THE RAVAGES OF UNIONISM (I) Ireland, as we have seen, has had the misfortune to provoke many worthy writers to a sad debauch of sentimentalism.

It has pleased their fancy especially to picture her as a sphinx, mysterious, elusive, inscrutable.
It is impossible to govern her, declare these theorists, because it is impossible to understand her.

She is the _femme incomprise_ of modern politics.

Her temperament is a magnet for disaster, her soul a sanctuary of inviolable secrets.

So runs the rhapsody, and many of my own countrymen have thought it good strategy to accept and exploit it.