Four years on from Good Friday 1998, the Belfast Agreement has defied the sceptics and confounded the would-be wreckers who predicted its failure with gleeful confidence.
Northern Ireland does not enjoy anything like full normality. Yesterday saw an attempted assassination in Co Tyrone. The scenes at Holy Cross school are testimony to the continuing hatreds which simmer barely below the surface. Wounded and maimed survivors of the various atrocities still suffer physically and psychologically. Evil men and women still probe for opportunities to deal out death. Paramilitaries continue their sponsorship of organised crime and racketeering.
And yet the achievements of the four years are extraordinary, outweighing in their significance the problems and the issues that remain. An executive and an assembly, reflective of both traditions, are operating much of the normal, day-to-day business of public administration. Acts of large-scale violence have all but ceased. North-south and Irish-British institutions are functioning as planned. The IRA has taken first steps towards decommissioning. A new police service, supported by the unionists and by the SDLP, is coming on to the streets.
Above all, the pathway of democratic politics has emerged as the preferred route for communities which for generations believed that they could only survive by the use of force and by the achievement of domination over others. The conversion is far from universal. But it is widespread and it is gaining ground, albeit more rapidly and more completely in some areas than in others.
There is a sense of quiet confidence among the two governments. Political figures within Northern Ireland itself speak of their own sense of a developing stability. Business and civic groups signify that conditions are right for development and growth.
Could it yet go wrong? Most certainly. Yesterday's attempted murder in Tyrone will almost certainly not be the last such outrage. Large arsenals of paramilitary weapons remain to be decommissioned. The possibility of further incidents of mass violence remains. Cross-community tensions run high over matters such as the proposed amnesty for "on the run" suspects. Reform of the criminal justice system and the development of the new policing arrangements are critical issues in which any change brings the risk of being viewed by one community as a gain or loss at the expense of the other.
But even in these areas of contention there is dialogue and the sense of business being done. Some compromise appears to be in contemplation to deal with the "on the runs." It is generally expected that Sinn Féin, in time, will endorse the new police service. (Sceptics might reflect that it was not until 10 years after the foundation of the State that Mr de Valera's adherents fully accepted the Garda Síochána.)
The main marching season of 2002 is only three months away. It will tell much about the reality that lies behind the appearances of a strengthening peace and increasing stability. But it is not unreasonable, this Easter weekend, to be mildly optimistic.