oems and Ballads of Young Ireland_,
it strikes one key with their political quality. One exquisite ballad of
"The Stolen Child," by W. B. Yeats, might have been sung in the
moonlight on a sylvan lake by the spirit of Heinrich Heine.

I spent an hour or two this morning most agreeably in the libraries of
the Law Courts and of Trinity College: the latter one of the stateliest
most academic "halls of peace" I have ever seen; and this afternoon I
called upon Dr. Sigerson, a most patriotic Irishman, of obviously Danish
blood, who has his own ideas as to Clontarf and Brian Boru; and who gave
me very kindly a copy of his valuable report on that Irish Crisis of
1879-80, out of which Michael Davitt so skilfully developed the agrarian
movement whereof "Parnellism" down to this time has been the not very
well adjusted instrument. The report was drawn up after a thorough
inspection by Dr. Sigerson and his associate, Dr. Kenny, visiting
physicians to the North Dublin Union, of some of the most distressed
districts of Mayo, Sligo, and Galway; and a more interesting,
intelligent, and impressive picture of the worst phases of the social
conditions of Ireland ten years ago is not to be found. I have just been
reading it over carefully in conjunction with my memoranda made from the
Emigration and Seed Potato Fund Reports, which Mr. Tuke gave me some
time ago, and it strongly reinforces the evidence imbedded in those
reports, which goes to show that agitation for political objects in
Ireland has perhaps done as much as all other causes put together to
depress the condition of the poor in Ireland, by driving and keeping
capital out of the country. The worst districts visited in 1879 by Dr.
Sigerson and Dr. Kenny do not appear to have been so completely cut off
from civilisation as was the region about Gweedore before the purchase
of his property there by Lord George Hill, and the remedies suggested by
Dr. Sigerson for the suffering in these districts are all in the
direction of the remedies applied by Lord George Hill to the condition
in which he found Gweedore. After giving full value to the stock
explanations of Irish distress in the congested districts, such as
excessive rents, penal laws, born of religious or "racial" animosity,
and a defective system of land tenure, it seems to be clear that the
main difficulties have arisen from the isolation of these districts, and
from the lack of varied industries. Political agitation has checked a