a
Swedish or Gothic invasion of Celtic lands south of the Baltic;
the continental Teutons presently are freed. It is the expansion
of a spirit, of a psychic something. People that were before
Celts (just as Mr. Dooley is an Anglo-Saxon) become somehow
Teutons. The language expands, and carries a tradition with it.
Head measurements show that neither Southern Germany nor England
differs very much towards Teutonicism from the Mediterranean
type; yet the one is thoroughly Teutonic, the other Anglo-Saxon.
Sometimes the blood may be changed materially; often, I suppose,
it is changed to some extent; but the main change takes place in
the language and tradition; sometimes in tradition alone. There
was a minor Celtic quickening in the twelfth century A. D.;
then Wales was in a fervor of national life. She had not the
resources, or perhaps the will, for outside conquest. But her
Authurian legend went forth, and drove Beowulf and Child Horn out
of the memory of the English, Charlemagne out of the memory of
the French; invaded Germany, Italy, even Spain: absolutely
installed Welsh King Arthur as the national hero of the people
his people were fighting; and infused chivalry with a certain
uplift and mysticism through-out western Europe. Or again, in
the Cinquecento and earlier, the Italian center quickened; and
learning and culture flowed up from Italy through France and
England; and these countries, with Spain, become the leaders in
power and civilization.

England since that Teutonic expansion which made her English was
spent, has grown less and less Teutonic, more and more Latin;
the Italian impulse of the Renaissance drove her far along that
path. In the middle of the eleventh century, her language was
purely Teutonic; you could count on the fingers of your hand the
words derived from Latin or Celtic. And now? Sixty percent of
all English words are Latin. At the beginning of the fifth
century, after nearly three hundred years of Roman occupation,
one can hardly doubt that Latin was the language of what is now
England. Celtic, even then I imagine, was mainly to be heard
among the mountains. See how that situation is slowly coming
back. And the tendency is all in the same direction. You have
taken, indeed, a good few words from Dutch; and some two dozen
from German, in all these centuries; but a Latin word has
only to knock, to be admitted and made welcome. Teachers of
composition must sweat blood and tears