practical or ideal ends, is to justify those who have chosen the
other path, and followed another star than ours. I do not wish
any one to infer from this a contempt for those who, for the last
hundred years, have guided public opinion in Ireland. If they
failed in one respect, it was out of a passionate sympathy for
wrongs of which many are memories, thanks to them, and to them
is due the creation of a force which may be turned in other
directions, not without a memory of those pale sleepers to whom
we may turn in thought, placing--

A kiss of fire on the dim brow of failure,
A crown upon her uncrowned head.

1899





STANDISH O'GRADY


In this age we read so much that we lay too great a burden on the
imagination. It is unable to create images which are the spiritual
equivalent of the words on the printed page, and reading becomes
for too many an occupation of the eye rather than of the mind. How
rarely, out of the multitude of volumes a man reads in his lifetime,
can he remember where or when he read any particular book, or with
any vividness recall the mood it evoked in him. When I close my
eyes, and brood in memory over the books which most profoundly