Irish heroes, for one reason or another, have come off, it must be owned, but poorly before the bar of history.  Either their deeds having been told by those in whose eyes they found a meagre kindness, or else by others who, with the best intentions possible, have so inflated the hero’s bulk, so pared away his merely human frailties, that little reality remains, and his bare name is as much as even a well-informed reader pretends to be acquainted with.  Comparing them with what are certainly their nearest parallels—­the heroes and semi-heroes of Scotch history—­the contrast strikes one in an instant, yet there is no reason in the nature of things that this should be.  Putting aside those whose names have got somewhat obscured by the mists of the past, and putting aside those nearer to us who stand upon what is still regarded as debateable ground, there are no lack of Irish names which should be as familiar to the ear as those of any Bruce or Douglas of them all.  The names of Tyrone, of James Fitzmaurice, of Owen Roe O’Neill, and of Sarsfield, to take only a few and almost at random, are all those of gallant men, struggling against dire odds, in causes which, whether they happen to fit in with our particular sympathies or not, were to them objects of the purest, most genuine enthusiasm.  Yet which of these, with the doubtful exception of the last, can be said to have yet received anything like a fair meed of appreciation?  To live again in the memory of those who come after them may not be—­let us sincerely hope that it is not—­essential to the happiness of those who are gone, but it is at least a tribute which the living ought to be called upon to pay, and to pay moreover ungrudgingly as they hope to have it paid to them in their turn.

Glancing with this thought in our minds along that lengthened chronicle here so hastily overrun, many names and many strangely-chequered destinies rise up one by one before us; come as it were to judgment, to where we, sitting in state as “Prince Posterity,” survey the varied field, and judge them as in our wisdom we think fit, assigning to this one praise, to that one blame, to another a judicious admixture of praise and blame combined.  Not, however, it is to be hoped, forgetting that our place in the same panorama waits for another audience, and that the turn of this generation has still to come.

AUTHORITIES.

* * * * *

Adamnan, “Life of St. Columba” (trans.).

Arnold (Matthew), “On the Study of Celtic Literature.”

Bagwell, “Ireland under the Tudors.”

Barrington (Sir Jonah), “Personal Recollections,” “Rise and Fall
  of the Irish Nation.”

Brewer, “Introduction to the Carew Calendar of State Papers.”

Bright (Rt.  Hon. J.), “Speeches.”

Burke (Edmund), “Tracts on the Popery Laws,” “Speeches and Letters.”

Carlyle, “Letters and Speeches of Cromwell.”