alone the value of ten thousand dollars of the revenue was set aside yearly for its support and purposes;—­whereby one would imagine that for all things else they could but have had a nickel or so left.  This is culture with a vengeance.  There was, besides, wonderful skill in arts and crafts, intricate designing in jewelry-work;—­and all this is not to be called by another name than the relics of a high civilization.  But there was no political unity; or only a loose bond under the high kings at Tara, who had forever to be fighting to maintain their authority.  There was racial, but not national consciousness.

But where in Europe was there national consciousness?  We should remember that it only began to exist, or to reincarnate from times beyond the horizon of history, in the thirteenth century A.D.  There would be a deal less sneering at Ireland were only these facts known.  England was perhaps the first country in which it became effective:  the wars of the first and third Edwards called it into being there.  Joan lit the fires of it in France; she mainly;—­in the fourteen-twenties and thirties.  Spain had to wait for Ferdinand and Isabel; Sweden for Gustavus Vasa; Holland for William the Silent; Italy for Victor Emmanuel; Germany for Bismarck.  Wales was advancing towards it, in an imperfect sort of way, rather earlier than England; but the Edwardian conquest put the whole idea into abeyance for centuries.  So too Ireland:  she was half-conquered by the Normans, broken, racked, ruined and crucified, a century before the idea of Nationhood had come into existence, and while centrifugalism was still the one force in Europe.  It is thus quite beside the point to say that she was never a nation, even in the days of her native rule.  Of course she was not.  Nor was England, in those times; nor any other.  In every part of the continent the centrifugal forces were running riot; though in some there were strong fighting kings to hold things together.  This by way of hurling one more spear at the old cruel doctrine of race inferiorities and superiorities:  at Unbrotherliness and all its wicked works and ways.  I was the European pralaya; when your duty to your neighbor was everywhere and always to fight him, to get in the first blow; to kill him before he killed you, and thank God for his mericies.  So Ireland was not exceptional in that way.  Where she was exceptional, bless her sweet heart, lay, as we shall see, in the fact that while all the rest were sunk in ignorance and foulest barbarism, and mentall utterly barren,—­she alone had the grace to combine her Kilkenny Cattery with an exquisite and wonderful illumination of culture.  While she tore herself to pieces with one hand, with the other she was holding up the torch of learning,—­and a very real learning too, —­to benighted Europe; and then (bedad!) she found another hand again, to be holding the pen with it, and to produce a literature to make the white angels of God as green as her own holy hills with envy! That was Ireland!