have painted the same pictures as born Frenchmen, and it would not
have excited any great surprise as a marked divergence from French art.
The cosmopolitan spirit, whether for good or for evil, is hastily
obliterating all distinctions. What is distinctly national in these
countries is less valuable than the immense wealth of universal ideas;
and the writers who use this wealth appeal to no narrow circle: the
foremost writers, the Tolstois and Ibsens, are conscious of addressing
a European audience.

If nationality is to justify itself in the face of all this, it
must be because the country which preserves its individuality does
so with the profound conviction that its peculiar ideal is nobler
than that which the cosmopolitan spirit suggests--that this ideal
is so precious to it that its loss would be as the loss of the soul,
and that it could not be realized without an aloofness from, if
not an actual indifference to, the ideals which are spreading so
rapidly over Europe. Is it possible for any nationality to make
such a defense of its isolation? If not, let us read Goethe, Balzac,
Tolstoi, men so much greater than any we can show, try to absorb
their universal wisdom, and no longer confine ourselves to local
traditions. But nationality was never so strong in Ireland as at
the present time. It is beginning to be felt, less as a political
movement than as a spiritual force. It seems to be gathering itself
together, joining men who were hostile before, in a new intellectual
fellowship: and if all these could unite on fundamentals, it would
be possible in a generation to create a national Ideal in Ireland,
or rather to let that spirit incarnate fully which began among the
ancient peoples, which has haunted the hearts and whispered a dim
revelation of itself through the lips of the bards and peasant
story tellers.