an she
most hates, the murderer of Noise, who bears her off on a chariot; and
Conchobar, watching this revolting sight, mocks her misery. She remains
silent. "There in front of her rose a huge rock, she threw herself
against it, her head struck and was shattered, and so she died."

An inexhaustible fertility of invention was displayed by the Celtic
makers. They created the cycle of Conchobar, and afterwards that of
Ossian, to which Macpherson's "adaptations" gave such world-wide renown
that in our own century they directed Lamartine's early steps towards
the realms of poetry. Later still they created the cycle of Arthur, most
brilliant and varied of all, a perennial source of poetry, from whence
the great French poet of the twelfth century sought his inspiration, and
whence only yesterday the poet laureate of England found his. They
collect in Wales the marvellous tales of the "Mabinogion"[20]; in them
we find enchanters and fairies, women with golden hair, silken raiment,
and tender hearts. They hunt, and a white boar starts out of the bushes;
following him they arrive at a castle there, "where never had they seen
trace of a building before." Pryderi ventures to penetrate into the
precincts: "He entered and perceived neither man, nor beast; no boar, no
dogs, no house, no place of habitation. On the ground towards the middle
there was a fountain surrounded by marble, and on the rim of the
fountain, resting on a marble slab, was a golden cup, fastened by golden
chains tending upwards, the ends of which he could not see. He was
enraptured by the glitter of the gold, and the workmanship of the cup.
He drew near and grasped it. At the same instant his hands clove to the
cup, and his feet to the marble slab on which it rested. He lost his
voice, and was unable to utter a word." The castle fades away; the land
becomes a desert once more; the heroes are changed into mice; the whole
looks like a fragment drawn out of Ariosto, by Perrault, and told by him
in his own way to children.

No wonder if the descendants of these indefatigable inventors are men
with rich literatures, not meagre literatures of which it is possible to
write a history without omitting anything, but deep and inexhaustible
ones. The ends of their golden chains are not to be seen. And if a
copious mixture of Celtic blood flows, though in different proportions,
in the veins of the French and of the English, it will be no wonder if
they happen some day to produ