rtions and mental tension of
the last twelve months.

The whole of his political activity was comprised within a period of
sixteen years, during ten of which he led the Irish Nationalist party,
exercising an authority more absolute than any Irish leader had
exercised before.

It has often been observed that he was not Irish, and that he led the
Irish people with success just because he did not share their
characteristic weaknesses. But it is equally true that he was not
English. One always felt the difference between his temperament and
that of the normal Englishman. The same remark applies to some other
famous Irish leaders. Wolfe Tone, for instance, and Fitzgibbon
(afterwards Lord Clare) were unlike the usual type of Irishman--that
is, the Irishman in whom the Celtic element predominates; but they
were also unlike Englishmen. The Anglo-Irish Protestants, a strong
race who have produced a number of remarkable men in excess of the
proportion they bear to the whole population of the United Kingdom,
fall into two classes--the men of North-Eastern Ulster, in whom there
is so large an infusion of Scottish blood that they may almost be
called "Scotchmen with a difference," and the men of Leinster and
Munster, who are true Anglo-Celts. It was to this latter class that
Parnell belonged. They are a group by themselves, in whom some of the
fire and impulsiveness of the Celt has been blended with some of the
firmness, the tenacity, and the close hold upon facts which belong to
the Englishman. Mr. Parnell, however, though he might be reckoned to
the Anglo-Irish type, was not a normal specimen of it. He was a man
whom you could not refer to any category, peculiar both in his
intellect and in his character generally.

His intellect was eminently practical. He did not love speculation or
the pursuit of abstract truth, nor had he a taste for literature,
still less a delight in learning for its own sake. Even of the annals
of Ireland his knowledge was most slender. He had no grasp of
constitutional questions, and was not able to give any help in the
construction of a Home Rule scheme in 1886. His general reading had
been scanty, and his speeches show no acquaintance either with
history, beyond the commonest facts, or with any other subject
connected with politics. Very rarely did they contain a maxim or
reflection of general applicability, apart from the particular topic
he was discussing. Nor did he ever attempt to give to them th