f, or
the instruction in classic art and science which accompanied it, you
cannot rightly judge, without taking the pains, and they will not, I
think, be irksome, of noticing carefully, and fixing permanently in
your minds, the separating characteristics of the greater races, both
in those who learned and those who taught.
[Footnote 1: Gibbon, in his 37th chapter, makes Ulphilas also an
Arian, but might have forborne, with grace, his own definition of
orthodoxy:--and you are to observe generally that at this time the
teachers who admitted the inferiority of Christ to the Father as
touching his Manhood, were often counted among Arians, but quite
falsely. Christ's own words, "My Father is greater than I," end that
controversy at once. Arianism consists not in asserting the subjection
of the Son to the Father, but in denying the subjected Divinity.]
Of the Huns and Vandals we need not speak. They are merely forms of
Punishment and Destruction. Put them out of your minds altogether, and
remember only the names of the immortal nations, which abide on their
native rocks, and plough their unconquered plains, at this hour.
Briefly, in the north,--Briton, Norman, Frank, Saxon, Ostrogoth,
Lombard; briefly, in the south,--Tuscan, Roman, Greek, Syrian,
Egyptian, Arabian.
Now of these races, the British (I avoid the word Celtic, because you
would expect me to say Keltic; and I don't mean to, lest you should
be wanting me next to call the patroness of music St. Kekilia), the
British, including Breton, Cornish, Welsh, Irish, Scot, and Pict, are,
I believe, of all the northern races, the one which has deepest love
of external nature;--and the richest inherent gift of pure music and
song, as such; separated from the intellectual gift which raises song
into poetry. They are naturally also religious, and for some centuries
after their own conversion are one of the chief evangelizing powers
in Christendom. But they are neither apprehensive nor receptive;--they
cannot understand the classic races, and learn scarcely anything from
them; perhaps better so, if the classic races had been more careful to
understand _them_.
Next, the Norman is scarcely more apprehensive than the Celt, but he
is more constructive, and uses to good advantage what he learns from
the Frank. His main characteristic is an energy, which never exhausts
itself in vain anger, desire, or sorrow, but abides and rules, like a
living rock:--where he wanders, he flow
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