literature of that era, and from all the learning of scribes, lay or clerical, to unmystify the matter of the pigs, and other tales equally startling?

The province of Gaul, we find, only sent us those that mocked the Britons, their Druids, their traditions, and all that (if they had not been unlettered) we should have called their learning. Still they had ideas, and an object in expressing them, in their traditions.

The peculiar religion of Gaul at the epoch of Saints Martin, Germanus, and the series to Faustus, appears to have been Mithraic. Apollinarius, prefect of Gaul, was of that superstition before he became a Christian; from him descended Apollinaris Sidonius, having the prenomen and title, Count Sollius. He inherited from his father-in-law, the Emperor Avitus, the property Aviticum in Auvergne. In 472, to secure a position on the breaking up of the empire, he resigned his property to his son, and took the see of Clermont or Arverni: his works exhibit an accomplished author for that age. The chateau Polignac on his estate had the head of Belinas, a striking production of art, as described by Dom Martin in his "Religion des Gaulois," i., 399. The head of the image was so constructed that oracles could be delivered through the aperture of the mouth. This notice may indicate the Mona of Gaul at the era of Neo-Druidism, and the distinction between Celt and Cymry. (w)

CHAPTER III.

Ethnology. The Welsh Descendants of the Cymmry.-" Briton" same as "Armorican;" therefore not equivalent to Pict.-Cymmry noticed on the Sculptures of Nineveh.-Cimbri of the Baltic identified with Celts by a Word: that Word questioned.-Kent and Chen in Britain. -Conan.-Veneti.-Dacian.-Topography and Coins.-Ken continued.-Kuvres of Herodotus.-The Catti, Cyttian, and Gwiddeled. -British Chiefs of Cornwall.-Picts Creutnach.-Welsh Vocabulary, non-Celtic Examples.-Hallelujah as a Watch-word.-The "Secret One" as applied to the Deity.-A Semitic Test proposed.

THE ethnological question, narrowed according to the practice in many cases to a verbal disquisition of "Briton,” "Albion," "Scot," Pict," "Cimri," or "Cimbri," has hitherto proceeded without data. Those have been arguing in a circle who have bestowed pains and squandered scholarship on certain generic terms, without having ascertained the language out of which the interpretation is to be sought. Suppose the subject were "The people of the United States:" the synonym "Yankees" might be assumed as the principal name, and that name, as is often done, might be ascribed to the native tribes of the American Continent. Thereupon all the argumentation used in our case might be exhausted there, to prove that the men of Washington were what we know they are not. It is obvious that conditions (that immediately overturn the assumption supposed) could be at once produced to show that the people were of a different physical appearance from the red men, that they were Christians, emigrants from beyond seas, and so forth. It is only by such a process that we can determine the case for the "Britons."

But on the evidence we make out little or nothing. Mr.

D

Algernon Herbert, from copious supplies of the Welsh triads, bardic poems, and Bruts or chronicles, has convinced himself that the Druids were diametrically opposed to the character assigned them in general terms by Cæsar, Lucan, and others; that the Britons were of the same family as Gauls, though the contrary was clear to Agricola, as shown in the description of Tacitus. If our author entertained an extreme opinion, what conclusion is led to by such extracts of ancient British works as we have referred to? In the history of events after the departure of the legions, and the (Riochat) Germanus, we see no Britons engaged in the struggle against the Saxons, and find them at length snug in Wales. Well! the Welsh, then, is the race and language. That is a natural reply, but the admission would be premature, if for no other reason, for that just given, the blank of nearly three centuries from the independence of the Roman province to the final demarcation of England and Wales. There may have been other races shut up with the Britons beyond the Severn, or two races may have been in close approximation, and in continual communication up to the retreat of the one across the Severn, or beyond Offa's Dyke. The case of race and language cannot be settled by a single event closing a blank history. It must be determined by facts out of a comparison of languages.

To enter on the question of race upon other particulars, and dismissing the coincidence that Britho in Welsh and Armorican, has the idea of Pict (pictus), spotted, for the Welsh and Bas-Britons, with the observation that the Breton is never "Pict," and that the Celtic designation is "Armorican" (Ar-mor, upon sea, or maritime), a characteristic strikingly applicable to them as in the description of Cæsar, we have to seek the term "Briton" in other than Celtic roots, to admit or suspect that "Pict" was limited and local in Britain, dismissing the idea that Pict and Briton are the same, taking Celt to mean as insisted, forester, and Cimbri not to be the Celtic "Camber," robber, for that the inscriptions of Nineveh have "Cimbri," not once, but repeatedly. We take up the case of social distinction or peculiarities of a com

munity upon the merits. Hereafter we may find suggestions for any or all the ethnological terms in question.

But we must proceed on some datum or admission. Were they Celts? A case in the affirmative seems at hand from Pliny (quoting" Philemon "); he says the Baltic was called in the neighbourhood of the Cimric Chersonese, "Mormorosa," and that the idea intended was Salt sea. That is pure Welsh mor-mar. But Dr. Clarke informs us that he found on the banks of the Irtish the expression "inverness," meaning in the corner, a characteristic of Inverness in Scotland, and that the man who uttered the words, as well as all his neighbours throughout the district, wore the Scotch bonnet and trews, and were, en regle, Scot. We thus have Celt and Cimri in local approximation, and cannot say whether Philemon had his report from the race met by Dr. Clarke some nineteen centuries later. We thus lose, perhaps, the solitary text making for a Celtic race and language for the Cimri of the Baltic. Tacitus, noticing the Esthionians, says, their language resembled that of the Britons, while in other particulars they were like the Suevi. We cannot decide what Tacitus means, not knowing what was the language of Britain then unless it were Welsh. Those Esthionians may have been Celts. Had the friend of Agricola, to illustrate the annals of his great relative, made a voyage to Jutland, or obtained an accurate report from those seas which the Romans dreaded to navigate, and whose shores they filled with the chimeras which Tacitus is not ashamed to adopt, or, mentioning them, not to dismiss as rejected, we might have had another ethnological fact from the classics as to the Cimbri. We must, in our difficulty, look at home. Kent was the most important and advanced district of Britain in Cæsar's day. The Iceni, called also "Cheni Magni" in Ptolemy, led the attack against the invaders shortly after the Romans renewed their insular campaigns under Claudius. The name "Kent" is not confined to the east of the island. Kentisbury, distinguished from Countesbury on the opposite side of natural lines of defence, formed by Lynmouth, occurs in North Devon, and in the neighbourhood at Ilfracombe, is

a Runymede. The physical characteristics of the people of Kent and of South Wales are strikingly similar. Kentchurch and Knighton, on the border of Wales, terminate the valley of the Kennet and its extensions in the topography of which Ken is of frequent occurrence.

The provincialisms of Kent are not Celt nor Saxon. Chenin is (Welsh) leek. Welshman is Cymry, or Cynmry. The British coins have " Cuno." "Armorica" is "Conan."

In the Avellenau of Merddin we have "When Cadwallader comes from the conference at the ford of Rheon with Conan, in opposition to the movements of the Saxons, the Cymmry become supreme and prosperous in their leader.'" The Armes Brydain of Taliesin.

"Conan in Gwynned

Is the omen before the slaughter,

And Cadwallader is

A joy unto Cymmry." The Gwawd Llud, p. 74.

The long public chief song of Cadwallader and Conan Taliesin Ambrosian prophecy, says the prophecies are of Cadwallader and Conan.

Elphin's consolation has,

"When he flies from the judgment,
What is the bard or his song?
When Conan is called

To the chair of citation,

Before the presence of Cadwallader,

And he fles from disease on earth,

To Conan, son of Bran."

"When Arthur returns as a grey-headed old man on a white horse, then Cadwallader shall call on Conan, and take Albany into alliance."

But the classic name of the Bretons was " Veneti," a name sounded Weneti: this word may have the same elements as Chen; the aspirate not to be directly represented in Latin, and (as in the case of the Eolic Digamma) variously represented by B, V, F, and in Greek also by Ch, would in Latin be C with an aspirate, which the letter I seems to have been employed for after the reign of Claudius; Iceni is explained