being an art which can only be learned by long practice. There are inexperienced races just as there are inexperienced individuals. One side of the Irish character has a strong resemblance to the French (and the Irish have always had a warm sympathy for the French), another reminds us of the Polish character, and there is a third which is almost Oriental. In a poem entitled "The Parallel" (one of the _Irish Melodies_), which Moore composed in answer to an anti-Irish pamphlet written to prove that the Irish were originally Jews, he compares the fate of the two nations:-- "Like thee doth our nation lie conquer'd and broken, And fall'n from her head is the once royal crown; In her streets, in her halls, desolation hath spoken, And 'while it is day yet, her sun hath gone down.'" And there undoubtedly is an Oriental quality in the race. Byron, writing of Moore, says that the wildness, tenderness, and originality of the Irish--the magnificent and fiery spirit of the men, the beauty and feeling of the women, are the best proofs of the Oriental descent which they claim. A race with such a character necessarily fell an easy prey to a determined, cruel English despotism. [Illustration: THOMAS MOORE] A hasty glance at the history of Ireland during Thomas Moore's youth will help us to understand how this man with the gentle nature and the sweet lyric gift was the first to rouse English poetry from its engrossed preoccupation with nature, to impress it into the service of liberty, and to give the start to political poetry.