Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 1.djvu/8

 hungry and thwarted strength. Her government was a graduated tyranny, in which the sovereign stood at the highest point of licentiousness; and the people were sunk to the bottom of the scale, in chill and deadly depression. But no man who knows the history of Ireland, can compute the influence of England among the elements of her depression. She neglected, but she scarcely smote her. It was the physician disgusted by the waywardness of the patient, leaving disease to take its course, and not the assassin inflicting a fresh wound—where the blow was given, it was almost the result of necessity, England was then fighting for her freedom; the nations of the earth had not yet been awed into wisdom by the noble evidence that a people warring as she warred, cannot be conquered. She was engaged pepetuallyperpetually [sic] on her frontier; she had no time to think of the remote territory behind. She slept upon a rampart, from which she never cast her eyes, but to see the banners of France and Spain moving against her; or, if she turned round to look upon the dissensions of Ireland, it was only with the quick and anxious irritation of a conqueror, who, in the moment of deciding the battle, sees an insurrection of the prisoners in his rear.

But there are in all countries examples of great individuals, summoned up from time to time, as if to retrieve the standard of human nature, and raise all men's eyes from the ground by the simple sight of their glorious and original altitude. The finest purpose of Biography is to draw back the curtain of the temple, and give their images to our wonder, for the vindication of the past, and the lesson of the future. The darkest periods of Ireland have been rich in evidence of such beings—