It is that into which the thoughts and passions of the romantic poets in all ages ran up, as into a goal--the conception of a perfect world, beyond this visible, in which the noble hopes, loves and work of humanity--baffled, limited, and ruined here--should be fulfilled and satisfied.

The Greeks did not frame this conception as a people, though Plato outreached towards it; the Romans had it not, though Vergil seems to have touched it in hours of inspiration.

The Teutonic folk did not possess it till Christianity invaded them.

Of course, it was alive like a beating heart in Christianity, that most romantic of all religions.
But the Celtic peoples did conceive it before Christianity and with a surprising fulness, and wherever they went through Europe they pushed it into the thought, passions and action of human life.

And out of this conception, which among the Irish took form as the Land of Eternal Youth, love and joy, where human trouble ceased, grew that element in romance which is perhaps the strongest in it--the hunger for eternity, for infinite perfection of being, and, naturally, for unremitting pursuit of it; and among Christian folk for a life here which should fit them for perfect life to come.