I have a picture by "A. E." of an ascending road on the side of
a mountain. There is rain in the air, and the road has a lonely,
unfrequented look. Yet, though there is no living creature visible in
the picture, Life fills it. I feel sometimes when I sit back in my
chair and look at "The Mountain Road" that there are divine beings
behind the bushes, that if I could only climb up that road and turn
the corner of the mountain, I should come upon the Golden Age. Is it
not ungracious to make complaint, even if the complaint be a slight
one, of a man who can make the invisible world so powerfully felt as
that? And if he persuades me, by nature sceptical, almost to believe
in the Shining Ones, how much more strong must his influence be on
those who are eager to believe! When the evil temper which possesses
Ireland at this moment has subsided, the fine temper of "A. E." will
rise again and call Irishmen to a kindlier mood. The little town of
Lurgan, in which he was born, is notorious in Ulster for the harshness
of its religious dissensions. A base bigotry flourishes there. It is in
the nature of things that from a place of great bitterness should have
come a man of reconciliation, bidding Catholic and Protestant to meet,
not in Geneva or in Rome, but on the holy hills of Ireland, under the
protection of the ancient gods.