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and admiration giving himself body and soul to some leader, that is not a promising political temperament, it is just the opposite of the Anglo-Saxon temperament, disciplinable and steadily obedient within cer5 tain limits, but retaining an inalienable part of freedom and self-dependence; but it is a temperament for which one has a kind of sympathy notwithstanding. And very often, for the gay defiant reaction against fact of the lively Celtic nature one has more than Io sympathy; one feels, in spite of the extravagance, in spite of good sense disapproving, magnetised and exhilarated by it. (The Gauls had a rule inflicting a fine on every warrior who, when he appeared on parade, was found to stick out too much in front,-to 15 be corpulent, in short, Such a rule is surely the maddest article of war ever framed, and to people to whom nature has assigned a large volume of intestines, must appear, no doubt, horrible; but yet has it not an audacious, sparkling, immaterial manner with 20 it, which lifts one out of routine, and sets one's spirits in a glow?

All tendencies of human nature are in themselves vital and profitable; when they are blamed, they are only to be blamed relatively, not absolutely. This 25 holds true of the Saxon's phlegm as well as of the Celt's sentiment. Out of the steady humdrum habit of the creeping Saxon, as the Celt calls him,-out of his way of going near the ground, has come, no doubt, Philistinism, that plant of essentially Germanic 30 growth, flourishing with its genuine marks only in the German fatherland, Great Britain and her colonies, and the United States of America; but what a soul

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of goodness there is in Philistinism itself! and this soul of goodness I, who am often supposed to be Philistinism's mortal enemy merely because I do not wish it to have things all its own way, cherish as much as anybody. This steady-going habit leads at 5 last, as I have said, up to science, up to the comprehension and interpretation of the world. With us in Great Britain, it is true, it does not seem to lead so far as that; it is in Germany, where the habit is more unmixed, that it can lead to science. Here with 10 us it seems at a certain point to meet with a conflicting force, which checks it and prevents its pushing on to science; but before reaching this point what conquests has it not won! and all the more, perhaps, for stopping short at this point, for spending its exertions 15 within a bounded field, the field of plain sense, of direct practical utility. How it has augmented the comforts and conveniences of life for us! Doors that open, windows that shut, locks that turn, razors that shave, coats that wear, watches that go, and a thou-20 sand more such good things, are the invention of the Philistines. On the Study of Celtic Literature, ed 1895, pp. 73-84.

The Modern Englishman.

WE, on the other hand, do not necessarily gain by the commixture of elements in us; we have seen how the clashing of natures in us hampers and embarrasses our behaviour; we might very likely be more at5 tractive, we might very likely be more successful, if we were all of a piece. Our want of sureness of taste, our eccentricity, come in great measure, no doubt, from our not being all of a piece, from our having no fixed, fatal, spiritual centre of gravity. 10 The Rue de Rivoli is one thing, and Nuremberg is another, and Stonehenge is another; but we have a turn for all three, and lump them all up together. Mr. Tom Taylor's translations from Breton poetry offer a good example of this mixing; he has a genuine 15 feeling for these Celtic matters, and often, as in the Evil Tribute of Nomenoë, or in Lord Nann and the Fairy, he is, both in movement and expression, true and appropriate; but he has a sort of Teutonism and Latinism in him too, and so he cannot forbear mixing 20 with his Celtic strain such disparates as :

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"'Twas mirk, mirk night, and the water bright
Troubled and drumlie flowed

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which is evidently Lowland-Scotchy; or as :

"Foregad, but thou'rt an artful hand!"

which is English-stagey; or as :—

"To Gradlon's daughter, bright of blee,
Her lover he whispered tenderly-

Bethink thee, sweet Dahut! the key!"

which is Anacreontic in the manner of Tom Moore. Yes, it is not a sheer advantage to have several strings 5 to one's bow! if we had been all German, we might have had the science of Germany; if we had been all Celtic, we might have been popular and agreeablé; if we had been all Latinised, we might have governed Ireland as the French govern Alsace, without getting 10 ourselves detested. But now we have Germanism enough to make us Philistines, and Normanism enough to make us imperious, and Celtism enough to make us self-conscious and awkward; but German fidelity to Nature, and Latin precision and clear rea- 15 son, and Celtic quick-wittedness and spirituality, we fall short of. Nay, perhaps, if we are doomed to perish (Heaven avert the omen !), we shall perish by our Celtism, by our self-will and want of patience with ideas, our inability to see the way the world is 20 going; and yet those very Celts, by our affinity with whom we are perishing, will be hating and upbraiding us all the time.

whole truth, however.

This is a somewhat unpleasant view to take of the matter; but if it is true, its being unpleasant does not 25 make it any less true, and we are always the better for seeing the truth. What we here see is not the So long as this mixed constitution of our nature possesses us, we pay it tribute and serve it; so soon as we possess it, it pays us 30 tribute and serves us. So long as we are blindly and ignorantly rolled about by the forces of our nature,

ance, they may be 5 carry us forward. our German part,

their contradiction baffles us and lames us; so soon as we have clearly discerned what they are, and begun to apply to them a law of measure, control, and guidmade to work for our good and to Then we may have the good of the good of our Latin part, the good of our Celtic part; and instead of one part clashing with the other, we may bring it in to continue and perfect the other, when the other has given us Io all the good it can yield, and by being pressed further, could only give us its faulty excess. Then we may use the German faithfulness to Nature to give us science, and to free us from insolence and self-will; we may use the Celtic quickness of perception to give 15 us delicacy, and to free us from hardness and Philistinism; we may use the Latin decisiveness to give us strenuous clear method, and to free us from fumbling and idling. Already, in their untrained state, these elements give signs, in our life and literature, of their 20 being present in us, and a kind of prophecy of what they could do for us if they were properly observed, trained, and applied. But this they have not yet been; we ride one force of our nature to death; we will be nothing but Anglo-Saxons in the Old World 25 or in the New; and when our race has built Bold Street, Liverpool, and pronounced it very good, it.. hurries across the Atlantic, and builds Nashville, and Jacksonville, and Milledgeville, and thinks it is fulfilling the designs of Providence in an incomparable 30 manner. But true Anglo-Saxons, simply and sincerely rooted in the German nature, we are not and cannot be; all we have accomplished by our onesideness is

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