[148] When the historian of this troubled reign turns to Ireland, his task becomes peculiarly difficult and delicate.

His steps,--to borrow the fine image used on a similar occasion by a Roman poet,--are on the thin crust of ashes, beneath which the lava is still glowing.

The seventeenth century has, in that unhappy country, left to the nineteenth a fatal heritage of malignant passions.

No amnesty for the mutual wrongs inflicted by the Saxon defenders of Londonderry, and by the Celtic defenders of Limerick, has ever been granted from the heart by either race.

To this day a more than Spartan haughtiness alloys the many noble qualities which characterize the children of the victors, while a Helot feeling, compounded of awe and hatred, is but too often discernible in the children of the vanquished.