century, leaving aside a few things in outward
circumstance, there is little to distinguish the work of the
best English writers or artists from that of their Continental
contemporaries. Milliais, Leighton, Rossetti, Turner--how different from
each other, and yet they might have painted the same pictures as born
Frenchmen, and it would not have excited any great surprise as a marked
divergence from French art. The cosmopolitan spirit, whether for good or
for evil, is hastily obliterating all distinctions. What is distinctly
national in these countries is less valuable than the immense wealth of
universal ideas; and the writers who use this wealth appeal to no narrow
circle: the foremost writers, the Tolstois and Ibsens, are conscious of
addressing a European audience.

If nationality is to justify itself in the face of all this, it must be
because the country which preserves its individuality does so with the
profound conviction that its peculiar ideal is nobler than that which
the cosmopolitan spirit suggests--that this ideal is so precious to it
that its loss would be as the loss of the soul, and that it could not
be realized without an aloofness from, if not an actual indifference to,
the ideals which are spreading so rapidly over Europe. Is it possible
for any nationality to make such a defense of its isolation? If not,
let us read Goethe, Balzac, Tolstoi, men so much greater than any we
can show, try to absorb their universal wisdom, and no longer confine
ourselves to local traditions. But nationality was never so strong in
Ireland as at the present time. It is beginning to be felt, less as a
political movement than as a spiritual force. It seems to be gathering
itself together, joining men who were hostile before, in a new
intellectual fellowship: and if all these could unite on fundamentals,
it would be possible in a generation to create a national Ideal in
Ireland, or rather to let that spirit incarnate fully which began among
the ancient peoples, which has haunted the hearts and whispered a dim
revelation of itself through the lips of the bards and peasant story
tellers.

Every Irishman forms some vague ideal of his country, born from his
reading of history, or from contemporary politics, or from imaginative
intuition; and this Ireland in the mind it is, not the actual Ireland,
which kindles his enthusiasm. For this he works and makes sacrifices;
but because it has never had any philosophical definition or a s