They determine almost all controversies; and if any crime has been perpetrated, if any murder has been committed, if there is a dispute about inheritance, if about boundaries, they decide it, and determine the recompense and punishment. If any, either in a public or private capacity, should not submit to their decree, they forbid the sacrifices. This is a very great punishment among them. Those who are thus interdicted are held in the number of the impious and wicked; all avoid them and flee from their approach and conversation, lest they might receive some evil from their contagion, neither is justice administered to them on their petitions, nor is any honor of the State conferred on them."

Need we remark that this too affords proof of that Eastern origin which the thoughtless and silly are so ready to laugh at. The testimony of Cæsar is conclusive as to the fact that the caste system existed among the Celts pretty much the same as it did among the Hindoos. It is not alone those of the former who were convicted of heinous crimes, or who set the authority of the Druids at defiance, that were regarded and treated as Pariahs. The lower class often preferred downright slavery-to render themselves liable to be bought and sold-to their general condition as a despised and oppressed caste. They dare to do nothing by themselves," says the Roman historian, "and are admitted to no councils. Many of them * declare themselves in servitude to the nobles."+

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In time of war, however, this servitude ceased; the slaves declared themselves free; and the nobles agreed, with as good a grace as they could, to what they could not prevent. Thus, in all circumstances, the Celts have ever evinced a strong instinct of liberty. If the poorer class could do no better, they would, as we have seen, become slaves; but wo to the master that attempted to apply the lash to them! Indeed, even in servitude they were free as far as the will was concerned. A Celt, in this position, in the time of Cæsar, Livy, or Tacitus, was no more a real slave than the Irish peasant of the present day is a real Protestant because he accepts

*

Nam fere de omnibus controversis publicis privatisque constituunt; et si quod est admissum facinus, si cædes facta, si de hereditate, si de finibus controversia est iidem decernunt; si qui aut privatus aut publicus eorum decreto non stetit sacrificiis interdicunt. Hæc poena apud eos est gravissima. Quibus ita est interdictum ii numero impiorum ac sceletorum habentur, &c.-De Bel. Gal., lib. vi., c. 13.

+ Plerique * 。 sese in servitutem dicant nobilibus.-De Bel. Gal., lib. vi., c. 13.

a Bible, and goes to church, when he is hungry and naked, in order to get food and clothes, and then returns to the priest, and laughs at the parson, as soon as the times grow better. Were the Celtic race a people who would tamely submit to oppression, they could not have elicited from their enemies, in all parts of the world, those noble tributes to their valor and courage which none others can boast; for even the Romans admitted their superiority in these respects-the proudest of their historians recording the fact, while boasting of their triumphs over all other nations, that " the Gauls were before the Romans in the glory of war, as the Greeks were in eloquence."*

We were not so sanguine, in commencing this article, as to hope that we could do justice to the Celtic race; but what we did contemplate, we trust we have accomplished—namely, to show those who are so fond of sneering at that people, and representing them as inferior to that to which they suppose they belong themselves; that, although their attempts have already done mischief, and may do more among a certain class, their disparaging statements have no other effect on any intelligent mind than to prove, either that they are actuated by a foolish malice, or, otherwise, have never taken the trouble to read any respectable history of the people on whose characteristics they pass such flippant judgment. The would-be critic of the fine arts who ventures to find fault with one of the chefs d'œuvre of Angelo, Titian, or Correggio, declaring the production of a fourthrate modern artist superior to it, does not render himself more an object of ridicule and contempt than the person who, with a supercilious sneer, pretends to condemn as "inferior" a race on whose eminently manly qualities every great historian, let his nationality be what it may, bestows the highest praise.

*Sciebam sæpenumero parvâ manu cám magnis legionibus hostium contendisse; cognoveram parvis copiis bella gesta cum opulentis regibus; ad hoc, sæpe fortunæ violentiam tolerassa; facundia Græcos, gloria belli Gallos, ante Romunos fuisse.-Bellum Catilinarum.

ART. II.-The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, D. D., late Head Master of Rugby School, etc. By ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, M. A. 2 vols., 12mo. Boston: 1860.

TO MOULD to a new and higher type the institutions of a people, to give increased earnestness and truth to their speculative life, or a worthier and more fertile direction, to their active powers-these have been esteemed as achievements marking their agent, in whatever time or country he may have lived, as a man in whom the faculties of our common nature have appeared in unusual measure. Once such achievements are felt and recognized, the broad human verdict is sure. With at least an apparent perverseness, stolidity, and obstinacy, the popular habit and heart-it may be the popular clamor and cruelty-may withstand and hinder the great-souled worker, while yet he is obscured by the dust of the conflict, and seen mainly through the distorting lights of alarmed self-interests. But when the tumult is hushed, whether because triumph has silenced the adverse party, or death has removed the centre and source of the new and agitating truths-when the new order and beauty have arisen and stood forth in realization-when larger benefits, rightly measured from the higher ground of comparison achieved, have accrued to men, it is then that one conviction only finds place in the universal conscience, and that, by those who speak for the race, one judgment only is pronounced. Not only is this a fact touching the feeling and judgment of the men who now live, and who, in their various lines of thought, are called on to pronounce upon the master spirits of the ages, but it has been equally true of men through the whole reach of the historic period, and in all nations that have risen to any high degree of intellectual and institutional life. Thus, the award of a belief in grander inherent powers, where influence has been deep, broad, and lasting, depends on a law of the very thought and intelligence of

man.

For a universal fact like this, a ground of like universality must exist. Yet, to isolate this question, and attempt to say why mankind accredit an extraordinary measure of original force of intellect, of character, or of both, as the indispensable antecedent to an extraordinary projection of influence upon and into the fabrics of institutions and society

this might be exceedingly difficult. Neither does our direct experience, nor as yet do the analyses and generalizations of science establish the fact of such a connection-not even, first of all, the hypothesis that one human spirit or personality can possess or consist of a larger quantity or intensity of active and effective potency than another. Yet, to raise the question, is to become aware that the common explanation is the only possible one. Clearly, in this explanation, we are aided by the analogy of observed physical actions. In these, the analogy-seeing intuition of the mind finds warrant for its assurance that the popular judgment is, not merely the only supposable, but also the true one. In physical nature, the greater mass falls with the more, crushing effect. The more intense pressure the more completely modifies and marks whatever is subjected to it. So, the Leyden jar snaps off its little charge; and presently the feebly disturbed equilibrium of a small surrounding space is as feebly

restored.

Now, we unavoidably feel that phenomena like these, transpiring in material nature, and indicating, each for its magnitude, a force of corresponding energy, are but the counterparts and interpretations of the phenomena wrought in the realm of the human spirit and intelligence, and which are indicative, in like manner, of a variable endowment of the purely spiritual energies. If Shakspeare has expressed to our hearts and heads, alike, more than other poets, and has spoken, at the same time, to a larger audience than it has fallen to any other modern poet to address, this is because, first of all, Shakspeare was more than the other poets-vastly more than the generality of men and women. It is all very well for Rusticus to see to it that, over his small domain of acres and interests, the "ends shall meet" as often as the years; and for Urbanus to spare no pains in versing himself in mysteries of etiquette and of the "per cents. ;" but no more surely was an Alexander or a Napoleon born to fashion empires, than was an Aristotle, a Bacon, and a Pestalozzi to infuse and incorporate each his own larger personality, his broader thought and deeper purpose, into the very fibre and framework of the manhood of all after generations.

It is not our intention to claim for Dr. Arnold a place with the Aristotles, the Bacons, and the Pestalozzis-creative and organizing minds of the very largest order, of whom the world has possessed so few. But it appears certain that

Arnold accomplished, in the way of elevating the aims and tone of public education in England, of giving to it a right direction, and of advancing it towards the desired completeness as a working system, more than, at least up to the time when he left the stage of action, it has fallen to the lot of any other individual educator to accomplish. And the impression which he has thus left on the system in England must, in time, though doubtless in a diminished degree, be felt in all countries in which the spirit of English institutions and the use of the English tongue prevail. For this fine essence of thought and influence is of no nationality; it cannot be arrested by political convulsions, nor kept out by bayonets or blockades.

It is true that Bacon, Locke, and Milton, all acted powerfully, and in the right direction, upon the English teacher and school; but their influence, exerted in the outset through purely theoretical teachings, and coming at first only to the philosophic and cultured minds of the nation, has been slow and long in filtering down toward the masses of parents, legislators, and schoolmasters, and has not yet fairly leavened any one of these bodies. What Sir J. K. Shuttleworth, ⚫ and the normal schools and society originated and directed by him, may in the end accomplish for education, it would doubtless be premature to endeavor now to ascertain. More, we are inclined to hope, at the last, for intellectual development, and the elevation of the humbler classes; but less toward that complete training of the children of the classes blest with leisure, in which the teacher's part towards a right moral and social discipline is of necessity, and by Arnold was in fact, more largely fulfilled. In respect to Bell and Lancaster, it has become evident that the permanent results and benefits accruing in our schools from their labors in no way correspond to the agitation they created in their day; and it certainly requires no very deep analysis to enable us to predict that a like upshot awaits the now loudly-heralded training system," or teachings by oral " picturing-out," of Mr. Stowe. Grant, now, that we shall not find in Dr. Arnold's intellect and character, nor in his actual instruction, all the merits of all his predecessors and contemporariesindeed, in spite of the obvious lack on his part of certain capacities of mind which some of them possessed, and of somewhat of the truthfulness of aim and method to which in certain directions others have attained, yet, when we view