Page:Pleasures of England (1888).djvu/37

 These, briefly, are the six barbaric nations who are to be taught: and of whose native arts and faculties, before they receive any tutorship from the south, I find no well-sifted account in any history:—but thus much of them, collecting your own thoughts and knowledge, you may easily discern—they were all, with the exception of the Scots, practical workers and builders in wood; and those of them who had coasts, first rate sea-boat builders, with fine mathematical instincts and practice in that kind far developed, necessarily good sail-weaving, and sound fur-stitching, with stout iron-work of nail and rivet; rich copper and some silver work in decoration—the Celts developing peculiar gifts in linear design, but wholly incapable of drawing animals or figures;—the Saxons and Franks having enough capacity in that kind, but no thought of attempting it; the Normans and Lombards still farther remote from any such skill. More and more, it seems to me wonderful that under your British block-temple, grimly extant on its pastoral plain, or beside the first crosses engraved on the rock at Whithorn—you English and Scots do not oftener consider what you might or could have come to, left to yourselves.

Next, let us form the list of your tutor nations, in whom it generally pleases you to look at nothing but the corruptions. If we could get into the habit of thinking more of our own corruptions and more of their virtues, we should have a better chance of