while out of their cradle, still engaged in their wanderings, changes
of place and struggle for development, so long as they have not yet
crystallised into solid nations, they may touch and mix in passing,
and yet very little come of it. It is when the embryo has grown and
solidified into a distinct nation, into the Gaul or German of
history, when it has finally acquired the characters which make the
Gaul of history what he is, the German of history what he is, that
contact and mixture are important, and may leave a long train of
effects; for Celt and Teuton by this time have their formed, marked,
national, ineffaceable qualities to oppose or to communicate. The
contact of the German of the Continent with the Celt was in the pre-
historic times, and the definite German type, as we know it, was
fixed later, and from the time when it became fixed was not
influenced by the Celtic type. But here in our country, in historic
times, long after the Celtic embryo had crystallised into the Celt
proper, long after the Germanic embryo had crystallised into the
German proper, there was an important contact between the two
peoples; the Saxons invaded the Britons and settled themselves in the
Britons' country. Well, then, here was a contact which one might
expect would leave its traces; if the Saxons got the upper hand, as
we all know they did, and made our country be England and us be
English, there must yet, one would think, be some trace of the Saxon
having met the Briton; there must be some Celtic vein or other
running through us. Many people say there is nothing at all of the
kind, absolutely nothing; the Saturday Review treats these matters of
ethnology with great power and learning, and the Saturday Review says
we are 'a nation into which a Norman element, like a much smaller
Celtic element, was so completely absorbed that it is vain to seek
after Norman or Celtic elements in any modern Englishman.' And the
other day at Zurich I read a long essay on English literature by one