essentially poetic genius, 'I find myself every now and then with one of her books in my hand. There is a finishing off in some of her scenes that is really quite above everybody else.' Pretty strong, that, from the greatest novelist of his day! But Macaulay puts every sincere artist under an obligation, he expresses so unequivocally the feelings of every writer who has felt despair creep over him reading her pages. In his diary, too: 'Read Dickens' Hard Times and another book of Pliny's Letters. Read Northanger Abbey, worth all Dickens and Pliny together; yet it was the work of a girl.' So it is to every writer, though not perhaps to the great mass of people who are looking for mental pabulum after the dull grind of the day's work. She is caviare to the general.

Quite as childlike, plain, easy and natural is Cervantes. Could you have a more educative contrast to the intricately involved complexities of Meredith's genius than this piece of advice that Don Quixote graciously imparts to his squire ? 'Henceforward, my dear child, carefully follow the advice that I now give you. When you see that we are attacked by such a common crowd, do not wait for me to draw my sword. Attack such rascals by yourself, and chastise them at your leisure.'

Not bad advice, considering that the dolorous knight and the fat squire were lying prostrate with the life and soul beaten out of them by the muleteers.

But the infantine pathos and humour of Don Quixote bear quotation just as ill as do the humour and pathos of Jane Austen. Their design is so simply and closely woven that you cannot undo a thread from it. They go right on like Flaubert. They never intrude themselves. They have too much taste. (At last we have got the word.) In the very midst of the story, Meredith will pull you aside to moralize with mordant judicial irony upon his characters; Thackeray, to gabble with old-maidish malice and cynicism upon the insincerities of life; Dickens, to slobber over you with that type of sentimentality which is commonly associated with alcohol, and which Englishmen

VOL. XXII-19

delight in after a good dinner. Flaubert and Jane Austen and Cervantes are as if they were not.

The best example of this is Flaubert in his Salammbó. Read it, and then compare it with one of the most popular of the books of one of the most popular of living writers, the Sonnica of Blasco Ibáñez, and you will realize with a gasp the difference between pinchbeck and the real thing. Both of these books deal with Hannibal. In that alone

they are alike. Flaubert's Salammbó is an imperishable work of purest art; the Sonnica of Blasco Ibáñez is of that fleshly school of ladies' novelettes that confounds smut with art, decked out with an odd bit of gauze found in the lumber-room of Latin culture a boy who had done Catullus and a play of Aristophanes would be ashamed to boast about.

Let us put side by side sentences from other works by the two. I will not spoil the close of his best short story by commenting on the finish of Flaubert's Hérodias :

Puis il leur montra l'objet lugubre (the head of St. John the Baptist), sur le plateau, entre les débris du festin. Un des hommes lui dit :

'Console-toi! Il est descendu chez les morts annoncer le Christ.' L'Essénien comprenait maintenant ces paroles: Pour qu'il croisse, il faut que je diminue.'

Et tous les trois, ayant pris la tête de Iaokanann, s'en allèrent du côté de la Galilée.

Comme elle était très lourde, ils la portaient alternativement.

Now, let us take a sentence from the best-known of the works of Ibáñez. It is from Sangre y Arena. In the last chapter, in which the bull and the hero, Juan Gallardo, kill each other, Gallardo is described as entering the chapel on the side of the enclosure where the banderilleros and picadors and toreros said a prayer before the statue of the Blessed Virgin before entering the ring. Gallardo kneels down. I quote :—

Virgin with the dove, a little protection! He would be good, and would live as God commands !

His superstitious spirit fortified with this useless repentance, he left the chapel still under the influence of his emotions, his eyes dim, blind to the people who obstructed his passage.

Consider that adjective useless placed before the noun repentance. Do not let religious sentiment at all enter into your consideration. Examine it just as part of a literary method. You must admit that it is a piece of vulgarity that no true artist could be guilty of. The novelist is giving a studiedly objective picture, psychological picture, of the espada the moment before he goes into the arena. The crowds, the costumes, the dust, the colours, the smells, all are contributory to his emotional state, and they are described vividly enough until the novelist comes to the crisis. Then he fails. Into a bit of objective art he introduces an utterly discordant element of religious controversy, an utterly incongruous element of scientific polemics. 'Useless'! He introduces his own private beliefs. At the very moment when, above all others, he should be completely wrapt up, submerged, drowned in the current of his art, behold he drags you, with inconceivable vulgarity, out upon the dusty, arid sands of controversy! You have been tricked. The account was on the point of absorbing your interest. And crack! did you know that I don't believe in this mummery, mardita sea? What do you or I want to know about the religious beliefs of Senor Ibáñez? It wasn't to discover them that we paid our few shillings to the bookseller. It was a romance we bought, not a tract. And we have been deceived, our author has not taste enough to be a fine novelist. I think Flaubert was an atheist ; Jane Austen belonged to the Church of England: but each of them had taste, which would have inexorably prevented them from marring a description as this self-confident Spaniard does.

And this is the word for it: taste. It is this quality of taste, this dainty, delicate, penetrating fastidiousness, this power of selection and rejection, this sensitive eye for proportion, this humorous equipoise of soul, that is the crown of genius, and makes a writer for writers.

PETER MCBRIEN,

ST. ABBAN OF HY-KINSELLAGH

THE

By J. B. CULLEN

HE south-eastern division of Ireland in ancient times, known as the kingdom of Kinsellagh or Ui Ceinnsealaigh, included within its boundaries the whole of the Co. Wexford, the barony of Shillelagh in the Co. Wicklow, the southern extremity of the Co. Carlow, and the sub-principalities of Forth and Idrone, which were governed by chieftains of the septs of O'Nolan and O'Ryan. After the introduction of Christianity into this part of Ireland the first ecclesiastic aldivision or See of Ferns was co-terminous in extent and jurisdiction with the area of the civil kingdom. Hy-Kinsellagh would seem to have had a sort of pre-eminence among the other principalities of the south-eastern province, since its rulers are frequently styled in history 'Kings of Leinster,' and the imposing remain of the castle of Ferns, built by Strongbow, son-in-law an successor of Dermot M'Morrogh, are still pointed out a 'the Royal residence' of the bygone dynasty.

There are few parts of Ireland which contain mor memorials of historical interest than are to be found withi the ancient boundaries of the kingdom of Kinsellagh. Rath and earthen forts, telling of the primitive existence of th early inhabitants of our island in the pre-historic past; t ruins or fragments of little kills or churches that spru up in the wake of Christianity, the fortified towers a castles of the Norman invaders, and the roofless walls the abbeys and priories of religious Orders founded medieval times-all contribute their share to the histo of the principality whose greater portion forms the prese Co. Wexford.

There is an abiding tradition, which is borne out by t

researches of scholars and historians, that Christianity existed and was established in the southern or seaward part of the kingdom of Kinsellagh, previous to St. Patrick's mission. The baronies of Forth, Bargy, and Shelburne, which, to a great extent, formed part of the southern sea-board of the the territory, were the districts first

evangelized.

St. Ibar, one of the four pre-Patrician apostles who first preached the Gospel in Erin, founded a monastery and school in a little island in Lough Garman (now Wexford Harbour), whence the light of faith was diffused over this part of southern Ireland.

The life-story of the second Abbot of the islandmonastery of Lough Garman-St. Abban-of which extensive materials are available, is our chosen subject in the following pages. Although a royal saint and heir to a kingship, he renounced all for the sake of Christ and for the salvation of his countrymen. As a missionary he visited many parts of Ireland, founding monasteries and churches, and, as we read of St. Patrick, it is also recorded of St. Abban that he was often visited by an angelic messenger by whom the commands of Almighty God were made known to him. He was a scholar of great distinction, since from his twelfth year the best part of his life was passed in the school of Begerin Island, of which his maternal kinsman was founder; one of the most largely frequented among the centres of education in ancient Ireland. Moreover, it is related that he visited Rome no less than three times, and during those prolonged pilgrimages doubtless added much to his store of knowledge and personal experience. We have touched upon these few traits of existence in advance of our narrative because of the regrettable fact that St. Abban is practically an unknown saint, and his name almost forgotten even in his birthlandHy-Kinsellagh.

In the accounts handed down to us of the early mission of St. Patrick, it is recorded that having preached and nade many converts in Meath, where he appointed some