a pleasure to come across an American poet who is not
national, and who tries to give expression to the literature that he
loves rather than to the land in which he lives. The Muses care so
little for geography!

Blue-books are generally dull reading, but Blue-books on Ireland have
always been interesting. They form the record of one of the great
tragedies of modern Europe. In them England has written down her
indictment against herself and has given to the world the history of her
shame. If in the last century she tried to govern Ireland with an
insolence that was intensified by race hatred and religious prejudice,
she has sought to rule her in this century with a stupidity that is
aggravated by good intentions.

Like most penmen he [Froude] overrates the power of the sword. Where
England has had to struggle she has been wise. Where physical strength
has been on her side, as in Ireland, she has been made unwieldy by that
strength. Her own strong hands have blinded her. She has had force but
no direction.

There are some who will welcome with delight the idea of solving the
Irish question by doing away with the Irish people. There are others who
will remember that Ireland has extended her boundaries, and that we have
now to reckon with her not merely in the Old World but in the New.

Plastic simplicity of outline may render for us the visible aspect of
life; it is different when we come to deal with those secrets which
self-consciousness alone contains, and which self-consciousness itself
can but half reveal. Action takes place in the sunlight, but the soul
works in the dark. There is something curiously interesting in the
marked tendency of modern poetry to become obscure. Many critics,
writing with their eyes fixed on the masterpieces of past literature,
have ascribed this tendency to wilfulness and to affectation. Its origin
is rather to be found in the complexity of the new problems, and in the
fact that self-consciousness is not yet adequate to explain the contents
of the Ego. In Mr. Browning's poems, as in life itself, which has
suggested, or rather necessitated, the new method, thought seems to
proceed not on logical lines, but on lines of passion. The unity of the
individual is being expressed through its inconsistencies and its
contradictions. In a strange twilight man is seeking for himself, and
when he has found his own image, he cannot understand it. Objective
forms of art, such as sculp