Page:Speeches and addresses by the late Thomas E Ellis M P.pdf/117

 The Celts always have, and, I trust, always will bear witness against materialism, against the strong tendency of peoples to commonness, hardness, and materialness of life. This is no doubt the tendency of the Teuton. Mark how Mr. Matthew Arnold described the pure Teuton at home in Germany:—

"The universal dead level of plainness and homeliness, the lack of all beauty and distinction in form and feature, the slowness and the clumsiness of the language, the eternal beer, sausages, and bad tobacco, the blank commonness everywhere, pressing at last like a weight on the spirits of the traveller in Northern Germany-and making him impatient to be gone—this is the weak side; the industry, the well-doing, the patient steady elaboration of things, the idea of science governing all departments of human activity—this is the strong side."

Against this commonness, against life made mechanical by elaborate science, by conventionality and luxury, the Celt instinctively rebels. He is always ready, says Mr. Henri Martin, to rebel against the despotism of