“The people,” says Professor Huxley, “are vastly less Teutonic than their language.”  It is not likely that any absolutely pure-blooded Anglo-Saxons now exist in our midst at all, except perhaps among the farmer class in the most Teutonic and agricultural shires:  and even this exception is extremely doubtful.  Persons bearing the most obviously Celtic names—­Welsh, Cornish, Irish, or Highland Scots—­are to be found in all our large towns, and scattered up and down through the country districts.  Hence we may conclude with great probability that the Anglo-Saxon blood has long since been everywhere diluted by a strong Celtic intermixture.  Even in the earliest times and in the most Teutonic counties, many serfs of non-Teutonic race existed from the very beginning:  their masters have ere now mixed with other non-Teutonic families elsewhere, till even the restricted English people at the present day can hardly claim to be much more than half Anglo-Saxon.  Nor do the Teutons now even retain their position as a ruling caste.  Mixed Celts in England itself have long since risen to many high places.  Leading families of Welsh, Cornish, Scotch, and Irish blood have also been admitted into the peerage of the United Kingdom, and form a large proportion of the House of Commons, of the official world, and of the governing class in India, the Colonies, and the empire generally.  These families have again intermarried with the nobility and gentry of English, Danish, or Norman extraction, and thus have added their part to the intricate intermixture of the two races.  At the present day, we can only speak of the British people as Anglo-Saxons in a conventional sense:  so far as blood goes, we need hardly hesitate to set them down as a pretty equal admixture of Teutonic and Celtic elements.

In character, the Anglo-Saxons have bequeathed to us much of the German solidity, industry, and patience, traits which have been largely amalgamated with the intellectual quickness and emotional nature of the Celt, and have thus produced the prevailing English temperament as we actually know it.  To the Anglo-Saxon blood we may doubtless attribute our general sobriety, steadiness, and persistence; our scientific patience and thoroughness; our political moderation and endurance; our marked love of individual freedom and impatience of arbitrary restraint.  The Anglo-Saxon was slow to learn, but retentive of what he learnt.  On the other hand, he was unimaginative; and this want of imagination may be traced in the more Teutonic counties to the present day.  But when these qualities have been counteracted by the Celtic wealth of fancy, the race has produced the great English literature,—­a literature whose form is wholly Roman, while in matter, its more solid parts doubtless owe much to the Teuton, and its lighter portions, especially its poetry and romance, can be definitely traced in great measure to known Celtic elements.  While the Teutonic blood differentiates our somewhat slow and steady character from the more logical but volatile and unstable Gaul, the Celtic blood differentiates it from the far slower, heavier, and less quick or less imaginative Teutons of Germany and Scandinavia.