Celtic heathen, if the English apostle delivered his message a little
more agreeably? There is nothing like love and admiration for
bringing people to a likeness with what they love and admire; but the
Englishman seems never to dream of employing these influences upon a
race he wants to fuse with himself. He employs simply material
interests for his work of fusion; and, beyond these, nothing except
scorn and rebuke. Accordingly there is no vital union between him
and the races he has annexed; and while France can truly boast of her
'magnificent unity,' a unity of spirit no less than of name between
all the people who compose her, in England the Englishman proper is
in union of spirit with no one except other Englishmen proper like
himself. His Welsh and Irish fellow-citizens are hardly more
amalgamated with him now than they were when Wales and Ireland were
first conquered, and the true unity of even these small islands has
yet to he achieved. When these papers of mine on the Celtic genius
and literature first appeared in the Cornhill Magazine, they brought
me, as was natural, many communications from Welshmen and Irishmen
having an interest in the subject; and one could not but be painfully
struck, in reading these communications, to see how profound a
feeling of aversion and severance from the English they in general
manifested. Who can be surprised at it, when he observes the strain
of the Times in the articles just quoted, and remembers that this is
the characteristic strain of the Englishman in commenting on
whatsoever is not himself? And then, with our boundless faith in
machinery, we English expect the Welshman as a matter of course to
grow attached to us, because we invite him to do business with us,
and let him hold any number of public meetings and publish all the
newspapers he likes! When shall we learn, that what attaches people
to us is the spirit we are of, and not the machinery we employ?