One remembers indeed that when the farming people and the labourers of
the towns made their last attempt to cast out England by force of arms
they named themselves after the companions of Finn. Even when Gaelic has
gone, and the poetry with it, something of the habit of mind remains in
ways of speech and thought and "come-all-ye"s and poetical saying; nor
is it only among the poor that the old thought has been for strength or
weakness. Surely these old stories, whether of Finn or Cuchulain, helped
to sing the old Irish and the old Norman-Irish aristocracy to their end.
They heard their hereditary poets and story-tellers, and they took to
horse and died fighting against Elizabeth or against Cromwell; and when
an English-speaking aristocracy had their place, it listened to no
poetry indeed, but it felt about it in the popular mind an exacting and
ancient tribunal, and began a play that had for spectators men and women
that loved the high wasteful virtues. I do not think that their own
mixed blood or the habit of their time need take all, or nearly all,
credit or discredit for the impulse that made our modern gentlemen fight
duels over pocket-handkerchiefs, and set out to play ball against the
gates of Jerusalem for a wager, and scatter money before the public eye;
and at last, after an epoch of such eloquence the world has hardly seen
its like, lose their public spirit and their high heart and grow
querulous and selfish as men do who have played life out not heartily
but with noise and tumult. Had they understood the people and the game a
little better, they might have created an aristocracy in an age that has
lost the meaning of the word. When one reads of the Fianna, or of
Cuchulain, or of some great hero, one remembers that the fine life is
always a part played finely before fine spectators. There also one
notices the hot cup and the cold cup of intoxication; and when the fine
spectators have ended, surely the fine players grow weary, and
aristocratic life is ended. When O'Connell covered with a dark glove the
hand that had killed a man in the duelling field, he played his part;