eyes. That the Irish kings and heroes should succeed one another,
surrounded by a blaze of bardic light, in which both themselves and
all those who were contemporaneous with them are seen clearly and
distinctly, was natural in a country where in each little realm or
sub-kingdom the ard-ollav was equal in dignity to the king, which
is proved by the equivalence of their cries. The dawn of English
history is in the seventh century--a late dawn, dark and sombre,
without a ray of cheerful sunshine; that of Ireland dates reliably
from a point before the commencement of the Christian era luminous
with that light which never was on sea or land--thronged with
heroic forms of men and women--terrible with the presence of the
supernatural and its over-arching power.

Educated Irishmen are ignorant of, and indifferent to, their
history; yet from the hold of that history they cannot shake
themselves free. It still haunts the imagination, like Mordecai at
Haman's gate, a cause of continual annoyance and vexation. An
Irishman can no more release himself from his history than he can
absolve himself from social and domestic duties. He may outrage it,
but he cannot placidly ignore. Hence the uneasy, impatient feeling
with which the subject is generally regarded.

I think that I do not exaggerate when I say that the majority of
educated Irishmen would feel grateful to the man who informed them
that the history of their country was valueless and unworthy of
study, that the pre-Christian history was a myth, the post-Christian
mere annals, the mediaeval a scuffling of kites and crows, and the
modern alone deserving of some slight consideration. That writer
will be in Ireland most praised who sets latest the commencement
of our history. Without study he will be pronounced sober and