The Old World (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ...of the earth. The race speech long ago died out in the land of the Gaul; it is gone from the land of the Cornishman; it is unspoken in the Channel Islands; it is a rapidly dying speech to the Celt of Ireland and Scotland and Wales. The race identity of the Celts who yet remain distinct as a people seems fated to be soon lost in the sturdier folk-life of the Englishspeaking peoples. Yet the Celt has had a work to do; and he has done it well. It has been said that the work of the Norman in Britain was to tone up the sluggish Saxon blood. So the work of the Celt may be described as that of lightening up the somber gloom of the Latin, and of the English-speaking Teuton with whom he has mingled his blood. His sunny temper, his cheerfulness, his elasticity of temperament, have seemed as the bringing in of the sunshine to race lives that were not sunny. He has been to the Teutonic race life what Baldur was to the Teutonic theogony, the coming in of the light and gladness of the morning. That old English and Norse blood was not a cheerful nor a kindly blood. It was strong, but it was harsh and hard. The strain of Celtic blood has helped to humanize and sweeten it. It has been as a leaven which has left its trace in the literature, the race constitution, the daily life. And now as the kindly rain which has watered and quickened the earth, and then returns again to be lost in the waters of the sea, so the Celt, his separate race life lived out, his work done, goes back whence he came, to be again mingled and lost in the blood of the broader folk-life of the Aryan peoples. And the French man, that Celto-man of the " Omnis Gallia in tres partes divisa est," the man of whom Caesar said, "Who in their own tongue are called Celts, in...