The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-11-09 00:00:00

MR. FROUDE'S NEW BOOK.

Under the title of "The English in Ireland in the
Eighteenth Century," Messrs. Lougmans have just
issued the first of two volumes which are to contain
Mr. Eroude's great cede d'accumtiort againat the Irish
people, and vindication of the English dealings towards
them, poet and present.
Dwelling on the characteristics of the Irish which—
as exemplified in the conversion of the original Nor-
man invaders into Celtic Barons—give to the Irish
Celts "on their own soil a power greater than any
other known family of mankind of assimilating those
who venture among them to their own image," Mr.
Fronde breaks into an eloquent and flattering while
yet severe appreciation of the Irish character :
Light-hearted, humorous, and imaginative, susceptible
through the entire range of feeling, from the profoundest
Pathos to the most playful jest, if they possess some real
virtues they possess the counterfeits of a hundred more
Passionate in everything—passionate in their patriotism,
passionate in their religion, passionately courageous, pas-
sionately loyal and affectionate, they are without the manli-
ness which will give strength and solidity to the sentimental
part of their dispositions while the surface and show is so
seductive and so winnis g that only experience of its instability
cal) resist the charm The incompleteness of character is con-
spicuous in all that they dosed have done—in their history,
In their practical habits, in their arts, and in their literature.
Their cyrical mambo. are exquisite, their epic poetry is ridicu-
lous bombast. In the lives of their saints there is a wild,
If fantastic, splendour ; but they have 110 secular history,
for, as a nation, they have done nothing which posterity
will not be anxious to forget; and if they have never
produced a tolerable drama, it is because imagination
cannot outstrip reality. In the annals of ten centuries
there is not a character, male or female, to be found
belotging to them with sufficient hardness of texture
to be carved into dramatic outline. Their temperaments
are singularly impressiona'ole, yet the impression is in-
capable of taking shape. They have little architecture
of their own, and the forms introduced from England
have been robbed of their grace. Their houses, from
cabin to castle, are the most hideous in the world. No
lines of beauty soften anywhere the forbidding harshness of
their provincial towns ; no climbing rose or creeper dresses the
naked walls of farmhouse or cottage. The suu never shone on
A Sniveller country as nature made it. They have oared
to the stump, till it shivers In danip and desolation,
The perceptions of taste which belong to the higher orders of
understanding are as completely absent as truthfulness of
spirit is absent, en oleauliuess of pers.o and habit. Tilt
Insti are the spendthrift sister of the Arian race. Yet thern
is, notwithstanding, a fascination about them in their old
land and in the sad and strange associations of their singular
destiny. They have a power of attraction which no one
who has felt it can withstand. Brave to rashness, yet so in-
firm of purpose, that unless they are led by ,thers their
bravery is useless to them; patriots, yet with a his-
tory which they must trick with falsehood to render it
tolerable even to themselves ; imaginative and poetical,
yet unable to boast of one single national work of art ;
attached ardently to their country, yet so cultivating it
that they are the byeword of Europe ; they appeal to sym-
pathy in their very weakness; and they posses and have
always possessed some qualities and moral worth of which
it is impossible to over-estimate, and which are rare in the
shiest races of mankind. Amidst their weaknesses, their
confident °outings aud imperfect performances, the Irish
have shown themselves at all times, and in all places, capable
of the most loyal devotion to any one who will lead and
command them. They have not been specially attached to
chiefs of their own race. Wherever and in whomsoever they
havestound courage and capacity, they have been ready with
heart and hand to give their services; and whether at home
In sacrificing their lives for their chiefs, or as soldiers in the
French or Euglish armies, or as we now know then in the form
of the modem police, there 18 00 duty, however dangerous and
difficult, from which they have been found to flinch, no
temptation however cruel which tempts them into unfaith-
fulness. Loyalty of this kind, though called contemptuouily
a vlttue of barbarism, is a virtue which, if civilisation
attempts to dispense with it, may cause In its absence the
ruin or civilisation. Mall men the most likely to appreciate
it were the Norman barons ; for personal fidelity of man to
man lay at the heart of the fendal organisation. But never-
theless in Ireland it was their temptation as well as their
stroigth.

frst.