The Ireland of to-day does not pay herself with words.

She is safe from that reaction and disillusionment which some prophets have discerned as the first harvest of Home Rule, because she is already disillusioned.

Looking into the future we see no hope for rhetoricians; what we do see is a strong, shrewd, indomitable people, at once clear-sighted and idealistic, going about its business "in the light of day in the domain of reality." No signs or wonders blaze out a trail for them.

The past sags on their shoulders and in their veins, a grievous burden and a grievous malady.
They make mistakes during their apprenticeship to freedom, for, as Flaubert says, men have got to learn everything from eating to dying.
But a few years farther on we see the recuperative powers of the nation once more triumphant.

The past is at last dead enough to be buried, the virus of oppression has been expelled.