Happily, the gloom is at length lighted up by returning day. The contest has lost its ferocity, and we are no longer surrounded by the deadly shade which obscured the sky a hundred years ago. Then it was hard to believe that the nation could ever rise; her final success seemed almost an impossibility. We now see that those who then despaired sinned against Providence, which waited for its own time to arrive and vindicate its ways. And it is chiefly on account of the bright hope which begins to dawn that our subject should possess for all a lively interest, and fill the Catholic heart with glowing sympathy and ardent thankfulness to God. CONTENTS I The Celtic Race II The World Under The Lead Of European Races.--Mission Of The Irish Race In The Movement III The Irish Better Prepared To Receive Christianity Than Other Nations IV How the Irish received Christianity V The Christian Irish and the Pagan Danes VI The Irish Free-Clans and Anglo-Norman Feudalism VII Ireland separated from Europe.--A Triple Episode VIII The Irish and the Tudors.--Henry VIII. IX The Irish and the Tudors.--Elizabeth.--The Undaunted Nobility.--The Suffering Church X England prepared for the Reception of Protestantism--Ireland not XI The Irish and the Stuarts.--Loyalty and Confiscation XII A Century of Gloom.--The Penal Laws XIII Resurrection.--Delusive Hopes XIV Resurrection.--Emigration XV The "Exodus" and its Effects XVI Moral Force all-sufficient for the Resurrection of Ireland CHAPTER I The Celtic Race. Nations which preserve, as it were, a perpetual youth, should be studied from their origin. Never having totally changed, some of their present features may be recognized at the very cradle of their existence, and the strangeness of the fact sets out in bolder relief their actual peculiarities. Hence we consider it to our purpose to examine the Celtic race first, as we may know it from ancient records: What it was; what it did; what were its distinctive features; what its manners and chief characteristics. A strong light will thus be thrown even on the Irish of our own days. Our words must necessarily be few on so extensive a subject; but, few as they are, they will not be unimportant in our investigations. In all the works of God, side by side with the general order resulting from seemingly symmetric laws, an astonishing variety of details everywhere shows itself, producing on the mind of man the idea of infinity, as effectually as the wonderful aspect of a seemingly boundless universe. This variety is visible, first in the heavenly bodies, as they are called; star differing from star, planet from planet; even the most minute asteroids never showing themselves to us two alike, but always offering differences in size, of form, of composition.