Miscellaneous Prose | Page 5

the harness of England, and when subject to his fevers,
he is unrestrained in his cries and deeds. That pertains to the nature of
him. Of course, if we have no belief in the virtues of friendliness and
confidence--none in regard to the Irishman--we show him his footing,
and we challenge the issue. For the sole alternative is distinct
antagonism, a form of war. Mr. Gladstone's Bill has brought us to that
definite line. Ireland having given her adhesion to it, swearing that she
does so in good faith, and will not accept a smaller quantity, peace is
only to be had by our placing trust in the Irish; we trust them or we
crush them. Intermediate ways are but the prosecution of our ugly
flounderings in Bogland; and dubious as we see the choice on either
side, a decisive step to right or left will not show us to the world so
bemired, to ourselves so miserably inefficient, as we appear in this
session of a new Parliament. With his eighty-five, apart from external
operations lawful or not, Mr. Parnell can act as a sort of lumbricus in
the House. Let journalists watch and chronicle events: if Mr. Gladstone
has humour, they will yet note a peculiar smile on his closed mouth
from time to time when the alien body within the House, from which,
for the sake of its dignity and ability to conduct its affairs, he would
have relieved it till the day of a warmer intelligence between Irish and
English, paralyzes our machinery business. An ably- handled coherent

body in the midst of the liquid groups will make it felt that Ireland is a
nation, naturally dependent though she must be. We have to do with
forces in politics, and the great majority of the Irish Nationalists in
Ireland has made them a force.
No doubt Mr. Matthew Arnold is correct in his apprehensions of the
dangers we may fear from a Dublin House of Commons. The
declarations and novel or ultra theories might almost be written down
beforehand. I should, for my part, anticipate a greater danger in the
familiar attitude of the English metropolitan Press and public toward an
experiment they dislike and incline to dread:--the cynical comments,
the quotations between inverted commas, the commiserating shrug,
cold irony, raw banter, growl of menace, sharp snap, rounds of laughter.
Frenchmen of the Young Republic, not presently appreciated as
offensive, have had some of these careless trifles translated for them,
and have been stung. We favoured Germany with them now and then,
before Germany became the first power in Europe. Before America had
displayed herself as greatest among the giants that do not go to pieces,
she had, as Americans forgivingly remember, without mentioning, a
series of flicks of the whip. It is well to learn manners without having
them imposed on us. There are various ways for tripping the
experiment. Nevertheless, when the experiment is tried, considering
that our welfare is involved in its not failing, as we have failed, we
should prepare to start it cordially, cordially assist it. Thoughtful
political minds regard the measure as a backward step; yet conceiving
but a prospect that a measure accepted by Home Rulers will possibly
enable the Irish and English to step together, it seems better worth the
venture than to pursue a course of prospectless discord! Whatever we
do or abstain from doing has now its evident dangers, and this being
imminent may appear the larger of them; but if a weighing of the
conditions dictates it, and conscience approves, the wiser proceeding is
to make trial of the untried. Our outlook was preternaturally black, with
enormous increase of dangers when the originator of our species
venturesomely arose from the posture of the 'quatre pattes'. We
consider that we have not lost by his temerity. In states of dubitation
under impelling elements, the instinct pointing to courageous action is,
besides the manlier, conjecturably the right one.

LESLIE STEPHEN--1904
When that noble body of scholarly and cheerful pedestrians, the Sunday
Tramps, were on the march, with Leslie Stephen to lead them, there
was conversation which would have made the presence of a shorthand
writer a benefaction to the country. A pause to it came at the
examination of the leader's watch and Ordnance map under the western
sun, and void was given for the strike across country to catch the tail of
a train offering dinner in London, at the cost of a run through hedges,
over ditches and fellows, past proclamation against trespassers, under
suspicion of being taken for more serious depredators in flight. The
chief of the Tramps had a wonderful calculating eye in the observation
of distances and the nature of the land, as he proved by his discovery of
untried passes in the higher