native inhabitants until the rising wave resisted by mere mass in the north-west, and had after to absorb but a slight coating of the same people. Another proof would be the ease with which they broke with Catholicity, as the Teutons did throughout, wheresoever they were pure; a fact confirmed by the exception of Bavaria and the neighbouring regions, where the ancient Celtic element opposed a strong resistance. It is that religion was their first native act of intellect, as in all races; as witness the grand hierarchy of the Celts in their primitive woods. But a proof beyond all inference historical or ethnographical is superadded by the principles first applied in the present pages. The public life of a nation, moral, mental, and political, must, as enormously more complex, be proportionably more conclusive, as to the gentilitial character, than any results of ethnology. But by this test the English are more Gothic than even the Germans. These in fact retain a good deal of the primitive simplicity, have never had the confidence of power or purse to act their nature, but on breaking off from Rome, have fallen over into France, and set themselves to imitate her speculation and bureaucracy. Accordingly, the purest and most forward of their States, the Prussian monarchy, is a species of Polonius among nations.1 England and America present the type in full development, and do so, in every phase without exception

It is only the other day that a decree was issued by the Prussian minister or government, enjoining the sub-officials that in saluting the high dignitaries, they should lower the hat "almost to the knee." Who shall say, after this, that the Teutonic race is not a race of organization as well as of politeness?

of the national life. At least the writer would be thankful for information to the contrary.

As to the Celts of the British islands, though nearly half the population, they have thus far no influence on the conduct of the nation. They are duly represented in the blood of the reigning dynasty, beneath whose weight the Liafail would long have groaned, were there force in destiny. No doubt the exclusion is so absolute but indirectly or through the fact that the Teutons hold the land, and thus uphold the feudal mastery; while the Celts of even England are thrown into manufactures. Thus both Ireland and Scotland weigh as little in the institutions, and above all in the foreign policy, as Cornwall and Jersey. This fact is quite familiar to the people of the Continent. In seasons of

1 This is doubtless not as flattering as national vanities could desire, and so the dose must be " 'got down" by some coercion, as in children. The means, as hitherto, will be example from the freshest experience, and in its most authentic or official expression, in order to bar the habitual evasory pleas of later change in the subject or imperfect knowledge of the circumstances.

The other day, in the British Parliament, there was broached a vote of censure on the butchery of several hundred prisoners in India. The English officer whose sense of military etiquette proposed it, well aware it would appear of the feelings of his own countrymen-whose "Humane Societies" would however have stormed the Government with their declamatory deputations if a live cat were skinned in London-this old officer appealed, then, to the Irish and the Scotch members. But not a voice arose from either to renounce a complicity which would have been repudiated by the inmates of a penitentiary; and the silence has been sanctioned by their national press and public. Now, either these two publics and their Honourable representatives must have consented to accept of this savage complicity, or else they must have felt that they had no real part in it; that is to say, no part in the imperial administra

the greatest moment, as in the late and the present wars, while every newspaper rag of London is cited by the Paris journals, as representative of some effective division of tion, and so no right to censure it beyond their own bailiwicks. From one or other of the positions there can be no escape for them; and it must be less bad to be nothing than be infamous.

Another fact more recent still, and more conclusive, if possible. Respecting the current war, a second Minister of the Crown has dared, in the face of the same Scotch and Irish deputies, to say that the sympathy and the support of the British empire would be given to a despotic and barbarous marauder, in upholding his feudal oppression of a glorious people and against a generous nation who came to their relief; and given through a "Teutonic brotherhood" with the marauder, in contempt of the Celtic brotherhood of Scotch and Irish with the liberator! Could the expression of disdain for the opinion and the influence of these two pretentious nations have been possibly more sublimated? Were these Celts not esteemed null at once in spirit and diplomacy, it must be plain that no sane minister could have so spoken in the crisis. No doubt the “brotherhood" intended was less of blood than of booty, as the same sagacious statesman went on to let out, by adding that the title of Austria to Lombardy was the same as that of England to Scotland and India-the Green Isle being made conspicuous by omission in the list of conquest. But such a motive could but aggravate the disregard by insult. Yet both were here again succumbed to by the same Celtic lawmakers, as also by their constituents and their self-styled "fourth estate," without a murmur of even partizan remonstrance to the ministry!

Nothing, surely, could be added to these two notorious facts in confirmation of the ignominious imputation of the text. This provincialized depression of the Scotch and Irish people, in relation to the general policy of the confederated kingdoms, remains, indeed, so low, that it must be near a crisis. Very possibly, the ministerial defiance was its death-knell. It might be deemed invidious to be the first to broach a party division between British Celts and Teutons. But since the English Government has broken itself the ice, the sooner the full and precise truth is known the better. This truth then is, that the political future of these islands is infallibly to turn on the following alternative:

P

opinion, there is never an allusion to a press in Edinburgh or Dublin. In fact the force which their distraction and degradation have left the Irish has been hitherto consumed on either mere self-defence, or in the effort, as the saying is, to "get their head above water.” The other people have been occupied in "feathering their nest." In this pursuit they are admitted, unlike the Irish, to grades of office, that might give the Celtic intellect at least some shaping influBut the Scotch have still a remnant of the "charity" of Portia's suitor.

ence.

Can the English population continue to keep down the Celts to its own coarse, commercial civilization at home, and to drag it abroad in the train of that uncouth COHUE of "consort"-trading princes, cabalistical philosophers and boorish or still barbarous hordes called the German empire? Or shall the Celts, on the contrary, sway their Saxon fellowcitizens to domestic emulation and diplomatic concert with the glorious Celtic nation that leads the destinies of humanity?

The latter course alone can make the Irish Union real, and change the Anglo-French Alliance into a truth, from being a treachery.

DISSERTATION

ON

THE SUPERNATURAL MACHINERY OF SHAKESPEARE.

1. Ir is a crude, although perhaps an universal, mistake to assume that heathenism was erased by Christianity. Crude, for it implies a transformation of the human mind, which neither history attests nor Christianity pretends to. The notion, therefore, is opposed alike to reason and to religion. In fact, the superstitions named collectively heathenism, are the natural, however weedy or wild, growth of the human soil. The new creed, if praeternatural or adventitious in its origin, could only crush them from above, but not extrude them by the roots. It went to famish them by shutting off the air and light of heaven. They however kept this sickly but still noxious existence by overrunning the ground, by usurping its juices, by even invading the towering dogmas of Christianity parasitically. To the spectator at a distance or viewing things merely on the exterior, the overspreading mass of forest-trees and foliage alone appeared. Christianity with its doctrines, disputations, worship, politics, would