine, and no passion should darken the clear blue of the intellectual atmosphere of her domain; no fiction warp its crisp outlines. The romancer, who gives you idle fables, and calls them history, would play a much more useful part if he appeared in his true character of novelist; while the man who distorts facts or colours them mischievously, with the view of raising or stimulating passions, is worse than a murderer, for he sows broadcast the seeds of murder. In uncritical times, the deposit of the national fancy is easily mistaken for the gold of truth, and for the most credulous of Irish historians there is this excuse for him the future was a vista of despair; the present, blood and tears, and hope, in the unnatural strain, was turned to the past, giving additional warmth and boldness to imagination. He erred, too, it must be admitted, in good company, but, in his case, error was fraught with serious consequences -it was used by the enemies of his country to discredit her real glory. Some Irish historians divide the history into periods; the pre-Christian, the Irish pentarchy, the Danish period, the Norman, the Tudor and Stuart, and the Hanoverian.* But, perhaps, See "The Student's Manual of Irish History." By M. F. Cusack. Until somebody does for Ireland what Mr. J. R. Green has done for England, I know no better book to recommend to those who want to get an outline of events. But, owing, perhaps, to the limits of space, very important facts, which should find a place even in a compendium, are omitted, and it is impossible to escape from the conviction that, here and there, the partiality of the patriot sways the balance of the historian-an unhappy thing, because calculated to make Irishmen look ridiculous, and a needless thing, for Irishmen can afford to have the truth told. But it is one of the best small histories of Ireland which can be got. * the facts would be brought more certainly before the mind if Irish history were divided into the Celtic period and the mixed period. The modern Irishman is not a Celt, any more than the modern Englishman is a Saxon. The name of the greatest of English historians proves him to have been in part Celt; the name of the latest of Irish historians + indicates that the writer is in part Norman. But, as in England, over Celt and Norman the Saxon predominates, so in Ireland, over Saxon and Norman, the Celt predominates. We may leave antiquarians to puzzle over the five "takings" of Ireland. It is enough for every practical purpose to know as we do, by the sure test of language, that the people inhabiting Ireland, when the mists of unhistorical times are swept away from its green hills, its fertile valleys, and extensive forests, belonged to the great Celtic race. That race which came before the Teuton formed the vanguard of the Aryan march to the West and played, and still plays, a great part in the history of the world. It plays its part no longer alone, but in conjunction with one or other of its brethren. The Celt of Gaul has done great things, not merely within his own bounds, but for Europe; but he has wrought all this brilliancy speaking a Latin dialect and wearing the name of a German tribe. The Celt of Ireland of Scotia major, and his brethren among the hills of Scotia minor, having learned a language composed of elements drawn from dialects of their brethren, the Teuton on the one hand, and the Roman on the other, have done their part in building up what, if Irishmen's attention had not been directed into other Disfigured, as Froude's history is, by deliberate misrepresentation, his pages are the most vivid which have been devoted to Irish history, and the student could not do better than read them, if he will remember their real character and correct them by reference to more trustworthy sources bearing on the period. Mr. Goldwin Smith's essay, "Irish History and Irish Character," should be read by every student. It is the most masterly thing ever written on Ireland, and breathes, with one or two trifling exceptions, a spirit of perfect fairness. For persons who are not students of Irish history there is no other book which will give them, on a small canvas, so true a picture. The canvas is small, but the treatment is the large treatment of a master-hand. THE CELT IN EUROPE. channels, they would have readily and gladly recognised as the Brito-Hibernian empire. On this continent, working by the side of the Saxon, and mingling with him, the Celt has made, in a few years, one of the foremost of modern nations, and here, in Canada, no small portion of the work of the future rests on his shoulders. It is impossible to say with certainty whether the Celts separated from the Roman and the Greek in their Aryan nome, or parted company with them on their westward march. When we see them face to face with their classical brethren, it is as enemies. They poured over the Alps, and settled in the valleys of the Po, and, in vengeance for the haughty language of Roman ambassadors and some Gaulish blood spilt in a skirmish, they raised the siege of Clusium and marched on Rome, which, having put the Romans to rout at Allia, they gave to the flames. It was Celtic valour bore down the Roman in the defile of Thrasymene, on the disastrous field of Cannæ; nor was it until Cæsar carried a ten years' extirminating war into the home of the Celts that the contest of four centuries was decided. They carried their arms into Greece and overran Asia Minor. They sacked Delphi; "they met the summons of Alexander with gasconading defiance; they overthrew the phalanx in the plains of Macedon."* We may trust the traditions which assign an early date to the settlement of Ireland, while dismissing with a smile stories about Noah's children and Canaanitish emigrations. The Celt who settled in Ireland, separated by the sea from the continent, would naturally be shut out from a share in the wars and enterprises of the members of his race on the mainland, and be kept free from influences to which they were exposed. Centuries passed away, and the civilization did not advance beyond the primitive stage of the sept and clan. Petty principalities arose, and petty kingdoms, and population was kept down by constant wars. There is no use in attributing virtues to the Irish Celts at this stage which are inconsistent with the infancy of a people. What they were we can very easily understand from what we know certainly of themselves, from what we know of the Gauls, and from what we know of the Greeks at a like period of growth. In art, in arms, in polity they were, up to the time of St. Patrick, about on a level with the Greeks of the time of which Homer sings; nor need we be surprised that a resemblance has been traced between ancient Irish and ancient Greek military monuments. The bards, as in early Greece, and in Germany in early times, held an important place in society and wielded great power. If it was their profession to flatter the strong, they were often the protectors of the weak. What was thought amongst the Teutons of the bards may be gathered from Uhland's great ballad, and in Ireland the wandering poet, who was credited with divine powers, often made himself unpopular with kings and princes. The bards were the journalists, orators, and historians of those times, and, before being admitted to the sacred order, they had to pass through a long course of training. Their religion was Druidism. They worshipped the sun, and in the neighbourhood of Dublin, to this day, the student witnesses survivals of this worship. The Irish-speaking Celt still calls the 1st of May "La Bealtinne," and throughout the island fires are lit, which are the embers of a once-living worship, the joyful greeting of the returning sun-god. There was a national code and recognised interpreters. Common ownership of land precedes separate ownership.* In Russia and Hindostan the village communities hold the land in common, and in Ireland the land was the property of the Sept. That such was the custom among the Greeks and Romans, in early times, may be gathered from the redistributions of land and the agrarian laws, from the Roman clientage and the Greek tribes, which are evidently cognate institutions of the Clan.† One of the most curious facts in comparative politics is, that the custom sanctioned by the Brehon laws of the creditor fasting upon the debtor exists at this hour in Hindostan, and has actually been practised within living memory in Ulster. Early in our era, the Scots of Erin colonised the west coast of Scotland and the adjacent islands. Traditions of this coloniza Maine's Ancient Law. + Goldwin Smith's "Irish History and Irish Character." |