this;—­a speech from the throne falls essentially within the sphere of rhetoric, it is one’s sense of rhetoric which has to fix its tone and style, so as to keep a certain note always sounding in it; in an English speech from the throne, whatever its faults, this rhetorical note is always struck and kept to; in a Prussian speech from the throne, never.  An English speech from the throne is rhetoric; a Prussian speech is half talk,—­heavy talk,—­and half effusion.  This is one instance, it may be said; true, but in one instance of this kind the presence or the absence of an aptitude for rhetoric is decisively shown.  Well, then, why am I not to say that we English get our rhetorical sense from the Norman element in us,—­our turn for this strenuous, direct, high-spirited talent of oratory, from the influence of the strenuous, direct, high-spirited Normans?  Modes of life, institutions, government, and other such causes, are sufficient, I shall be told, to account for English oratory.  Modes of life, institutions, government, climate, and so forth,—­let me say it once for all,—­will further or hinder the development of an aptitude, but they will not by themselves create the aptitude or explain it.  On the other hand, a people’s habit and complexion of nature go far to determine its modes of life, institutions, and government, and even to prescribe the limits within which the influences of climate shall tell upon it.

However, it is not my intention, in these remarks, to lay it down for certain that this or that part of our powers, shortcomings, and behaviour, is due to a Celtic, German, or Norman element in us.  To establish this I should need much wider limits, and a knowledge, too, far beyond what I possess; all I purpose is to point out certain correspondences, not yet, perhaps, sufficiently observed and attended to, which seem to lead towards certain conclusions.  The following up the inquiry till full proof is reached,—­or perhaps, full disproof,—­ is what I want to suggest to more competent persons.  Premising this, I now go on to a second matter, somewhat more delicate and inward than that with which I began.  Every one knows how well the Greek and Latin races, with their direct sense for the visible, palpable world, have succeeded in the plastic arts.  The sheer German races, too, with their honest love of fact, and their steady pursuit of it,—­ their fidelity to nature, in short,—­have attained a high degree of success in these arts; few people will deny that Albert Durer and Rubens, for example, are to be called masters in painting, and in the high kind of painting.  The Celtic races, on the other hand, have shown a singular inaptitude for the plastic arts; the abstract, severe character of the Druidical religion, its dealing with the eye of the mind rather than the eye of the body, its having no elaborate temples and beautiful idols, all point this way from the first; its sentiment cannot satisfy itself, cannot even find a resting-place for itself, in colour and