THE IRISH NATIONAL IDEA

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 10

THE IRISH NATIONAL IDEA

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the Quirinal. The Irish race of to-day, on the contrary, take up their mission just where English aggression cut it short seven centuries ago, and leap to their feet as buoyantly as though the whole hideous tragedy of the intervening ages were but the nightmare of an uneasy sleeper. The same sanguine blood bounds in their veins; the same hopes here and hereafter inspire them; the rosy freshness that suffused the morning sky of the race still kisses the hill-tops of the future as tranquilly as though its radiance had never been buried in the lightnings and the blood-red rain of ghastly centuries. There is here no taint of intellectual or physical degeneracy. The same faith that once inhabited the ruined shrines is rebuilding them. The same passion for valour, beauty, spirituality, learning, hospitality, and all that is adventurous abroad and affectionate at home, is still the badge and cognisance of the Celtic race. They are the same passionate, stormy-souled, kindly-hearted, fighting, worshipping, colonising and lightning-witted race of Ireland's golden prime, with this substantial difference, that instead of being a million of people in scattered pastoral clans, buried in this island, they are now twenty millions, doing the work and the soldiering and the statesmanship and the sacred shepherding of three continents; and, whether in Australian mines or in Canadian woods, bound to this small island by stronger links than if Ireland were a despot that could stretch out a world-wide sceptre to enforce their allegiance. The Celtic race to-day is, in fact, as conspicuous a factor in human society as the Teutonic. It is little less in numbers; it is as distinct in type; it has as rich a range of capacities, sympathies, and ideals of its own; its fine susceptibilities and aerial genius are capable of exerting … continue reading »

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