to blur and confuse the natural basis in ourselves altogether, and to become something eccentric, unattractive, and inharmonious.

A man of exquisite intelligence and charming character, the late Mr. Cobden, used to fancy that a 5 better acquaintance with the United States was the grand panacea for us; and once in a speech he bewailed the inattention of our seats of learning to them, and seemed to think that if our ingenuous youth at Oxford were taught a little less about the 10 Ilissus, and a little more about Chicago, we should all be the better for it. Chicago has its claims upon us, no doubt; but it is evident that from the point of view to which I have been leading, a stimulation of our Anglo-Saxonism, such as is intended by Mr. Cob- 15 den's proposal, does not appear the thing most needful for us; seeing our American brothers themselves have rather, like us, to try and moderate the flame of Anglo-Saxonism, in their own breasts, than to ask us to clap the bellows to it in ours. So I am inclined to 20 beseech Oxford, instead of expiating her over-addiction to the Ilissus by lectures on Chicago, to give us an expounder for a still more remote-looking object than the Ilissus,-the Celtic languages and literature. And yet why should I call it remote? if, as I have 25 been labouring to show, in the spiritual frame of us English ourselves, a Celtic fibre, little as we may have ever thought of tracing it, lives and works. Aliens in speech, in religion, in blood! said Lord Lyndhurst; the philologists have set him right about the speech, the 30 physiologists about the blood; and perhaps, taking religion in the wide but true sense of our whole

So.

spiritual activity, those who have followed what I have been saying here will think that the Celt is not so wholly alien to us in religion. But, at any rate, let us consider that of the shrunken and diminished 5 remains of this great primitive race, all, with one insignificant exception, belongs to the English empire; only Brittany is not ours; we have Ireland; the Scotch Highlands, Wales, the Isle of Man, Cornwall. They are a part of ourselves, we are deeply interested 10 in knowing them, they are deeply interested in being known by us; and yet in the great and rich universities of this great and rich country there is no chair of Celtic, there is no study or teaching of Celtic matters; those who want them must go abroad for them. 15 It is neither right nor reasonable that this should be Ireland has had in the last half century a band of Celtic students,-a band with which death, alas! has of late been busy,-from whence Oxford or Cambridge might have taken an admirable professor of 20 Celtic; and with the authority of a university chair, a great Celtic scholar, on a subject little known, and where all would have readily deferred to him, might have by this time doubled our facilities for knowing the Celt, by procuring for this country Celtic docu25 ments, which were inaccessible here, and preventing. the dispersion of others which were accessible. It is not much that the English Government does for science or literature; but if Eugene O'Curry, from a chair of Celtic at Oxford, had appealed to the Government to 30 get him copies or the originals of the Celtic treasures in the Burgundian Library at Brussels, or' in the library of St. Isidore's College at Rome, even the

English Government could not well have refused him. The invaluable Irish manuscripts in the Stowe Library the late Sir Robert Peel proposed, in 1849, to buy for the British Museum; Lord Macaulay, one of the trustees of the Museum, declared, with the confident 5 shallowness which makes him so admired by public speakers and leading-article writers, and so intolerable to all searchers for truth, that he saw nothing in the whole collection worth purchasing for the Museum, except the correspondence of Lord Melville on the 10 American war. That is to say, this correspondence of Lord Melville's was the only thing in the collection about which Lord Macaulay himself knew or cared. Perhaps an Oxford or Cambridge professor of Celtic might have been allowed to make his voice heard, on 15 a matter of Celtic manuscripts, even against Lord Macaulay. The manuscripts were bought by Lord Ashburnham, who keeps them shut up, and will let no one consult them (at least up to the date when O'Curry published his Lectures he did so) "for fear an actual 20 acquaintance with their contents should decrease their value as matter of curiosity at some future transfer or sale." Who knows? Perhaps an Oxford professor of Celtic might have touched the flinty heart of Lord Ashburnham.

25

At this moment, when the narrow Philistinism, which has long had things its own way in England, is showing its natural fruits, and we are beginning to feel ashamed, and uneasy, and alarmed at it; now, when we are becoming aware that we have sacrificed 30 to Philistinism culture, and insight, and dignity, and acceptance, and weight among the nations, and hold

on events that deeply concern us, and control of the future, and yet that it cannot even give us the fool's paradise it promised us, but is apt to break down, and to leave us with Mr. Roebuck's and Mr. Lowe's lauda5 tions of our matchless happiness, and the largest circulation in the world assured to the Daily Telegraph, for our only comfort; at such a moment it needs some moderation not to be attacking Philistinism by storm, but to mine it through such gradual means as the slow 10 approaches of culture, and the introduction of chairs. of Celtic. But the hard unintelligence, which is just now our bane, cannot be conquered by storm; it must be suppled and reduced by culture, by a growth in the variety, fulness, and sweetness of our spiritual 15 life; and this end can only be reached by studying things that are outside of ourselves, and by studying them disinterestedly. Let us unite ourselves with our better mind and with the world through science; and let it be one of our angelic revenges on the Phil20 istines, who among their other sins are the guilty authors of Fenianism, to found at Oxford a chair of Celtic, and to send, through the gentle ministration of science, a message of peace to Ireland.—On the Study of Celtic Literature, ed. 1895, pp. 131–137.

SIR:

Compulsory Education.

GRUBB STREET, April 21, 1867.

I take up the thread of the interesting and important discussion on compulsory education between Arminius and me where I left it last night.

ร

"But," continued Arminius, "you were talking of 5 compulsory education, and your common people's want of it. Now, my dear friend, I want you to understand what this principle of compulsory education really means. It means that to ensure, as far as you can, every man's being fit for his business in life, 10 you put education as a bar, or condition, between him and what he aims at. The principle is just as good for one class as another, and it is only by applying it impartially that you save its application from being insolent and invidious. Our Prussian peasant stands 15 our compelling him to instruct himself before he may go about his calling, because he sees we believe in instruction, and compel our own class, too, in a way to make it really feel the pressure, to instruct itself before it may go about its calling. Now, you propose 20 to make old Diggs's boys instruct themselves before they may go bird-scaring or sheep-tending. I want to know what you do to make those three worthies in