however well it may do for the Cymri, will never do for the Gael, never do for the typical Irishman of Donnybrook fair. Again, M. Renan's infinie délicatesse de sentiment qui carac5térise la race Celtique; how little that accords with the popular conception of an Irishman who wants to borrow money. Sentiment is, however, the word which marks where the Celtic races really touch and are one; senti whim, flightiness, perverseness; patient fidelity to Nature, in a word, science,-leading it at last, though slowly, and not by the most brilliant road, out of the bondage of the humdrum and common, into the better life. The universal dead-level of plainness and homeliness, the lack of all beauty and distinction in form and feature, the slowness and clumsiness of the language, the eternal beer, sausages, and bad tobacco, the blank commonness every- 10 mental, if the Celtic nature is to be characwhere, pressing at last like a weight on the spirits of the traveller in Northern Germany, and making him impatient to be gone,-this is the weak side; the industry, the well-doing, the patient steady elaboration of things, the 15 idea of science governing all departments of human activity, this is the strong side; and through this side of her genius, Germany has already obtained excellent results, and is destined, we may depend upon it, however her 20 ful regret, it may be seen in passionate, penc terised by a single term, is the best term to take. An organisation quick to feel impressions, and feeling them very strongly; a lively personality therefore, keenly sensitive to joy and to sorrow; this is the main point. If the downs of life too much outnumber the ups, this temperament, just because it is so quickly and nearly conscious of all impressions, may no doubt be seen shy and wounded; it may be seen in wist trating melancholy; but its essence is to aspire ardently after life, light, and emotion, to be expansive, adventurous, and gay. Our word gay, it is said, is itself Celtic. It is not from old Irish poem, assigning the characteristics 25 gaudium, but from the Celtic gair, to laugh; for which different nations are celebrated: For acuteness and valour, the Greeks, For beauty and amorousness, the Gaedhils. and the impressionable Celt, soon up and soon down, is the more down because it is so his nature to be up-to be sociable, hospitable, eloquent, admired, figuring away bril30 liantly. He loves bright colours, he easily becomes audacious, overcrowing, full of fanfaronade. The German, say the physiologists, has the larger volume of intestines (and who that has ever seen a German at a table-d'hôte will not readily believe this?), the Frenchman has the more developed organs of respiration. That is just the expansive, eager, Celtic nature; the head in the air, snuffing and snorting; a proud look and a high stomach, as the Psalmist We have seen in what sense, and with what explanation, this characterisation of the German may be allowed to stand; now let us come to the beautiful and amorous Gaedhil. Or 35 rather, let us find a definition which may suit both branches of the Celtic family, the Cymri as well as the Gael. It is clear that special circumstances may have developed some one side in the national character of the Cymri 40 says, but without any such settled savage or Gael, Welshman or Irishman, so that the observer's notice shall be readily caught by this side, and yet it may be impossible to adopt it as characteristic of the Celtic nature gener temper as the Psalmist seems to impute by those words. For good and for bad, the Celtic genius is more airy and unsubstantial, goes less near the ground, than the German. The Celt ally. For instance, in his beautiful essay on 45 is often called sensual; but it is not so much the poetry of the Celtic races, M. Renan,2 with the vulgar satisfactions of sense that attract him as emotion and excitement; he is truly, as I began by saying, sentimental. Sentimental, always ready to react against the despotism of fact; that is the description a great friend of the Celt gives of him; and it is not a bad description of the sentimental temperament; it lets us into the secret of its dangers and of its habitual want of success. Bal5 Infinite delicacy of sentiment which characterizes the Celtic race. Psalms, ci. 7. (Prayer-Book version) "Whoso hath also a proud look and high stomach, I will not suffer him." 7" Monsieur Henri Martin, whose chapters on the Celts, in his Histoire de France, are full of information and interest." Arnold. ance, measure, and patience, these are the eternal conditions, even supposing the happiest temperament to start with, of high success; and balance, measure, and patience are just what the Celt has never had. Even in the world of spiritual creation, he has never, in spite of his admirable gifts of quick perception and warm emotion, succeeded perfectly, because he has never had steadiness, patience, sanity enough to comply with the conditions 10 under which alone can expression be given to the finest perceptions and emotions. The Greek has the same perceptive, emotional temperament as the Celt; but he adds to this temperament the sense of measure; hence his 15 make progress in material civilisation, and also has not patience for. So he runs off into technic where he employs the utmost elaboration, and attains astonishing skill; but in the contents of his poetry you have only so much interpreta5 tion of the world as the first dash of a quick, strong perception, and then sentiment, infinite sentiment, can bring you. Here, too, his want of sanity and steadfastness has kept the Celt back from the highest success. If his rebellion against fact has thus lamed the Celt even in spiritual work, how much more must it have lamed him in the world of business and politics! The skilful and resolute appliance of means to ends which is needed both to to form powerful states, is just what the Celt has least turn for. He is sensual, as I have said, or at least sensuous; and here he is like the Greek and Latin races; but compare the talent the Greek and Latin (or Latinised) races have shown for gratifying their senses, for procuring an outward life, rich, luxurious, splendid, with the Celt's failure to reach any material civilisation sound and satisfying, and admirable success in the plastic arts, in which the Celtic genius, with its chafing against the despotism of fact, its perpetual straining after mere emotion, has accomplished nothing. In the comparatively petty art of ornamentation, 20 in rings, brooches, crosiers, relic-cases, and so on, he has done just enough to show his delicacy of taste, his happy temperament; but the grand difficulties of painting and sculpture, the prolonged dealings of spirit with 25 not out at elbows, poor, slovenly, and half matter, he has never had patience for. Take barbarous. The sensuousness of the Greek the more spiritual arts of music and poetry. made Sybaris and Corinth, the sensuousness All that emotion alone can do in music the of the Latin made Rome and Baix, the sensuCelt has done; the very soul of emotion breathes ousness of the Latinised Frenchman makes in the Scotch and Irish airs; but with all this 30 Paris; the sensuousness of the Celt proper has power of musical feeling, what has the Celt, made Ireland. Even in his ideal, heroic times, so eager for emotion that he has not patience his gay and sensuous nature cannot carry him, for science, effected in music, to be compared in the appliances of his favorite life of sociawith what the less emotional German, steadily bility and pleasure, beyond the gross and developing his musical feeling with the science 35 creeping Saxon whom he despises; the regent of a Sebastian Bach or a Beethoven, has ef- Breas, we are told in the Battle of Moytura of fected? In poetry, again,-poetry which the the Fomorians, became unpopular because Celt has so passionately, so nobly loved; poetry "the knives of his people were not greased at where emotion counts for so much, but where his table, nor did their breath smell of ale at reason, too, reason, measure, sanity, also 40 the banquet." In its grossness and barbarouscount for so much,-the Celt has shown genius; ness is not that Saxon, as Saxon as it can be? but even here his faults have clung to him, and just what the Latinised Norman, sensuous hindered him from producing great works, and sociable like the Celt, but with the talent such as other nations with a genius for poetry, to make this bent of his serve to a practical -the Greeks, say, or the Italians,-have pro- 45 embellishment of his mode of living, found so disgusting in the Saxon. And as in material civilisation he has been ineffectual, so has the Celt been ineffectual in politics. The colossal, impetuous, adventur duced. The Celt has not produced great poetical works, he has only produced poetry with an air of greatness investing it all, and sometimes giving moreover, to short pieces, or to passages, lines, and snatches of long 50 ous wanderer, the Titan of the early world, pieces, singular beauty and power. And yet he loved poetry so much that he grudged no pains to it; but the true art, the architectonices which shapes great works, such as the Agamemnon or the Divine Comedy, comes only after a 55 has been constantly slipping, ever more and steady, deep-searching survey, a firm conception of the facts of human life, which the Celt The art of the master-builder which enables him to plan and execute great works. who in primitive times fills so large a place on earth's scene, dwindles and dwindles as history goes on, and at last is shrunk to what we now see him. For ages and ages the world more, out of the Celt's grasp. "They went forth to war," Ossian says most truly, "but they always fell.” CULTURE (From Culture and Anarchy, 1869) but always in machinery, as if it had a value in and for itself. What is freedom but machinery? what is population but machinery? what is coal but machinery? what are railroads but 5 machinery? what is wealth but machinery? what are, even, religious organisations_but machinery? Now almost every voice in England is accustomed to speak of these things as if they were precious ends in themselves, and If culture, then, is a study of perfection, and of harmonious perfection, general perfection and perfection which consists in becoming something rather than in having something, in an inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances,—it is clear that culture, instead of being the frivolous 10 therefore had some of the characters of perfec tion indisputably joined to them. I have before now noticed Mr. Roebuck's stock argument for proving the greatness and happiness of England as she is, and for quite stopping and useless thing which Mr. Bright, and Mr. Frederic Harrison, and many other Liberals are apt to call it, has a very important function to fulfil for mankind. And this function is particularly important in our modern world, 15 the mouths of all gainsayers. Mr. Roebuck is never weary of reiterating this argument of his, so I do not know why I should be weary of noticing it. "May not every man in England say what he likes?"-Mr. Roebuck per of which the whole civilisation is, to a much greater degree than the civilisation of Greece and Rome, mechanical and external, and tends constantly to become more and more so. But above all in our own country has culture a 20 petually asks; and that, he thinks, is quite weighty part to perform, because here that mechanical character, which civilisation tends to take everywhere, is shown in the most eminent degree. Indeed nearly all the characters of perfection, as culture teaches us to fix 25 them, meet in this country with some powerful tendency which thwarts them and sets them at defiance. The idea of perfection as an inward condition of the mind and spirit is at variance with the mechanical and material 30 civilisation in esteem with us. The idea of perfection as a general expansion of the human family is at variance with our strong individualism, our hatred of all limits to the unre sufficient, and when every man may say what he likes, our aspirations ought to be satisfied. But the aspirations of culture, which is the study of perfection, are not satisfied, unless what men say, when they may say what they like, is worth saying,-has good in it, and more good than bad. In the same way the Times, replying to some foreign strictures on the dress, looks, and behaviour of the English abroad, urges that the English ideal is that everyone should be free to do and to look just as he likes. But culture indefatigably tries, not to make what each raw person may like, the rule by which he fashions himself; but to draw ever strained swing of the individual's personality, 35 nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw person to like that. And in the same way with respect to railroads and coal. Everyone must have ob our maxim of "every man for himself." Above all, the idea of perfection as a harmonious expansion of human nature is at variance with our want of flexibility, with our inaptitude for seeing more than one side of a thing, with 40 served the strange language current during the our intense energetic absorption in the particular pursuit we happen to be following. So culture has a rough task to achieve in this country. Its preachers have, and are likely long to have, a hard time of it, and they will 45 is an end of the greatness of England. But much oftener be regarded, for a great while to come, as elegant or spurious Jeremiahs than as friends and benefactors. That, however, will not prevent their doing in the end good late discussions as to the possible failures of our supplies of coal. Our coal, thousands of people were saying, is the real basis of our national greatness; if our coal runs short, there what is greatness?-culture makes us ask. Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the outward proof of possessing greatness is that service if they persevere. And, meanwhile, 50 we excite love, interest and admiration. the mode of action that they have to pursue, and the sort of habits they must fight against, ought to be made quite clear for everyone to see, who may be willing to look at the matter attentively and dispassionately. Faith in machinery is, I said, our besetting danger; often in machinery most absurdly disproportioned to the end which this machinery, if it is to do any good at all, is to serve; If England were swallowed up by the sea tomorrow, which of the two, a hundred years hence, would most excite the love, interest, and admiration of mankind,-would most, 55 therefore, show the evidences of having possessed greatness, the England of the last twenty years, or the England of Elizabeth, of a time of splendid spiritual effort, but when our coal, and our industrial operations depend ing on coal, were very little developed? Well, then, what an unsound habit of mind it must be which makes us talk of things like coal or iron as constituting the greatness of England, and how salutary a friend is culture, bent on seeing things as they are, and thus dissipating delusions of this kind and fixing standards of perfection that are real! him forever. No such voices as those which we heard in our youth at Oxford are sounding there now. Oxford has more criticism now, more knowledge, more light; but such voices 5 as those of our youth it has no longer. The name of Cardinal Newman' is a great name to the imagination still; his genius and his style are still things of power. But he is over eighty years old, he is in the Oratory at Bir difficulties which beset men's minds to-day, a solution which, to speak frankly, is impossible. Forty years ago he was in the very prime of life; he was close at hand to us at Wealth, again, that end to which our prodigious works for material advantage are 10 mingham; he has adopted, for the doubts and directed, the commonest of commonplace tells us how men are always apt to regard wealth as a precious end in itself; and certainly they have never been so apt thus to regard it as they are in England at the present time. 15 Oxford; he was preaching in St. Mary's pulpit Never did people believe anything more firmly than nine Englishmen out of ten at the present day believe that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being so very rich. Now, the every Sunday; he seemed about to transform and to renew what was for us the most national and natural institution in the world, the Church of England. Who could resist the use of culture is that it helps us, by means of 20 charm of that spiritual apparition, gliding in its spiritual standard of perfection, to regard wealth as but machinery, and not only to say as a matter of words that we regard wealth as but machinery, but really to perceive and feel that it is so. If it were not for this purging 25 effect wrought upon our minds by culture, the whole world, the future as well as the present, would inevitably belong to the Philistines. The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very 30 and chances of this troubled, unhealthy state, the dim afternoon light through the aisles of St. Mary's, rising into the pulpit, and then, in the most entrancing of voices, breaking the silence with words and thoughts which were a religious music,-subtle, sweet, mournful? I seem to hear him still, saying: "After the fever of life, after wearinesses and sicknesses, fightings and despondings, languor and fretfulness, struggling and succeeding; after all the changes at length comes death, at length the white throne of God, at length the beatific vision." Or, if we followed him back to his seclusion at Littlemore, that dreary village by the London rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call Philistines. Culture says: "Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of voice; look at 35 road, and to the house of retreat and the church which he built there,--a mean house such as Paul might have lived in when he was tentmaking at Ephesus, a church plain and thinly sown with worshippers,-who could resist him them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth 40 there either, welcoming back to the severe having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it?" And thus culture begets a dissatisfaction which is of the highest possible value in stemming the common tide of men's thoughts in a wealthy 45 and industrial community, and which saves the future, as one may hope, from being vulgarised, even if it cannot save the present. THE VOICES OF YOUTH joys of church-fellowship, and of daily worship and prayer, the firstlings of a generation which had well-nigh forgot them? Again I seem to hear him: "The season is chill and dark, and the breath of the morning is damp, and worshippers are few; but all this befits those who are by their profession penitents and mourners, watchers and pilgrims. More dear to them that loneliness, more cheerful that severity, 50 and more bright that gloom, than all those aids and appliances of luxury by which men (From "Emerson," in Discourses in America, nowadays attempt to make prayer less dis 1885) Forty years ago, when I was an undergradu- 55 ate at Oxford, voices were in the air there which haunt my memory still. Happy the man who in that susceptible season of youth hears such voices! they are a possession to agreeable to them. True faith does not covet comforts; they who realise that awful day, 1 One of the great leaders of the Oxford movement. Newman became a convert to the Roman Catholic Church in 1845, and thereafter spent the greater part of his life at the Oratory at Birmingham. He died in 1890. The University Church at Oxford. Newman's residence just outside of Oxford. when they shall see Him face to face whose eyes are as a flame of fire, will as little bargain to pray pleasantly now, as they will think of doing so then." a present object for your heart and imagination. That is surely the most potent of all influences! nothing can come up to it. To us at Oxford Emerson was but a voice speaking 5 from three thousand miles away. But so well he spoke, that from that time forth Boston Bay and Concord were names invested to my ear with a sentiment akin to that which invests for me the names of Oxford and of 10 Weimar; and snatches of Emerson's strain fixed themselves in my mind as imperishably as any of the eloquent words which I have been just now quoting. "Then dies the man in you; then once more perish the buds of art, Somewhere or other I have spoken of those "last enchantments of the Middle Age" which Oxford sheds around us, and here they were! But there were other voices sounding in our ear besides Newman's. There was the puissant voice of Carlyle; so sorely strained, over-used, and misused since, but then fresh, comparatively sound, and reaching our hearts with true, pathetic eloquence. Who can forget the emotion of receiving in its first freshness such a sentence as that sentence of Carlyle 15 poetry, and science, as they have died already upon Edward Irving, then just dead: "Scotland sent him forth a herculean man; our mad Babylon wore and wasted him with all her engines, and it took her twelve years!" A greater voice still,-the greatest voice of that 20 century, came to us in those youthful years through Carlyle: the voice of Goethe. To this day, such is the force of youthful associations, I read the Wilhelm Meister with more pleasure in Carlyle's translation than in the 25 original. The large, liberal view of human life in Wilhelm Meister, how novel it was to the Englishman in those days! and it was salutary, too, and educative for him, doubtless, as well as novel. But what moved us most in Wilhelm 30 Meister was that which, after all, will always move the young most,-the poetry, the eloquence. Never, surely, was Carlyle's prose so beautiful and pure as in the rendering of the Youth's dirge over Mignon!-"Well is our 35 treasure now laid up, the fair image of the past. Here sleeps it in the marble, undecaying; in your hearts, also, it lives, it works. Travel, travel, back into life! Take along with you this holy earnestness, for earnestness alone 40 makes life eternity." Here we had the voice of the great Goethe;-not the stiff, and hindered, and frigid, and factitious Goethe who speaks to us too often from those sixty volumes of his, but of the great Goethe, and the true 45 one. in a thousand thousand men." "What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand." "Trust thyself! every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the Divine Providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connexion of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age; betraying their perception that the Eternal was stirring at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest spirit the same transcendent destiny; and not pinched in a corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but redeemers and benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble clay plastic under the Almighty effort, let us advance and advance on chaos and the dark!" These lofty sentences of Emerson, and a hundred others of like strain, I have never lost out of my memory; I never can lose them. WORDSWORTH (From Essays in Criticism, Second Series, 1888) Long ago, in speaking of Homer, I said that the noble and profound application of ideas to life is the most essential part of poetic greatness. I said that a great poet receives his distinctive character of superiority from his And besides those voices, there came to us in that old Oxford time a voice also from this side of the Atlantic,-a clear and pure voice, which for my ear, at any rate, brought a strain 50 application, under the conditions immutably as new, and moving, and unforgettable, as fixed by the laws of poetic beauty and poetic truth, from his application, I say, to his subject, whatever it may be, of the ideas "On man, on nature, and on human life," which he has acquired for himself. The line quoted is Wordsworth's own; and his superiority arises from his powerful use; in his best pieces, his powerful application to his |