New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1888-06-24
TWO BOOKS ON IRELAND.
1 LANDLORDS VIEWS; AND A TOURISTS

lomo, DID. 256 London Swan, sonnensenein'
Lowcry G. Co.
1887. BY GEORGE PELLEw, A. NJ, LIB. j.
mo- ID. 800. @. p. PutDams Sons
These two books, which deal with the same
.subyact approach one another at few points. The
first is by an Irshman Of the landlord class, who
appears to have been absentee during the greater
part of his life. The second is the work OF an
American Of an extremely practical turn, whose
only aim has been TO ascertain the truth ana
whose perfectly dspassionate inquiries have
brought together strange series Of Kaleidoscope
views.
Mr. George Moore is writer Of fiction, and fic-
tion of a peculiar kind II is necessary to say this
because in the present volume his singularity OF
views figures quite prominently. Long resident
in France he appears to have absorbed the most
morbid ideas current in the most insurrecuonary
iParisian circles The revolt indicated is not po-
Itical but moral and social Those who join it
war upon everything that is reasonable, beautl-
full calm and measured. They ridicule modern
art poetry fiction, and apotheosize the most mon
strous alterations. They affect special refine
ment and subtlety. In poetry they
hold form to be everything and con-
tents nothing, and as a consequence they
applaud the most eccentric and utterly barren
rubbish in the shape of verse that was spawned
a.
With oil this forced and artificial eccentricity OF
taste these curious people are pleased to consider
themselves realists They rcpudiate lola, indeed,
chiefly because lola has vogue with the Popu-
lace but their realism is Zolaistic, as none can
doubt who take the trouble TO read the French
fiction they prefer, or the English romances Oh
George Moore.
The latter seems to have desired, in Parnell
and His Island" to present an unvarnlshed ana
realistic picture of Ireland. What he has In fact
produced is strange medley. lie sketches vari-
Gus Irish types the tenant-farmer, the priest the
landlord, the agent the patriot. lie tries to be
frank and impartial TO tell the truth about every
thing and everybody to represent facts as they are
But he sees the world through colored glasses.
His Ireland is peopled by race whose development
has beer arrested who are so backward as to be
incapable Of self government who have been so de-
moralizcd by the Parnellite and League doctrines
that their ethics are in state of dissolution who,
nevertheless, he thinks, will obtain Home Ruia.
and promptly demonstrate their incapacity to main
tain autonomy lie is himself he says q land
lord, but be has little save contempt and rebuke
for the class. The class is doomed he frankly con-
cedes but the people make no distinction between
good and bad landlords in their behavior, and the
dominant element in the country is longer Celtic
but the aboriginal Finnish, which is an inferior
blood, degraded and bruazed. The Celt him.
SELF however, if we are to believe Mr.. Moore, is o
failure. He says: The graft of civilization the
Anglo-Saxon has for 700 years striven to bind upon
the island has never caught, but whether the Celt
will be able to civilize himself when he gets Homo
Rule do not pretend to say At present he is a
savage, emincntly fitted for cattle-lifting, but i'll
suited to ply the industry of farming, which the
law forces as the alternative Of starvation with
L. ~; uolo 80 40
scription:
Down in the wet below the edge of that bog
lies the village. The cabins are built out of
rough stones without mortar Each is divided
into two, rarely into three, compartments; and
the windows are not so large those of a rail
way carriage. And in these dens whole fami-
y, family consisting of husband and wife,
grandfather and grandmother, and from eight to
cabins are matched or are rooted with green sods
cut from the nearest field. About each doorway
tine IS and sba n pav g M
part, The interior Of these cabins can be ina
gined, a dark place from which exudes stink;
a stink which the inmates describe as warm
SMELL Around the walls are vague shapes
what, you cannot quite see: like high boxes pushed
out Of sight are the beds. The floor is. broken
in places and the rain collects in the hOll0ws,
and has 10 be swept out every morning large
pig, covered with lice. feeds out Of q trough
placed in the middle of the floor, and the beast
from time to time approaches and shifts at the
child sleeping in cot ny the freside. The old
grandmother waves her palsied hands and the
beast retires to his trough As We have seen the
pig, let the family at dinner. OF cookery
they have no idea whatever; there is not single
plate or kitchen utens Of any kind in the howell
except the black iron pot that hangs over the
fire. The father and mother enter followed by
the brood. The mother, great strong creature
fit for work in the fields dressed in a, red petit
the thick shapcless red legs-lifts the black
pot of the fire and carries it to the threshold,
one of the children holds sieve and the water
OF hunted
one Of the beds, and the family eat their dinner
ont OF the sieve.
Here is another Characteristic bit: "You want
TO know what Ireland is like? Ireland is like the
smea of parafiine oil! The country exhales the
damp. faccid evil smell of poverty,-yes, poverty
that is Of the earth earthly. And this smell hangs
about every cabin: it rises out of the chimneys
with the smoke of the peat it broods upon the
dung-heap and creeps along the deep black bog
holes that line the roadway and the thin, meagre
aspect OF the mafshy fields and the hungry hills
reminds you of this smell of poverty-the smell
Of something sick to death Of poverty There
is nightmare feeling about AL these descriptions
which is one of the pecularities of Mr. Moore's
writings, and which seems TO follow him every
where. In everything upon which he casts his
eyes the gloomy element predominateS He is
that anomalous creature, an Irishnan destitute
of humor. He can perceive only the rags, the dirt
the squalOr, the unsavory odors, whichever way
he moves. He has picture of decaying country
house 1t suggests TO him sweeping pessimistic
generalization, and he bursts OUT The western
Celt is a creature great 10 dream, and powerless to
execute in external aspects and in moral history
the same talo is told-great things attempted
nothing done and the physiology and psychology
of bis country is read in the unfinished pile"
II IL not for the cynical spirit of detraction
and depreciation which leads Mr. Moore TO blaclsen
all his shadows heavily and to tone down his
lights until they CHASTITY, many of his sketches
would deserve praise for their power and graphic
skill Here is striking sketch caught while
driving over an estate with its owner a recently
returned absentee