f forced in turn to yield its speech,
manners, and independence to the victorious eagles of Rome. We alone of
the nations of Western Europe escaped the claws of those birds of prey; we
alone developed ourselves naturally upon our own lines outside of and free
from all Roman influence; we alone were thus able to produce an early art
and literature, _our_ antiquities can best throw light upon the
pre-Romanised inhabitants of half Europe, and--we are our father's sons.

There is really no exaggeration in all this, although Irishmen are
sometimes prone to overstating as well as to forgetting. Westwood himself
declares that, were it not for Irishmen, these islands would possess no
primitive works of art worth the mentioning; Jubainville asserts that
early Irish literature is that which best throws light upon the manners
and customs of his own ancestors the Gauls; and Zimmer, who has done so
much for Celtic philology, has declared that only a spurious criticism can
make an attempt to doubt about the historical character of the chief
persons of our two epic cycles, that of Cuchullain and of Finn. It is
useless elaborating this point; and Dr. Sigerson has already shown in his
opening lecture the debt of gratitude which in many respects Europe owes
to ancient Ireland. The dim consciousness of this is one of those things
which are at the back of Irish national sentiment, and our business,
whether we be Unionists or Nationalists, should be to make this dim
consciousness an active and potent feeling, and thus increase our sense of
self-respect and of honour.

What we must endeavour to never forget is this, that the Ireland of to-day
is the descendant of the Ireland of the seventh century, then the school
of Europe and the torch of learning. It is true that Northmen made some
minor settlements in it in the ninth and tenth centuries, it is true that
the Normans made extensive settlements during the succeeding centuries,
but none of those broke the continuity of the social life of the island.
Dane and Norman drawn to the kindly Irish breast issued forth in a
generation or two fully Irishised, and more Hibernian than the Hibernians
themselves, and even after the Cromwellian plantation the children of
numbers of the English soldiers who settled in the south and midlands,
were, after forty years' residence, and after marrying Irish wives,
turned into good Irishmen, and unable to speak a word of English, while
several Gaelic poets of the