And if he seeks the record of his race in the only schools or books open to him he will find that hope has been shut out of the school and fame taken out of the story.
The late John Richard Green, one of the greatest of English historians, was attracted to Ireland by a noble sympathy for the fallen which he shared with very few of his fellow-countrymen.

We are told that he sympathized with the spirit of Irish nationality.

"A State," he would say, "is accidental; it can be made or unmade; but a nation is something real which can be neither made nor destroyed." He had once planned a history of Ireland, "but abandoned the idea because the continuous record of misery and misgovernment was too painful to contemplate." All pleasure lies in contrast.

The history of Ireland offers no contrast; it is a tale of unmitigated wrong.
It is too full of graves and the ghosts are not laid yet.

As well write the history of a churchyard.