The Celtic genius, sentiment as its main basis,
with love of beauty, charm, and spirituality for its excellence,
ineffectualness and self-will for its defect. The Norman genius,
talent for affairs as its main basis, with strenuousness and clear
rapidity for its excellence, hardness and insolence for its defect.
And now to try and trace these in the composite English genius.
V.
To begin with what is more external. If we are so wholly Anglo-Saxon
and Germanic as people say, how comes it that the habits and gait of
the German language are so exceedingly unlike ours? Why while the
Times talks in this fashion: 'At noon a long line of carriages
extended from Pall Mall to the Peers' entrance of the Palace of
Westminster,' does the Cologne Gazette talk in this other fashion:
'Nachdem die Vorbereitungen zu dem auf dem GurzenichSaale zu Ebren
der Abgeordneten Statt finden sollenden Bankette bereits vollstandig
getroffen worden waren, fand heute vormittag auf polizeiliche
Anordnung die Schliessung sammtlicher Zugange zum Gurzenich Statt'?
{97} Surely the mental habit of people who express their thoughts in
so very different a manner, the one rapid, the other slow, the one
plain, the other embarrassed, the one trailing, the other striding,
cannot be essentially the same.
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