milating it: lastly, since there is obvious
inconvenience in using the same word for an ethnical delimitation and
a psychological, when their boundaries do not exactly correspond--and
if some Anglo-Saxons have the 'Celtic' note it is certain that many
thousands of Celts have not; why then I shall be glad enough to use a
better and a handier and a more exact, if only some clever person
will provide it.

Meanwhile, let it be understood that in speaking of a 'Celtic' note I
accuse no fellow-creature of being an Irishman, Scotsman, Welshman,
Manxman, Cornishman, or Breton. The poet will as a rule turn out to
be one or other of these, or at least to have a traceable strain of
Celtic blood in him. But to the note only is the term applied,
Now this note may be recognised by many tokens; but the first and
chiefest is its insistence upon man's brotherhood with bird and
beast, star and flower, everything, in short, which we loosely call
'nature,' his brotherhood even with spirits and angels, as one of an
infinite number of microcosms reflecting a common image of God.
And poetry which holds by this creed will hardly be subservient to
societies and governments and legalised doctrines and conventions;
it will hold to them by a long and loose chain, if at all.
It flies high enough, at any rate, to take a bird's-eye view of all
manner of things which in the temple, the palace, or the
market-place, have come to be taken as axiomatic. It eyes them with
an extraordinary 'dissoluteness'--if you will give that word its
literal meaning. It sees that some accepted virtues carry no
reflection of heaven; it sees that heaven, on the other hand--so
infinite is its care--may shake with anger from bound to bound at the
sight of a caged bird. It sees that the souls of living things, even
of the least conspicuous, reach up by chains and are anchored in
heaven, while 'great' events slide by on the surface of this skimming
planet with empires and their ordinances.

"And so the Emperor went in the procession under the splendid
canopy. And all the people in the streets and at the windows
said, 'Bless us! what matchless new clothes our Emperor has!'
But he hasn't anything on!' cried a little child. 'Dear me,
just listen to what the little innocent says,' observed his
father, and the people whispered to each other what the child
had said. 'He hasn't anything on!' they began to shout at last.
This made th