In the history of Ireland nothing has been completed. That which is unknown disturbs, and may overturn the vulgar conclusions from the fragments known. We are for ever walking through a country unmapped. To be sure it is full of sign-posts put up at hazard--“To English Civilisation.” Where every road is marked to lead to the same inn, why should travellers discuss, debate, and ask questions? What reason can there be to loiter by the way? The English fingerpost is always there. Some day perhaps the Irish race in this island will no longer seem to lie beyond the need, and below the honour, of the historical method. Ireland will have a history like other nations. It is possible to conceive that out of its peoples, English or Irish, there may arise some great thinker or poet who will set before us the two civilizations that have met here; in other words, the efforts by which two highly endowed races endeavoured to solve the problem that has perplexed every people that has ever yet appeared in this world--how to shape a community where men may live in safety, freedom, and happiness. The Celts had waged the fight for their civilization to the walls of Rome itself. They had left the valleys of the Danube and the Rhine and the plains of Gaul red with their blood. Now, on the outermost border of the world their last conflict awaited them. Within the mountain rim of Ireland, with silent Nature to keep the lists, two peoples met to fight out the last issues on that fatal soil. Here, imprisoned by the Ocean, the antagonists stood for centuries to their battle: every passion exalted, the splendours of courage, the majesty of despair, all skill of surprises, all glory of chivalry, triumph and sorrow, Christian pieties, and the surging up amid the upheaval of human nature of the mysterious superstitions of elemental man, and of his ferocities. What affections of race lay behind such a struggle? What was its meaning? What of beauty, of happiness, or of virtue did each civilization in fact offer to man? What was gained, what was lost? Here would have been a history of fire and flame, a new outlook on the fate of commonwealths, a theme worthy of an English or an Irish patriot.