The Four Nations. [MAY, 



gypsies have preserved so much of their original appearance, and so many 

 of their original habits. 



According to all accounts that is, according to such accounts as we 

 have the mythology of the Saxon tribes was much more intellectual than 

 that of the Celts ; but still it was metaphysical and complicated, rather 

 than sublime ; and it partook not a little of the cold-blooded cruelty which 

 was characteristic of this race in its savage state. 



The religion of the Northmen was abundantly superstitious but it 

 wanted those features of cruelty which marked the other two ; and there 

 was a magnificent wildness a going-forth and extension a maddening, 

 as it were, of creative fancy about it which imparts to it a charm even in 

 the smallest fragment. Now, as the Christianity of every nation in the 

 Christian world is mixed with more or less of the antecedent superstition, 

 and more especially so the more unmixed that the people are, and the less 

 that they are learned, there cannot be a question that in Ireland, in 

 Wales, and in the interior of the highlands of Scotland, the remains of 

 the Celtic religion, whatever that religion may have been, still goes so far 

 toward the formation of at least the vulgar character. It is equally true 

 that in those islands, and upon those coasts where the Northmen formed 

 settlements and made landings, their mythology must still go toward the 

 formation of the vulgar character. Now, as the system of learning or, 

 perhaps, I should rather say, the substance of learning is every where 

 pretty nearly the same, so far as it goes, the national character can neither 

 be judged cf, nor investigated from, the learned of either nation ; and thus 

 the antient religion, as being an invention of the antient race and, as 

 such, an embodying of its powers may have more influence upon tho 

 existing peculiarities of character than there are data for demonstrating. 

 This, however, though a tempting, is both a wide and a pathless field 

 a land of dreams, in which fact and fancy are blended beyond the power of 

 separation. 



Intermediate between the Saxons and the Celts and Northmen, there 

 is more especially in the north of England, and in the south and middle 

 parts of Scotland say from the North Riding of Yorkshire to the Gram- 

 pian mountains a race which has not the characteristics of any of the 

 three ; but with a complexion perhaps a little different from what one 

 would predicate of such a union, might be considered as the whole or, 

 more especially, the Saxon and the Norman, blended together. This race 

 of people (which, of course, from the changes and intermarriages that 

 have taken place, more especially within the last century, cannot now be 

 found pure in any one locality) have a greater elongatio*n and altitude of 

 head, as well as a greater length of countenance, than any of the others ; 

 and, without the irascibility of the Celt, the stubbornness of the Saxon, 

 or the hardihood of the Norman, they are decidedly more intellectual 

 than any of these races. Where they are found in the greatest perfection, 

 the country is neither bleak mountain nor fertile plain but an alternation 

 of hill and dale, beautiful, romantic, and comparatively fertile. This is 

 the situation to which the histories, or rather the legends, have referred the 

 Picts, in whose cause there has been so much good ink so unprofitably 

 shed. But whether they be Picts, or a more recent population arising 

 out of the admixture of Celts with Saxon or Northmen, it is unquestionably 

 to them that both ends of the island owe the most of its inventive and 

 intellectual character. 



The small head of the Celt is accompanied by a sort of compression or 



