to Ireland.

I know it will be said that this is a scientific age, the world is
so full of necessitous life that it is waste of time for young
Ireland to brood upon tales of legendary heroes, who fought with
enchanters, who harnessed wild fairy horses to magic chariots and
who talked with the ancient gods, and that it would be much better
for youth to be scientific and practical. Do not believe it, dear
Irish boy, dear Irish girl. I know as well as any the economic
needs of our people. They must not be overlooked, but keep still
in your hearts some desires which might enter Paradise. Keep in
your souls some images of magnificence so that hereafter the halls
of heaven and the divine folk may not seem altogether alien to the
spirit. These legends have passed the test of generations for
century after century, and they were treasured and passed on to
those who followed, and that was because there was something in
them akin to the immortal spirit. Humanity cannot carry with it
through time the memory of all its deeds and imaginations, and it
burdens itself only in a new era with what was highest among the
imaginations of the ancestors. What is essentially noble is never
out of date. The figures carved by Phidias for the Parthenon still
shine by the side of the greatest modern sculpture. There has been
no evolution of the human form to a greater beauty than the
ancient Greeks saw and the forms they carved are not strange to
us, and if this is true of the outward form it is true of the
indwelling spirit. What is essentially noble is contemporary with
all that is splendid to-day, and, until the mass of men are equal
in spirit, the great figures of the past will affect us less as
memories than as prophecies of the Golden Age to which youth is
ever hurrying in its heart.