A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volumes 1 and 2, 3rd ed.: From the Earliest Times to the Present DayFergusson, James
History
A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volumes 1 and 2, 3rd ed.: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day
Fergusson, James
Architecture -- History
We find their remains in Asia Minor, whence Ethnologists fancy that they
can trace a southern migration along the northern coast of Africa,
across the Straits of Gibraltar, into Spain, and thence to Ireland. A
more certain and more important migration, however, crossed the
Bosphorus, and following the valley of the Danube, threw one branch into
Italy, where they penetrated as far south as Rome; while the main body
settled in and occupied Gaul and Belgium, whence they peopled Britain,
and may have met the southern colonists in the Celtic Island of the
west. From this they are now migrating, still following the course of
the sun, to carry to the New World the same brilliant thoughtlessness
which has so thoroughly leavened all those parts of the Old in which
they have settled, and which so sorely puzzles the purer but more
matter-of-fact Aryan tribes with which they have come in contact.
RELIGION.
It may appear like a hard saying, but it seems nevertheless to be true,
to assert that no purely Celtic race ever rose to a perfect conception
of the unity of the Godhead. It may be that they only borrowed this from
the Turanians who preceded them; but whether imitative or innate, their
Theology admits of Kings and Queens of Heaven who were mortals on earth.
They possess hosts of saints and angels, and a whole hierarchy of
heavenly powers of various degrees, to whom the Celt turns with as
confiding hope and as earnest prayer as ever Turanian did to the gods of
his Pantheon. If he does not reverence the bodies of the departed as the
Egyptian or Chinese, he at least adopts the Buddhist veneration for
relics, and attaches far more importance to funereal rites than was ever
done by any tribe of Aryans.
The Celt is as completely the slave of a casteless priesthood as ever
Turanian Buddhist was, and loves to separate it from the rest of
mankind, as representing on earth the hierarchy in heaven, to which,
according to the Celtic creed, all may hope to succeed by practice of
their peculiar virtues.
To this may be added, that his temples are as splendid, his ceremonials
as gorgeous, and the formula as unmeaning as any that ever graced the
banks of the Nile, or astonished the wanderer in the valleys of Thibet
or on the shores of the Eastern Ocean.
GOVERNMENT.
It is still more difficult to speak of the Celtic form of government, as
no kingdom of this people ever existed by itself for any length of time;
and none, indeed, it may be suspected, could long hold together. It may,
however, be safely asserted, that no republican forms are possible with
a Celtic people, and no municipal institutions ever flourished among
them. The only form, therefore, we know of as peculiarly theirs, is
despotism; not necessarily personal, but rendered systematic by
centralised bureaucratic organisations, and tempered by laws in those
States which have reached any degree of stability or civilisation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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