I used to tell the few friends to whom I could speak these secret thoughts that I would make the attempt in Ireland but fail, for our civilisation, its elements multiplying by divisions like certain low forms of life, owerful; but iy I had the wildest hopes. To?day I add to that first vi, to that first desire for unity, this other vi, long a mere opinion vaguely or itently apprehended: Nations, races and individual men are unified by an image, or bundle of related images, symbolical or evocative of the state of mind, which is of all states of mind not impossible, the most difficult to that man, race or nation; because only the greatest obstacle that be plated without despair rouses the will to full iy. A powerful class by terror, rhetorid anised seality, may drive their people to war, but the day draws near when they ot keep them there; and how shall they face the pure nations of the East when the day es to do it with but equal arms? I had seen Ireland in my own time turn from the bragging rhetorid gregarious humour of Oells geion and school, and offer herself to the solitary and proud Parnell as to her anti?self, buskin following hard on sock; and I had begun to hope, or to half?hope, that we might be the first in Europe to seek unity as deliberately as it had been sought by theologian, poet, sculptor, architect from the eleventh to the thirteenth tury. Doubtless we must seek it differently, no longer sidering it veo epitomise all human knowledge, but find it we well might, could we first find philosophy and a little passion.