towards the Irish race, as if nothing had happened between him and them. The voices, so full of blessings for their Maker and their own kindred, adopt a very different strain and cadence when the name of England is mentioned; and, even when he is most warmly and generously received by those whom he falls in with, he will be repudiated by those who are at a distance. Natural amiableness, religious principle, education, reading, knowledge of the world, and the charities of civilization, repress or eradicate these bitter feelings in the class in which he finds his friends; but, as to the population, one sentiment of hatred against the oppressor, manet altâ mente repostum. The wrongs which England has inflicted are faithfully remembered; her services are viewed with incredulity or resentment; her name and fellowship are abominated; the news of her prosperity heard with disgust; the anticipation of her possible reverses nursed and cherished as the best of consolations. The success of France and Russia over her armies, of Yankee or Hindoo, is fervently desired as the first instalment of a debt accumulated through seven centuries; and that, even though those armies are in so large a proportion recruited from the Irish soil. If he ventures at least to ask for prayers for England, he receives one answer-a prayer that she may receive her due. It is as if the air rang with the old Jewish words, "O daughter of Babylon, blessed shall he be who shall repay thee as thou has paid to us!"

(II.)

IT is remarkable that the Holy See, to whose initiative the union of the two countries is historically traceable, is in no respect made chargeable by the Irish people with the evils which have resulted to them from it. And the fact itself is remarkable that the Holy See really should be responsible for that initiative. There are other nations in the world illmatched besides the English and Irish. There are other instances of the rule of strangers, and of the compulsory submission of the governed; but the Pope cannot be called to account for such political arrangements. The Pope did not give Greece to the Sublime Porte, or Warsaw to Russia, or Venice to Austria, or Belgium to Holland, or Norway to Sweden, or the cities of the Rhine to Prussia, the Septinsular Republic to England; but, even had he done so, still in some of these instances, he would have but united together members of one race-German to German, Fleming to Fleming, Slave to Slave. But it is certainly most remarkable that a power so authoritative, even when not divine, so sagacious, even when not supernatural; whose acts are so literally the personal acts of the Pontiff who represents it for the time being, yet of such solemn force and such tremendous permanence; which, by appealing to its present prerogatives, involves itself in its past decisions, which "openeth, and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth ;"-it does we say require some explanation1

1 [The explanation Dr. Newman offers is, that the "object" of the Holy See in annexing Ireland to the English crown in the twelfth century was "a religious one," while "the circumstantial evils in which it had no real part were temporal." The Irish were "lapsing back to bar

how an oracle so high and irrefragable should have given its religious sanction to a union apparently so unblessed, and which at the end of seven centuries is as devoid of moral basis or of effective accomplishment, as it was at the commencement. What time German and Italian, Turk and Greek, shall be contented with each other; when "the lion and the sheep shall abide together," and "the calf and the bear shall feed,"-then, it will be argued, will there be a good understanding between two nations so contradictory the one of the other-the one an old immemorial race, the other the composite of a hundred stocks; the one possessed of an antique civilization, the other civilized by Christianity; the one glorying in its schools and its philosophy, the other in its works and institutions; the one subtle, acute, speculative, the other wise, patient, energetic; the one admiring and requiring the strong arm of despotic rule, the other spontaneously developing itself in methods of self-government and of individual competition. And yet, not once or twice only has the Holy See recognized in Ireland a territory of the English Crown. Adrian IV., indeed, the first Pope who countenanced the invasion of Henry II., was an Englishman; but not on his bull did Henry rely for the justification of his proceedings. He did not publish it in Ireland till he had received a confirmatory brief from Alexander III. Nor was Alexander the

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barism,” and “it was surely incumbent on the power which had converted them to interfere." The remedy the Pope applied was to send against them the Normans-" the soldiers of a young and ambitious power, first to reform, then secondly to unite them together." matter of fact, the policy which he pursued towards Ireland, is precisely that which he had adopted towards England a century earlier, except that its concomitants in the case of England were far more penal, in severity at least if not in duration." See the paper (unfortunately unfinished) from which the above extract is taken, “The Northmen and Normans in England and Ireland."]

M

only Pope who distinctly recognized it; John XXII., a hundred and sixty years afterwards, refers to it in his brief addressed to Edward II.'

Such have been the dealings of the Holy See in times past with Ireland; yet it has not thereby roused against itself any resentful feelings in the minds of its natives. Doubtless, their good sense understands well that, whatever be decided about the expedience of the act of annexation itself, its serious evils did not begin until the English monarchy was false to the Pope as well as to Ireland. Up to that date the settlers in the conquered soil became so attached and united to it and its people, that, according to the proverb, they were Hibernis hiberniores. It is Protestantism which has been the tyrannical oppressor of the Irish; and we suppose that Protestantism neither asked nor needed letters apostolic or consecrated banner to encourage it in the war it waged against Irish Catholicism. Neither Cromwell nor William of Nassau waited for the Pope's leave or sought his blessing in his military operations against Ireland, any more than Queen Victoria appeals to the Pope's grant for her title of Defender of the Faith, though from the Pope it was originally derived. The Tudor, not the Plantagenet, introduced the iron age of Ireland. ("Hist. Sketches," vol. III. p. 257.)

THE NORTHMAN CHARACTER.

THOUGH of the same stock as the Saxons, the Northmen were gifted with a more heroic cast of soul. Perhaps it was the peculiar scenery and climate of their native

1 Lanigan, vol. IV. pp. 165-6.

homes which suggested to them such lofty aspirations, and such enthusiastic love of dangers and hardship. The stillness of the desert may fill the fierce Arab with a rapturous enjoyment,' and the interminable forests of Britain or Germany might breathe profound mystery; but the icy mountains and the hoarse resounding waves of the North nurtured warriors of a princely stature, both in mind and body, befitting the future occupants of European thrones. Cradled in the surge and storm, they were spared the temptation of indolence and luxury; they neither worshipped the vivifying powers of nature with the Greek, nor with the Sabean did they kiss the hand to the bright stars of heaven; but while they gave a personal presence and volition to the fearful or the beautiful spirits which haunted the mountains, or lay in ambush in the mist, they understood by daily experience that good could not be had by the mere wishing, and they made it a first article in their creed that their reward was future, and that their present must be toil.

The light and gloom, the nobleness, the sternness, and the fancifulness of the Northman character, are admirably portrayed in the romantic tales of Fouqué. At one time he brings before us the honour-loving Froda, the friend of the Skalds, who had been taught in the book of a learned Icelander how the Lady Aslauga, a hundred years and more before, had, in her golden veil of flowing hair, won the love of King Ragnar Lodbrog, and who, smit with devotion to her, saw from time to time the sudden apparition of his bright queen in the cloudy autumn sky, animating him to great and warlike deeds. At another

1" A young French renegade confessed to Chateaubriand that he never found himself alone, galloping in the desert, without a sensation approaching to rapture, which was indescribable." (Notes to Bride of Abydos.")

"The