332 A Walk from 



Welsh mountains ; but he knows, without geography, 

 who and what Queen. Victoria is among the earth's 

 sovereigns, and the length and breadth of her sceptre's 

 reach and rule around the world. 



There was a Border-land between Britain and 

 Ireland, blackened and scarred with more burning 

 antagonisms than those that once divided the larger 

 island. The record of several consecutive centuries 

 is graven deep in it by the brand and bayonet, and 

 by the more incisive teeth-marks of hate. The slum- 

 bering antipathies of race and religion even now crop 

 out here and there over the unfused boundary in his- 

 sing tongues of flame. The Briton and the Celt are 

 still struggling for the precedence in the Irishman's 

 breast ; but it is not a war of extermination. His 

 ardent nature is given to martial memories, and all 

 the battles he boasts of are British battles, in which 

 he or his father played the hero number one. The 

 history of independent Ireland is poor and thin ; still 

 he holds it back in his heart, and hesitates to link it 

 with the great annals of the " Saxon " realm, and 

 thus make of both one grand and glorious record, 

 present and future. He cannot yet make up his 

 mind to say We with all the other English-speaking 

 millions of the empire, as the Scotsman and Welsh- 

 man have learned and loved to say it. He cannot 



