joy and to sorrow; this is the main point.  If the downs of life too much outnumber the ups, this temperament, just because it is so quickly and nearly conscious of all impressions, may no doubt be seen shy and wounded; it may be seen in wistful regret, it may be seen in passionate, penetrating melancholy; but its essence is to aspire ardently after life, light, and emotion, to be expansive, adventurous, and gay.  Our word gay, it is said, is itself Celtic.  It is not from gaudium, but from the Celtic gair, to laugh; {84} and the impressionable Celt, soon up and soon down, is the more down because it is so his nature to be up to be sociable, hospitable, eloquent, admired, figuring away brilliantly.  He loves bright colours, he easily becomes audacious, overcrowing, full of fanfaronade.  The German, say the physiologists, has the larger volume of intestines (and who that has ever seen a German at a table-d’hote will not readily believe this?), the Frenchman has the more developed organs of respiration.  That is just the expansive, eager Celtic nature; the head in the air, snuffing and snorting; A proud look and A high stomach, as the Psalmist says, but without any such settled savage temper as the Psalmist seems to impute by those words.  For good and for bad, the Celtic genius is more airy and unsubstantial, goes less near the ground, than the German.  The Celt is often called sensual; but it is not so much the vulgar satisfactions of sense that attract him as emotion and excitement; he is truly, as I began by saying, sentimental.

Sentimental,—­always ready to react against the despotism of fact; that is the description a great friend {85} of the Celt gives of him; and it is not a bad description of the sentimental temperament; it lets us into the secret of its dangers and of its habitual want of success.  Balance, measure, and patience, these are the eternal conditions, even supposing the happiest temperament to start with, of high success; and balance, measure, and patience are just what the Celt has never had.  Even in the world of spiritual creation, he has never, in spite of his admirable gifts of quick perception and warm emotion, succeeded perfectly, because he never has had steadiness, patience, sanity enough to comply with the conditions under which alone can expression be perfectly given to the finest perceptions and emotions.  The Greek has the same perceptive, emotional temperament as the Celt; but he adds to this temperament the sense of measure; hence his admirable success in the plastic arts, in which the Celtic genius, with its chafing against the despotism of fact, its perpetual straining after mere emotion, has accomplished nothing.  In the comparatively petty art of ornamentation, in rings, brooches, crosiers, relic-cases, and so on, he has done just enough to show his delicacy of taste, his happy temperament; but the grand difficulties of painting