lofty edifice which will arise later and make all the work glorious.
And in Ireland, for all its melancholy history, we may, knowing that we
are human, dream that there is the seed of a Pericles in Patrick's
loins, and that we might carve an Attica out of Ireland.





V.



In Ireland we must of necessity give special thought to the needs of the
countryman, because our main industry is agriculture. We have few big
cities. Our great cities are almost all outside our own borders. They
are across the Atlantic. The surplus population of the countryside do
not go to our own towns but emigrate. The exodus does not enrich
Limerick or Galway, but New York. The absorption of life in great
cities is really the danger which most threatens the modern State with a
decadence of its humanity. In the United States, even in Canada, hardly
has the pioneer made a home in the wilderness when his sons and his
daughters are allured by the distant gleam of cities beyond the plains.
In England the countryside has almost ceased to be the mother of men--at
least a fruitful mother. We are face to face in Ireland with this
problem, with no crowded and towering cities to disguise the emptiness
of the fields. It is not a problem which lends itself to legislative
solution. Whether there be fair rents or no rents at all, the child of
the peasant, yearning for a fuller life, goes where life is at its
fullest. We all desire life, and that we might have it more