THE CELT IN BRITAIN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 27, 3 April 1891, Page 15

THE CELT IN BRITAIN.

The Celt is coming back with a vengeance. Writing in the -Fortnightly Review apropos of Mr. Burne- Jones's picture, on " The Celt in English Art," Mr. Grant Allen says :—": — " For many months past Mr. Burr e- Jones's beautiful dream of the Briar Rose and the Sleeping Princess has floated like a vision at a London picture-dealer's. Everybody ha 9 seen it, therefore everybody is now in a position to judgß of the new element imported into English Art within a single generation by the Celtic temperament. Tha return wave of Celtic influence over Teutonic or Teutonised England has brought with it many strange things, good, bad, and indifferent. It has broueht with it Home Rule, Land Nationalisation, Socialism, Radicalism, tbe Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, the Tithes War, the Crofter Question, tbe Plan of Campaign, It has brought freah forces into political life — The eloquent young Irishman, the perfervid Highland Scot, the enthusiastic Welshman, the hard-headed Cornish miner ; Methodism, Catholicism, the Eisteddfod, the parish priest ; New Tipperary, the Hebrides, the Scotland Division of Liverpool ; Conybeare, Cunninghame Graham, Michael Davitt, Holyoake ; Co-operation, the Dockers, the Star, the Fabians. Powers hitherto undreamt of surge up in our Parliamentary world in the Sextons, the Healya, the Atherley Joneses. the M'Donalds, the O'BrieDs, the Dillons, the Morgans, the Abrahams ; in our wider public life in the William Morrises, the Annie Besants, the Father Humphreys, the Archbishop Crokes. the General Booths, the Alfred Rusßel Wallaces, the John Stuart Blackies. tbe Joseph Arches, the Bernard Shaws, the John Burnses ; the People's Palace, tbe Celtic Society of Scotland, the Democratic Federation, the Socialist League. Anybody who looks over any great list of names in any of the leading modern movements of England— from the London County Council to the lectures at South Place— will see in a moment that the new Radicalism is essentially a Celtic product. The Celt in Britain, like Mr. Burne-Jones's enchanted princess, has lain silent for ages in an enforced sleep ; but the Bpirit of the century, pushing aside the weeds and briars of privilege and caste, bas Bet free the sleeper at last, aa with a blast from its horn, and to-day the Celt awakes again to fresh and vigorous life, bringing all the Celtic ideals, the Celtic questions, and the Celtic characteristics into the very thick and forefront of the actual fray m England, lbe 'limes may shake its sapient head, like Weithenin over the rotten dyke of tbe Lowland Hundred ; the flood is upon us." — Nation.