404 ' THE lUUTISII ISLES. 



schools with diligence. I'ntil recently there existed in Ireland, us in Greece, 

 open-air or " hedge schools," in which the teacher, seated under a hedge, was 

 surrounded by his studious pupils. This custom dated from a time anterior 

 to 1830, up to which year all primary education, excepting that vouchsafed, 

 through the agency of the Established Church, was interdicted.* The Irish are 

 vehement in their language, ardent in attack, and smart in repartee. They 

 excel in flights of fancy, and readily find a word to sum up a situation. 

 They are, in fact, born orators, and a greater number of truly eloquent speakers 

 have arisen amongst them than in England. Their writers possess no less verve 

 than their talkers, and the Irish newspapers are written with a persuasiveness 

 which we look for in vain in the journals published on the other side of St. George's 

 Channel. Bravery is a quality common to all Irishmen ; they have supplied the 

 armies of England with some of its most famous leaders, and from them its ranks 

 are laro-elv recruited. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries thousands of 

 Irishmen died lighting in French regiments, for they turned lovingly to France 

 as to a country which professed the same religion, and shared with them the hatred 

 of Eno-land. The narrow bavs on the south-western coasts were at that time the 

 trvsting-places where young Irishmen desirous of entering the service of France 

 found vessels to carry them over the sea. 



For two hundred years the Irish have been a conquered people, and are so 

 still. English rule, against which they have struggled so long, still weighs 

 upon them, and Irish patriots have not ceased to claim "Home Hule" in one 

 shape or another. The Isle of Erin is the only country in Europe which wholly 

 escaped Roman conquests, and never suffered from the invasion of barbarians. 

 The character of its civilisation was consequently more spontaneous, and although 

 ardent patriots exaggerate its importance, it certainly did exercise an influence 

 upon the development of Great Britain ; and Ireland, far from having invari- 

 ably been England's pupil, acted occasionally as her neighbour's instructress. 

 The conquest of Ireland by the English was virtually an irruption of barbarians, 

 which arrested the free flight of Irish genius ; and in losing their independ- 

 ence the inhabitants of Erin lost, at the same time, the prerogatives which that 

 independence had conferred upon them. From that day Ireland ceased to plaj'- 

 a part in European history. All civilisation vanished during the atrocious 

 wars which devastated the soil of Ireland and destroyed the population of whole 

 districts. Sir John Norris, one of the English leaders during the reign of 

 Queen Elizabeth, killed all the inhabitants of Rathlin Island, and the refugees 

 who had fled to it for shelter, sparing neither women nor children, but driving 

 all into the caverns, and killing them, as he states in his ofiicial reports, "as 

 if they had been seals or otters." t But the Irish avenged themselves in 

 1641, when they massacred at least 20,000 Englishmen and Scotchmen. For 

 this, however, Cromwell inflicted a terrible punishment upon them. AYe all 

 know how he treated Drogheda, with Avhat tranquillity of mind he caused fire to 



• Sullivan, '"Xew Ireland." 



t Fronde, " The English in Ireland." 



