"If you mean government by Queen, Lords, and Commons, I am clearly of opinion that it is. But if you mean to ask my impressions of the present Cabinet, I rather think I should give you a very different answer."
"You mistake me altogether," replied the professor. "What are you, in Britain but a heterogeneous mixture of all possible races, without unity of blood, and sometimes even unity of language? Are not Celt and Saxon, Dane and Norman, jumbled together in the great social sphere? And can you expect, out of these warring elements, ever to produce harmony? No, August Reignold! One great error—the total disregard of unity of race—has hitherto been the enormous stumbling-block in the way of human perfection, and it is for the cure of that error that Germany has arisen from her sleep!"
"And what the deuce—excuse my profanity—do you intend to do?"
"To reunite and reconstitute the nations upon the foundation of unity of race," replied the professor.
"It would be rather a difficult thing to accomplish in my case, professor." I replied. "Without raising a multiplepoinding; as we say in Scotland, I could hardly ascertain to which race I really belong. My father was a Saxon, my mother a Celt—I have a cross of the Norman ancestry, and a decided dash of the Dane. It would defy anatomy to rank me!"
"In cases of admixture," said the professor, lighting his pipe—"which, be it remarked, are the exceptions, and not the rule—we are willing to admit the minor test of language. Now, observe. Western Europe—for we need not complicate ourselves with the Sclavonic question—may be considered as occupied by four different races. It is, I believe, quite possible to reduce them to three, but, in order to avoid controversy, I am willing to take the higher number. In this way we should have, instead of many separate states, merely to undertake the arrangement or federalisation of four distinct races—the Latin, the Teutonic, the Celtic, and Scandinavian. Each tree should be allowed to grow separately, but all its branches should be interwoven together, and the result will be a harmony of system which the world has never yet attained."
"You hold France to be Celtic, I presume, professor?"
"Decidedly. The southern portion has an infusion of Latin, and the northern of Scandinavian blood; but the preponderance lies with the Celt."
"And who do you propose should join with France?"
"Three-fourths of Ireland, the Highlands of Scotland, Wales, and the Basque Provinces."