its compassion; but the frenzy that would have silenced his master-work
was, like most violent things artificial, the defence of virtue by those
that have but little, which is the pomp and gallantry of journalism and
its right to govern the world.

As I stood there watching, knowing well that I saw the dissolution of a
school of patriotism that held sway over my youth, Synge came and stood
beside me, and said, 'A young doctor has just told me that he can hardly
keep himself from jumping on to a seat, and pointing out in that howling
mob those whom he is treating for venereal disease.'




II


Thomas Davis, whose life had the moral simplicity which can give to
actions the lasting influence that style alone can give to words, had
understood that a country which has no national institutions must show
its young men images for the affections, although they be but diagrams of
what it should be or may be. He and his school imagined the Soldier, the
Orator, the Patriot, the Poet, the Chieftain, and above all the Peasant;
and these, as celebrated in essay and songs and stories, possessed so
many virtues that no matter how England, who as Mitchell said 'had the
ear of the world,' might slander us, Ireland, even though she could not
come at the world's other ear, might go her way unabashed. But ideas and
images which have to be understood and loved by large numbers of people,
must appeal to no rich personal experience, no patience of study, no
delicacy of sense; and if at rare moments some 'Memory of the Dead' can