d its eyes
to-day are, in scriptural phrase, "on the ends of the earth." Primary
education, secondary studies, as governed by the machinery controlled
through the Board of Intermediate Education, and university teaching as
directed and rewarded through the Royal University, have all in the last
resort been inspired by Englishmen who thought it very desirable that
Irish boys and girls should learn to read and write and cipher, and that
young men and young women should equip themselves for clerkships in the
civil service, but who never for one instant realised that the end of
education is divergence not conformity--to elicit, whether from the race
or from the individual, a full and characteristic development. In twenty
years perhaps a paper of interest may be written to show the positive
results of education upon Irish character. At present the most
noticeable facts are negative, and may be summed up by affirming a total
lack of correspondence between the system employed and the needs and
qualities of the Irish people.

1907.

THE IRISH GENTRY.

At the height on the struggle over the Home Rule Bill, there was
published a book interesting as the biography of a remarkable
individual, but no less interesting as depicting the crucial moment in
the history of an aristocracy. Colonel Moore wisely entitles the life of
his father simply _An Irish Gentleman_. Versatile, eloquent,
quick-tempered and lovable, excessive in generosity, excessive in
courage and self-confidence, with the racecourse for his ruling passion
and horsemanship for his supreme achievement, George Henry Moore was the
paragon of his class. He displayed in the highest degree those qualities
on which the Irish gentry prided themselves and which they most admired:
he shared the prestige and power of Irish landlords when prestige and
power were at their height; and he confronted the decisive hour when he,
and men like him, had to choose between the interest of their country
and the interest of their class. There he separated himself from his
fellows; he parted from all to whom he was bound by ties of immediate
advantage, of pleasure, of association, of affection, and he threw in
his lot with Ireland. He saw first the moral bankruptcy of his own
class, then their widespread financial ruin; and though he helped to
break their political power, and in so doing earned the general love of
his countrymen, yet the troubles which beset the landlord class did not