vation which they are unable either to
communicate or to increase. They are a negative element in the world;
sometimes the barrier, sometimes the instrument, sometimes the material
of those races to whom it is given to originate and to advance. Their
existence is either passive, or reactionary and destructive, when, after
intervening like the blind forces of nature, they speedily exhibit their
uncreative character, and leave others to pursue the course to which
they have pointed. The Chinese are a people of this kind. They have long
remained stationary, and succeeded in excluding the influences of
general history. So the Hindoos; being Pantheists, they have no history
of their own, but supply objects for commerce and for conquest. So the
Huns, whose appearance gave a sudden impetus to a stagnant world. So the
Slavonians, who tell only in the mass, and whose influence is
ascertainable sometimes by adding to the momentum of active forces,
sometimes by impeding through inertness the progress of mankind.

To this class of nations also belong the Celts of Gaul. The Roman and
the German conquerors have not altered their character as it was drawn
two thousand years ago. They have a history, but it is not theirs; their
nature remains unchanged, their history is the history of the invaders.
The revolution was the revival of the conquered race, and their reaction
against the creations of their masters. But it has been cunning only to
destroy; it has not given life to one constructive idea, or durability
to one new institution; and it has exhibited to the world an
unparalleled political incapacity, which was announced by Burke, and
analysed by Tocqueville, in works which are the crowning pieces of two
great literatures.

The Celts of these islands, in like manner, waited for a foreign
influence to set in action the rich treasure which in their own hands
could be of no avail. Their language was more flexible, their poetry and
music more copious, than those of the Anglo-Normans. Their laws, if we
may judge from those of Wales, display a society in some respects highly
cultivated. But, like the rest of that group of nations to which they
belong, there was not in them the incentive to action and progress which
is given by the consciousness of a part in human destiny, by the
inspiration of a high idea, or even by the natural development of
institutions. Their life and literature were aimless and wasteful.
Without combination or concen