Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/287

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COSMOPOLITAN LITERATURE
273

by less learned scholars. M. Texte, of course, is well aware that the English are not a single race. He would feel it more keenly, perhaps, if he were a poor Anglo-Saxon whose thick-headed incapacity for wit, humour, fancy, or imagination is being daily impressed upon him by his Irish friends. This, however, becomes a real difficulty in 'ethnological' theories of literature. If Ossian represents the Celt as distinguished from, and not as merely one of, the Northern races, will not theories as to the influence of Germanic and Latin races require modification? If Matthew Arnold's view be accepted, it would apparently follow that race differences are so indelible that centuries of close contact cannot obliterate them. If all Northern races are alike in so far as they are all 'children of the mist,' can these qualities be really transmitted till London fogs have occupied Paris?

I do not presume to treat such questions. I confine myself to a simpler point. The 'cosmopolitan' movement, in one sense, needs no exposition. That Europe is becoming a unit for scientific purposes, or that the great changes, which we generally sum up as democratic, affect all civilised countries, is too obvious to be insisted