an artistic feeling, a happy
audacity, inventive power that made them, as it were, the oxygen of any
combination of race into which they entered. He had often quoted the
statement made by Mr Fergusson in his "History of Architecture," that,
but for the Celts, there would hardly have been a church worth looking
at in Europe. That might be over expressive of the truth, but it did
point to the truth; and the more we recognise the truth thus indicated
the sooner there would be an end of ignorant class feeling that delayed
such union as was yet to be made of Celt with Saxon--each an essential
part of England, each with a strength to give, a strength to take. We
had remains of ancient Celtic literature; some representing--with such
variation as oral traditions would produce--a life as old as that of the
third century in songs of the battle of Gabhra, and the bards and
warriors of that time, some recalling the first days of enforced fusion
between Celt and Teuton in the sixth century. There were old
manuscripts, enshrining records, ancient when written, of which any
nation civilised enough to know the worth of its own literature must be
justly proud. Our story began with the Celt, and as it advanced it was
most noticeable that among the voices of good men representing early
English literature, whenever the voice came from a man who advanced
himself beyond his fellows by originality of thought, by happy audacity
as poet or philosopher, it was (until the times of Chaucer) always the
voice of a man who was known to have, or might reasonably be supposed to
have, Celtic blood in his veins; always from a man born where the two
races had lived together and blended, or were living side by side and
blending. Before the Conquest it was always in the north of England,
afterwards always along the line of the west, until in the latter part
of the fourteenth century, London was large and busy enough to receive
within itself men from all parts, and became a sort of mixing-tub for
the ingredients of England. From that time the blending has been
general, though it might even now be said that we are strongest where it
has been most complete. With such opinions then, derived by an
Englishman who might almost call himself most south of the south, from
an unbiassed study of the past life of his country, he could not do
other than support most heartily the resolution--"That a complete view
of the character and origin of society, as it exists in these