variety every
evening. Very soon he realised that other advantages would accrue,
beyond the addition of forty thousand children to the birth-rate, and
one advantage that seemed to him to exceed the original advantage would
be the nationalisation of religion, the formation of an Irish
Catholicism suited to the ideas and needs of the Irish people.

In the beginning of the century the Irish lost their language, in the
middle of the century the characteristic aspects of their religion. He
remembered that it was Cardinal Cuilen who had denationalised religion
in Ireland. But everyone recognised his mistake, and how could a church
be nationalised better than by the rescission of the decree? Wives and
the begetting of children would attach the priests to the soil of
Ireland. It could not be said that anyone loved his country who did not
contribute to its maintenance. He remembered that the priests leave
Ireland on foreign missions, and he said: "Every Catholic who leaves
Ireland helps to bring about the very thing that Ireland has been
struggling against for centuries--Protestantism."

This idea talked to him, and, one evening, it said, "Religion, like
everything else, must be national," and it led him to contrast
cosmopolitanism with parochialism. "Religion, like art, came out of
parishes," he said. Some great force was behind him. He must write! He
must write... .

He dropped the ink over the table and over the paper, he jotted down
his ideas in the first words that came to him until midnight; he could
see his letter in all its different parts, and when he slept it floated
through his sleep.

"I must have a clear copy of it before I begin the Latin translation."

He had written the English text thinking of the Latin that would come
after, and very conscious of the fact that he had written no Latin
since he had left Maynooth, and that a bad translation would discredit
his ideas in the eyes of the Pope's secretary, who was doubtless a
great Latin scholar. "The Irish priests have always been good
Latinists," he murmured as he hunted through the dictionary.

The table was littered with books, for he had found it necessary to
create a Latin atmosphere before beginning his translation. He worked
principally at night, and one morning about three he finished his
translation, and getting up from his chair he walked to the whitening
window. His eyes pained him, and he decided he would postpone reading
over what he had written t