FIVE YEARS IN IRELAND, 1895-1900.
Pies Years an Ireland, 1895-1900. By M. J. F. McCarthy. (Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. 7s. 6d.)—Con tho whole, Mr. McCarthy's review of Irish life and politics of the five years preceding the 1900 General Election is hopeful. He passes before him all sorts and conditions of men, and every variety of political and social event, and gives his opinion in a frank, good- natured temper of mind. There are at least a score of persons whose aims and methothohe objects to, and one Act of Legislature he has the most supreme contempt for, but he never desceuds to personalities. Thus he keeps his pages sweet, and he takes us further into Irish sympathies than one had hoped for from an Irishman writing on Ireland. His plan, which implies a difficulty similar to the driving of six horses abreast, is to take the years Its they come, so that many incidents follow each other with little or no real connection. On one subject, that of the influence of the Roman Catholic priest- hood on the Irish people, Mr. McCarthy's self-restraint becomes a little obvious, and the reader begins to feel uncomfort- able. The description of the Ballyvadlea and Lisphelan crimes and the Cappawhite tragedy sufficiently indicates his views as to those who are really responsible for such atrocious exhibitions of religious insanity. Two or three times he makes pathetic appeals to the reason of his countrymen. A propos of Mr. Barry of Killavullen's burst of rancour, he asks why the " Barrys" let their "energies run to seed while they pursue with their hatred that chimera which they call 'England,' and which no longer exists in fact. The England of Cromwell's time is as defunct as Cromwell. The England of Strongboves time is as dead as Richard Strongbow, whose body has lain mouldering in the grave' in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, for the last seven centuries." And again, when closing the account of the extraordinary outbursts of fanaticism at Bally- vadlea, &c., he gives vent to a lamentation characteristittelly Irish in its pathos. " Ah, my readers, Ireland is not the merry country which people think, which Protestant Irishmen like Lever and Lover have painted it; or of half-humorous, half-contemptible braggarts, as Thackeray saw it. It is a sad, a gloomy, a de- pressed, a joyless country for the bulk of its peasantry. Hence it is they leave it." One can almost see the tears between the lines. Universal purchase is Mr. McCarthy's panacea. But a surer aid is that absence of personalities, that abnegation of
ancient grudges, which Mr. McCarthy shows ; without that even universal purchase might be ineffective. Earnestness and common-sense are the writer's attributes, and he does not lack humour.
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