The Broken Sword of Ulster. By Richard Ctinninghame. (Hodges, Figgis,
and Co., Dublin. Ss. Gd. net.)—Mr. Cunninghame has an excellent subject, and he seems to have studied it with much industry ; he contrives also, considering that he is traversing a land so eminently debateable, to be impartial and just. The struggles of the Irish Celts against the Saxon domination have always been fierce, and the war waged by Hugh Roe O'Donnell and the Earl of Tyrone was no exception. The great drawback to the acceptableness of the book is the style. The title which Mr. Cunninghame has chosen has a somewhat suspicious sound; that, however, counts for little ; titles have to catch the ear. But what is to be said for such flowers of rhetoric as these that follow ? When Hugh Roe O'Donnell was escaping from his prison in Dublin, and fell exhausted on his way through the Wicklow hills, we read that "around him lay the winter night black and sullen, with death on its chilly pinions if no help should come." "In Connaught dissatisfaction shook its grisly locks and bared its bloody arms." " Discordia demens, vipereum crinem vittis irmexa cruentis," says Virgil. "Dissatisfaction" is about as feeble a personification as we have ever seen.
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