water-wheel. It is not for me to dogmatise on the proper development of Ireland, but assuredly to be wise and successful it must harmonise with the nature of the people, and correct it where correction is needful. Education is far stronger than nature, and there is no doubt the deficiencies in national character may be repaired by discipline. The highest teaching of a people is to accustom them to have a strict regard for the rights of others, to be prudent and temperate in action, and to regard the whole nation as members of a common household. To make our people politically free, yet leave them bond-slaves of some debasing social system like that which crowds the mines and factories of England with squalid victims, or make the artisans of France so often godless scoffers, would be a poor result of all Ireland’s labours and sacrifices.

Liberty will do much for a nation, but it will not do everything. Among a people who do not know and reverence their own ancestors, who do not submit cheerfully to lawful authority, and do not love the eternal principles of justice, it will do little. But moral sentiments, generous impulses, religious feelings still survive in the Irish race, and they give assurance that in that mystic clime on the verge of the Western Ocean, where the more debasing currents of European civilisation only reach it at high tide, there is place for a great experiment for humanity. There within our circling seas we may rear a race in which the fine qualities of the Celtic family, fortified by the sterner strength of the North, and disciplined by the Norman genius of Munster may at last have fair play; where, at lowest a pious and gallant race may after long struggles and nameless sufferings possess their own soil and their own souls in peace.

Let me say, though I have said it more than once before, that the Celts are among the most teachable of races. The drill, the jacket, the discipline, transform an Irish peasant into a sub-constable with almost as military a carriage, and as expert an eye and hand as a veteran of the Peninsula. A few years in a National School, and the boy who emerged from a smoky and squalid cabin, shared with a pig, is turned into a clean and shapely youth, fit to wrestle with the world, and perhaps to win the match. Look at a railway porter, or a railway policeman—the decent uniform and the punctual system soon make a new man of the peasant. An English priest in Paris, with little prejudice in favour of our race, assured me that no girls crossed the sea who acquire so speedily the carriage, deportment, and grace which distinguish French women, as girls from Munster, coming perhaps as servants to some great lady. And this physical training is a small achievement compared with the result of discipline on the intellect and practical power of cultivated, aspiring men. The one multiplies iron, the other multiplies rarest gold of Ophir. But we have not, I fear, made even a beginning in the practical education which makes industry prosperous. I lived for a quarter of a century in Australia, and there rarely came an English ship into the port of Melbourne that did not bring me letters of introduction with young Irishmen who hoped to make their home in the new country. Such of them as it was possible to place in the public service, and that was a limited number, did their work extremely well. But after I had done all that I reasonably could do—for I was administering the affairs of a colony where three-fourths of the inhabitants were English and Scotch, and the patronage had to be distributed in just relation to the population—an enormous remnant remained to be provided for. Some of them were as bright, intelligent young fellows as I ever met in the world, but they were wholly untrained in any business. They had no profession and no trade; they were merely nice fellows, and agreeable idle gentlemen. Now what became of them in the new country, where there was work and pay for everybody who was willing and able to work, and brought to the public service some capacity worth paying for? Multitudes of them sank to be waiters in hotels, barbers, and cabmen. The man who had a trade prospered in a wonderful manner, the man who had a profession prospered, according to his capacity, but the man who was ready “to do anything” generally found nothing to do.

It has been asked scornfully what we can hope to effect in a little country with diminishing population and limited resources? Ought not some Irish student to teach our people that it is not great states like those which the greed of conquerors has aggregated, but states scarcely larger than an Irish province which have done the most memorable work for humanity and civilisation? The achievements in arts, arms, science, and discovery, and in the art of government of the Greek Republics, of the Italian Republics, of the trampled provinces of Spain in the Low Countries, of the little rib taken out of the side of Spain, and called Portugal, how emphatically they teach the lesson that it is not by the quantity but by the quality of their men that states are glorified! A little book which told this great story would be a boon to our people.

It would be presumptuous to name the books which ought to be published in such an enterprise, but we may profitably consider the class and character to be preferred.

Big books of history are only for students, they are never read by the people. But they will read picturesque biographies, which are history individualised, or vivid sketches of memorable eras, which are history vitalised. A dozen lives of representative Irishmen would teach more of the training and growth of Ireland than a library of annals and State papers. They would familiarise us with great men, whom the Celt loves better than systems or policies. This is the class of books in which we are most deficient; there is no memoir of Roger O’Moore, none of Luke Wadding, none of Patrick Sarsfield, none of a man as fertile in intellect, as firm in judgment as any of these, a man whom some of us have seen in the flesh, the wise and fearless J. K. L. Mr. Fitzpatrick has collected his letters and literary remains with commendable care, it only needs that some sympathetic student should ponder over them till the electric spark is kindled, that a new figure may be given to our imagination for ever. The first great poet who sang the wrongs of Ireland with civilised Europe for an audience, has never had an adequate memoir. He has been singularly unfortunate in his biographer; Lord John Russell discharged on the public several cart-loads of undigested diaries as “The Memoirs and Journals of Thomas Moore.” They are of little use to anybody at present, but a skilful literary workman, or a chemist of the intellect, could extract a delightful little volume from the chaotic mass.

How profitable it would be if the best men of this time would contribute each of them a study to a gallery of representative Irishmen! We are accustomed to say, with not unjust reproach, that England knows little of our country; but, alas! my friends, we Irishmen know too little of it ourselves. ’Tis a great possession given to us by a gracious God, which we do not take adequate pains to comprehend; and the philosopher has declared with profound truth that men only possess what they understand.

And we want works reproduced which have disappeared out of circulation. The hundred best Irish books have been skilfully discussed in the newspapers, but the young student soon discovers that half of the hundred are out of print, or locked up in costly editions. Fifty pounds would not purchase the volumes recommended. But it would not be impossible to produce a library containing these