te Mr. George Bryers, a sterling Irishman, called my
attention to the opinion of the professional reader to the firm that it
would be advisable to call the story "Olaf the Dane; or the Curse of
Columbkille." I accepted the suggestion, and accordingly the book has
been published with that title.

I have seen with much interest the movement inaugurated by the Irish
Theatre Company in Dublin, and have been present at some of their
performances in London. In spite of some false starts and a tendency to
imitate certain undesirable foreign influences, the movement should
certainly help to foster the Irish drama.

CHAPTER XXIV.

"HOW IS OLD IRELAND AND HOW DOES SHE STAND?"

Summing up these pages, how shall I answer the question asked by Napper
Tandy in "The Wearin' of the Green" over a hundred years ago--"How is
old Ireland, and how does she stand?"

Let us see what changes, for the better or for the worse, there have
been during the period--nearly seventy years--covered by these
recollections.

Catholic Emancipation had, five years before I was born, allowed our
people to raise their voices, and give their votes through their
representatives in an alien Parliament.

I am not one to say that no benefit for Ireland has arisen through
legislation at Westminster, but the system that allowed our people to
perish of starvation has always been, to my mind, the one great
justification for our struggle for self-government by every practicable
method. It has been a struggle for sheer existence.

If Ireland had had the making of her own laws when the potato crop
failed, not a single human being would have perished from starvation.
That I am justified in introducing the terrible Irish Famine and its
consequences into these recollections as part of my own experiences I
think I have shown in my description of its effects upon our people
when passing through Liverpool as emigrants or as settlers in England.

I have always endeavoured to look upon the most hopeful aspects of the
Irish question. But with the appalling tragedy of the Famine half way in
the last century, with half our people gone and the population still
diminishing, one is bound to admit that the nineteenth century was one
of the most disastrous in Irish history.

Is it surprising that, during my time, driven desperate at the sight of
a perishing people in one of the most fruitful lands on earth, we should
have made two attempts at rebellion?

In 1848 th