Celt-hater, I hastened to add, as the reader will see by referring to
the passage, {0a} words of explanation and apology for so calling
him. But I thought then, and I think still, that Mr. Nash, in
pursuing his work of demolition, too much puts out of sight the
positive and constructive performance for which this work of
demolition is to clear the ground. I thought then, and I think
still, that in this Celtic controversy, as in other controversies, it
is most desirable both to believe and to profess that the work of
construction is the fruitful and important work, and that we are
demolishing only to prepare for it. Mr. Nash's scepticism seems to
me,--in the aspect in which his work, on the whole, shows it,--too
absolute, too stationary, too much without a future; and this tends
to make it, for the non-Celtic part of his readers, less fruitful
than it otherwise would be, and for his Celtic readers, harsh and
repellent. I have therefore suffered my remarks on Mr. Nash still to
stand, though with a little modification; but I hope he will read
them by the light of these explanations, and that he will believe my
sense of esteem for his work to be a thousand times stronger than my
sense of difference from it.

To lead towards solid ground, where the Celt may with legitimate
satisfaction point to traces of the gifts and workings of his race,
and where the Englishman may find himself induced to sympathise with
that satisfaction and to feel an interest in it, is the design of all
the considerations urged in the following essay. Kindly taking the
will for the deed, a Welshman and an old acquaintance of mine, Mr.
Hugh Owen, received my remarks with so much cordiality, that he asked
me to come to the Eisteddfod last summer at Chester, and there to
read a paper on some topic of Celtic literature or antiquities. In
answer to this flattering proposal of Mr. Owen's, I wrote him a