Excerpt from The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere, Vol. 5: Inisfail, a Lyrical Chronicle of Ireland; The Irish Sisters; Early Poems, Meditative or Devotional; Poems for the Most Part Connected With the Great Irish Famine, 1846-1849 Been fatal to a people whose vocation was to create a great political dominion. TO a country whose great ness was destined to be a missionary greatness It proved an auxiliary, at once affording to her the type of those spiritual clans, her convents, of whlch those ruled by the great monastic family Of St. Columba proved the most potent, and also withdrawing her from the larger worldly ambitions. Had the clan system met with no external interference, civil society might possibly in Ireland, as In India, have preserved its original type substantially unchanged to modern times, without decay, though also without progress. But, on the other hand, the missionary progress Of Ireland in three centuries, exceeded that made by half the countries of Europe in twice the time. Clan fights were her Sports but Religion was her Reality. To it her genius was attracted. Another Eastern characteristic, Fatalism, ' has been attributed to the Irish race. Her Fatalism meant Simply a profound sense of Religion. The intense Theism which has ever belonged to the East survived in Ireland as an instinct no less than as a Faith. The Irish have commonly found it more easy to recognise the Divine hand than secondary causes. They have regarded Religion as the chief' possession of man. Such nations are ever attached to the Past. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.