Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/157

Rh the firm trammels of the Shemitic spirit. This is so true that Jews and Mahometans have nothing but aversion for this religion, the sister of their own; but which, in the hands of another race, has clothed itself with exquisite poetry, the enchanting adornment of romantic legends. Beings, gentle, sensitive, and imaginative, such as the author of The Imitation of Christ, such as the mystics of the middle ages, such as the saints in general, have professed a religion proceeding in truth from the Shemitic mind, but transformed in all its parts, by the genius of modern nations, especially by the Celtic and Germanic races. That depth of sentiment, that tender melancholy, found in the religion of a Francis of Assisi, of a Fra Angelico, were every way opposed to Shemitic genius, essentially hard and dry.

As for the future, gentlemen, I foresee, more and more, the triumph of Indo-European genius. From the sixteenth century, one great fact, till then doubtful, continues to manifest itself with striking energy; it