r whether this mode of arrest
in ancient Irish art may not be indicative of points of character
which even yet, in some measure, arrest your national power? I have
seen much of Irish character, and have watched it closely, for I have
also much loved it. And I think the form of failure to which it is
most liable is this,--that being generous-hearted, and wholly
intending always to do right, it does not attend to the external laws
of right, but thinks it must necessarily do right because it means to
do so, and therefore does wrong without finding it out; and then, when
the consequences of its wrong come upon it, or upon others connected
with it, it cannot conceive that the wrong is in any wise of its
causing or of its doing, but flies into wrath, and a strange agony of
desire for justice, as feeling itself wholly innocent, which leads it
farther astray, until there is nothing that it is not capable of doing
with a good conscience.

But mind, I do not mean to say that, in past or present relations
between Ireland and England, you have been wrong, and we right. Far
from that, I believe that in all great questions of principle, and in
all details of administration of law, you have been usually right, and
we wrong; sometimes in misunderstanding you, sometimes in resolute
iniquity to you. Nevertheless, in all disputes between states, though
the strongest is nearly always mainly in the wrong, the weaker is
often so in a minor degree; and I think we sometimes admit the
possibility of our being in error, and you never do.[237]

And now, returning to the broader question, what these arts and
labours of life have to teach us of its mystery, this is the first of
their lessons--that the more beautiful the art, the more it is
essentially the work of people who _feel themselves wrong_;--who are
striving for the fulfilment of a law, and the grasp of a loveliness,
which they have not yet attained, which they feel even farther and
farther from attaining the more they strive for it. And yet, in still
deeper sense, it is the work of people who know also that they are
right. The very sense of inevitable error from their purpose marks the
perfectness of that purpose, and the continued sense of failure arises
from the continued opening of the eyes more clearly to all the
sacredest laws of truth.

This is one lesson. The second is a very plain, and greatly precious
one: namely,--that whenever the arts and labours of life are fulfilled
in th