magically vivid and near interpretation of nature; since it is this which constitutes the special charm and power of the effect I am calling attention to, and it is for this that the Celt's sensibility gives him a peculiar aptitude. But Europe tends constantly to become more and more one community, and we tend to become Europeans instead of merely Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, so whatever aptitude or felicity one people imparts into spiritual work, gets imitated by the others, and thus tends to become the common property of all. Therefore anything so beautiful and attractive as the natural magic I am speaking of, is sure, nowadays, if it appears in the productions of the Celt's, or of the English, or of the French, to appear in the productions of the Germans also, or in the productions of the Italians; but there will be a stamp of perfectness and inimitableness about it in the literatures where it is native, which it will not have in the literatures where it not native. A rough-and-ready critic easily credits the Germans with the Celtic fineness of tact, the Celtic nearness to Nature and her secret; but do the strokes in the German's picture of nature ever have the indefinable delicacy of charm, and perfection of the Celt's touch?

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 to Philistinism culture, and insight, and dignity, and acceptance, and weight among the nations, and hold on events that de

deeply concern us, and control of the future, and yet that it cannot even give us the fool's paradise it promised us; 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 approaches of culture. But the hard unintelligence, which is just now our bane, cannot be conquered by storm, it must be supplied and reduced by culture, by a growth in the variety, fullness, and sweetness of our spiritual life; and this end can only be reached by studying things that are outside of ourselves and by studying them disinterestedly.