of the Celt's grasp," wrote Matthew Arnold. But all the while the Celt
has great compensations. To him belongs another world than the visible;
the world of phantasmagoria, of emotion, the world of passionate
beginnings, rather than of things achieved. After the romantic and
defiant days of his youth, my father, still pursuing the same natural
tendency, found all that he needed in Catholicism, and specially, I
think, in that endless poetry and mystery of the Mass which keeps
Catholicism alive.

Matthew Arnold was very different in outward aspect. The face, strong
and rugged, the large mouth, the broad lined brow, and vigorous
coal-black hair, bore no resemblance, except for that fugitive yet
vigorous something which we call "family likeness," to either his father
or mother--still less to the brother so near to him in age. But the
Celtic trace is there, though derived, I have sometimes thought, rather
from an Irish than a Cornish source. Doctor Arnold's mother, Martha
Delafield, according to a genealogy I see no reason to doubt, was partly
of Irish blood; one finds, at any rate, Fitzgeralds and Dillons among
the names of her forebears. And I have seen in Ireland faces belonging
to the "black Celt" type--faces full of power and humor, and softness,
visibly molded out of the good common earth by the nimble spirit within,
which have reminded me of my uncle. Nothing, indeed, at first sight
could have been less romantic or dreamy than his outer aspect.
"Ineffectualness" was not to be thought of in connection with him. He
stood four-square--a courteous, competent man of affairs, an admirable
inspector of schools, a delightful companion, a guest whom everybody
wanted and no one could bind for long; one of the sanest, most
independent, most cheerful and lovable of mortals. Yet his poems show
what was the real inner life and genius of the man; how rich in that
very "emotion," "love of beauty and charm," "rebellion against fact,"