n many languages, yet in none, I think, more finely
shaped), it is easy to see how from age to age it may revive itself in
new forms, entering into other shapes, as Helen's figure adorns not her
own story only, but the praise of a thousand women. Let it be understood
that this legend is only one of a cycle, and that the song which I wrote
down was only the barest fraction of James Kelly's repertory. Indeed, he
was vexed that I should take it as a specimen, for he himself "had more
conceit in" the lays that tell of Finn and his companions, and I could
have filled a volume, and maybe several volumes, from his recitations.

These songs may die, the language may die, the Irish race may be
swallowed up in England and America. But it is my belief that the strong
intellectual life which made of Ireland a home of the arts before the
Normans came across channel may, like many another life in nature,
spring after centuries of torpor into vigour and fertility again. That
is the belief and hope of many of us; but nothing has rendered me so
confident in it as to find this work of a strong and fine art not laid
aside and neglected, but honoured and current to-day, and, though in a
poor man's cottage, living with as full a life as when it was chanted at
the feasts of princes.

IRISH EDUCATION AND IRISH CHARACTER.

Education in Ireland has been organised by the State in accordance with
English ideas. Had English influence been able to bring about any large
measure of conformity between the two countries, there would have been
little or no need for a separate paper on moral training in Irish
schools. But what conformity there is, is purely superficial; and
although free development has been hindered, and Irish institutions for
teaching are less characteristic than they would have been if entirely
left to themselves, still the moral influences which emerge wherever
pupils and teachers are brought together reveal themselves in Ireland,
and reveal themselves as Irish. The object of this paper, then, is to
illustrate, so far as possible, the nature and the symptoms of these
distinctive influences.

First of all, it may be said broadly that no ordinary person in Ireland
contemplates the possibility of teaching morality apart from religion;
and by religion is meant emphatically this or that particular creed.
Almost every school maintained by the State is managed locally by a
clergyman, who appoints the teacher, and public feeling i