Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/105

Rh wedding music to immortal verse, and pouring forth a passionate utterance in a few but beautiful words, the Celtic is only equalled by the Semitic race.

Their remaining literature is of such modern growth, and was so specially copied from what had preceded it, or so influenced by the contemporary effusions of other people, that it is impossible accurately to discriminate what is due to race and what to circumstances. All that can safely be said is, that Celtic literature is always more epigrammatic, more brilliant, and more daring than that of the sober Aryan; but its coruscations neither light to so great a depth, nor last so long as less dazzling productions might do. They may be the most brilliant, but they certainly do not belong to the highest class of literary effort; nor is their effect on the destiny of man likely to be so permanent.

The true glory of the Celt in Europe is his artistic eminence. It is perhaps not too much to assert that without his intervention we should not have possessed in modern times a church worthy of admiration, or a picture or a statue we could look at without shame.

In their arts, too,—either from their higher status, or from their admixture with Aryans,—we escape the instinctive fixity which makes the arts of the pure Turanian as unprogressive as the works of birds or of beavers. Restless intellectual progress characterizes everything they perform; and had their arts not been nipped in the bud by circumstances over which they had no control, we might have seen something that would have shamed even Greece and wholly eclipsed the arts of Rome.

They have not, it is true, that instinctive knowledge of color which distinguishes the Turanian, nor have they been able to give to music that intellectual culture which has been elaborated by the Aryans; but in the middle path between the two they excel both. They are far better musicians than the former, and far better colorists than the last-named races; but in modern Europe Architecture is practically their own. Where their influence was strongest, there Architecture was most perfect; as they decayed, or as the Aryan influence prevailed, the art first languished, and then died.

Their quasi-Turanian theology required Temples almost as grand as those of the Copts or Tamuls; and, like them, they sought to honor those who had been mortals by splendor which mortals are assumed to be pleased with; and the pomp of their worship always surpassed that with which they honored their Kings. Even more remarkable than this is the fact that they could and did build Tombs such as a Turanian might have envied, not for their size but for their