other ancient nations, that the soul is indestructible as well as the world itself, and that fire and water are destined at periods to prevail. "They dispute much," says Cæsar, "concerning the heavenly bodies and their motions, and the magnitude of the world and of regions, concerning the nature of things, and the power and dominion of the immortal gods." Their astronomy was connected with notions respecting fate and destined periods. It was in fact rather astrology than anything really constituting science. In this relation it is mentioned by Cicero:

Eaque divinationum ratio ne in barbaris quidem gentibus neglecta est; siquidem et in Gallia Druidæ sunt, è quibus ipse Divitiacum Æduum hospitem tuum laudatoremque cognovi; qui et Naturæ rationem, quam physiologiam Græci appellant, notam sibi esse profitebatur, et partim auguriis, partim conjectura, quae essent futura dicebat."*

SECTION XVI. Of the physical Characters of the Celtic Nations.

It seems strange that such a subject as the physical character of the Celtic race should have been made a theme of controversy. Yet this has happened, and the dispute has turned not only on the question what characteristic traits belonged to the ancient Celtæ, but what are those of their descendants the Welsh and the Scottish Gaël.

Mr. Pinkerton, a learned but dogmatical and paradoxical writer, advanced the assertion that the Celta and the German or, as he termed it, the Gothic race, were originally and generically different; that this difference has been always uniformly maintained in their physiognomy, as well as in their psychological and moral character. The external peculiarities of all Gothic or German nations are, as he says, red or yellow hair, blue eyes, fair complexions, large limbs, and tall stature; those of Celtic tribes universally dark hair, dark eyes, swarthy complexions, small stature. In describing the mental character of the Celts, Mr. Pinkerton is still more " tranchant." The Celts, he says, are natural savages, and were regarded as

*Cicero de Div. lib. i.

such by all writers of all ages. such is a Goth to a Celt."

"What a lion is to an ass,

Dr. Macculloch, who however was a writer of a very different class from Mr. Pinkerton, has adopted his notions concerning the physical characters of the Celts, and has confirmed them as far as general and somewhat vague assertions can be thought to afford confirmation.*

The opinions of Mr. Pinkerton and Dr. Macculloch have been fully discussed and refuted in an ingenious work written expressly with that view by the Rev. T. Price. To that work I beg to refer my readers who are desirous of estimating the merits of this controversy; and I should now go on to collect what evidence the ancients have given respecting the physical characters of the Celts, were it not in the first place necessary to advert to what has been said on this subject by a writer whose opinions are on all occasions entitled, though not to implicit confidence, yet certainly to a most attentive and deferential consideration. In the first edition of Niebuhr's Roman history, published in 1812, there is an admirable and striking portraiture of the Gauls who attacked Rome, containing the general results of the information left by the ancient writers respecting the physical character and habits of the Celts. Niebuhr's expressions are so concise and characteristic that I am unwilling to weaken them by translation. In describing the personal attire of the Gauls, he says, "Mit Gold schmückte sich jeder wohlhabende Gallier, und wenn er in der Schlacht nackt erschien, so trug er doch goldne Ketten an den Armen, und dicke goldne Ringe um den Halz. Ihre bunten, gewürfelten, mit Regenbogenfarben schimmernden Mäntel sind noch die mahlerische Tracht ihrer Stammgenossen

Dr. Macculloch, though highly informed and distinguished on subjects connected with gcology, was so ignorant of ethnography as to suppose the Celta a Semitic race. I mention this circumstance in order to prove that the characteristic distinction of human races was a subject to which he only directed his attention incidentally. A writer under such circumstances who was led to make for a particular purpose some not very profound inquiries into the history of the Highlanders, was likely to prefer the authority of such a man as Pinkerton, of clear and strong though somewhat peremptory and wrong-headed, to the weak and childish dreams of the Celtic antiquarians who had preceded him, and who descant with amazing absurdity through entire volumes upon their Phoenician, Punic, Scythian, Spanish, and Magogian ancestry.

sense,

der Berg-Schotten, welche die Brakken der alten Gallier abgelegt haben. Grosse Körper, ein langes struppichtes gelbes Haar, wilde Züge, machten ihren Anblick furchtbar: ihre Gestalt, ihr wilder Muth, ihre unermessliche Zahl, der betäubende Lärm einer ungeheuern Menge Hörner und Trompeten bey ihren Heeren, und die grässlichen Verwüstungen welche dem Siege folgten, lähmten die Völker welche sie überzogen mit Entsetzen."*

In the last edition of his Roman history Niebuhr has made some change in his description of the Gauls, but none, as it appears, in his opinion. He says that on this subject he had been honoured by a letter full of information from an anonymous British scholar, who assured him that all the Celts now have black hair, and hence infers that in all those passages quoted in the first edition which ascribed to that people yellow hair, the Celts must have been confounded by ancient writers with the Germans. Niebuhr professed himself inclined to concur in this view; but he found the evidence of Ammianus Marcellinus, who himself had resided in Gaul, so very decisive on the subject, that he adheres to the opinion which ascribes to the ancient Celtic Gauls yellow hair, "until some one shall have solved the difficulty how Ammianus could possibly be so mistaken as to ascribe a sanguine or xanthous complexion to the people among whom he was constantly living, and who, according to the hypothesis maintained, were a black-haired swarthy tribe."

There is a passage in Strabo which might have furnished some explanation of this difference to M. Niebuhr, and it is singular that it should have escaped him. Strabo in describing the Britons, distinguishes their physical character from that of the Gauls, and says that, with other differences, they were not so xanthous or yellow-haired as the Gauls. The difference

"Every wealthy Gaul adorned himself with gold: even when he appeared naked in battle, he wore golden chains upon his arms and golden rings around his neck. Their mantles, checkered, and displaying all the colours of the rainbow, are still the picturesque costume of their kindred race the Highlanders, who have laid aside the bracca of the ancient Gauls. Their great bodies, long shaggy yellow hair, uncouth features, made their appearance frightful; their figures, their savage courage, their immense numbers, the deafening noise of the numerous horns and trumpets in their armies, and the terrible devastation which followed their victories paralysed with terror the nations whom they invaded."

must have been strongly marked in order to have drawn the attention of a writer who seldom takes notice of physical characters. It appears then that the Britons were a darker race than the Celts of the Continent, and that even if the information given to M. Niebuhr by his anonymous corresponden were perfectly correct, it did not lead to the conclusion that the descriptions given by so many writers of the ancient Celta were erroneous. The Britons and Gauls, though kindred nations, may have differed in physical character, just as the Vogouls and Ostiaks, living on the opposite sides of the Uralian chain, and tribes of one race, are one a black-haired and the other a remarkably red-haired people.

M. Niebuhr, however, adopts a different explanation of this difficulty, and his observations contain a very important fact. In holding the opinion of the permanency of physical characters in general, he thinks that the colour of their hair-he would probably have extended the remark to the complexion and colour of the eyes-is an exception. The ancient Germans are said to have had universally yellow or red hair and blue eyes, in short a strongly-marked xanthous constitution. This, says Niebuhr, has now, in most parts of Germany, become uncommon. I can assert from my own observation that the Germans are now in many parts of their country far from a light-haired race. I have seen a considerable number of persons assembled in a large room at Frankfort-on-the-Mayne, and observed that, except one or two Englishmen, there was not an individual among them who had not dark hair. The Chevalier Bunsen has assured me that he has often looked in vain for the auburn or golden locks and the light cœrulean eyes of the old Germans, and never verified the picture given by the ancients of his countrymen till he visited Scandinavia; there he found himself surrounded with the Germans of Tacitus. What can be more evident than that Niebuhr is correct in his opinion that the physical characters of the people have changed? Some alterations in the external conditions under which the race has existed have given rise to a modification in their physical character. The climate of Germany has in fact changed since the country was cleared of forests.

I shall now go on to collect what information I can obtain

from the ancient writers respecting the physical characters of the Celtic nations, and shall advert in the first place to Ammianus Marcellinus, whose testimony appeared to Niebuhr so important. Ammianus was a soldier of Constantius, whose armies were chiefly stationed in Gaul, and in that country though not a Gaul by birth, he probably spent the early part of his life. In his coarse but somewhat graphic description of a boisterous Celt the reader will not fail to recognise an exact portrait of some of their posterity in the present day.

"The Gauls," says Ammianus," are almost all tall of stature, very fair and red-haired, and horrible from the fierceness of their eyes, fond of strife, and haughtily insolent. A whole band of strangers would not endure one of them, aided in his brawl by his powerful and blue-eyed wife, especially when with swollen neck and gnashing teeth, poising her huge white arms, she begins, joining kicks to blows, to put forth her fists, like stones from the twisted strings of a catapult. Most of their voices are terrific and threatening, as well when they are quiet as when they are angry.-All ages are thought fit for war, and an old man is led out to be armed with the same vigour of heart as the man in his prime, with limbs hardened by cold and continual labour, and a contempt of many even real dangers. None of them are known, like those who in Italy are called in joke Marci, to cut off their thumbs through fear of serving in war. They are, as a nation, very fond of wine, and invent many drinks resembling it ;* and some of the poorer sort wander about with their senses quite blunted by continued intoxication."

It is impossible to doubt that Ammianus drew this description from scenes of which he had been an eye-witness. The Celts of his days resembled, as it appears, some of their supposed descendants in their irascible tempers, vehement expression, and conjugal sympathy. There is no reason to hesitate in affirming that the Gauls were in the time of Ammianus a people of fair complexion, of yellow hair, and blue eyes.

But it must be admitted that these characters, or rather that of red hair, are ascribed still more particularly to the Germans. Tacitus conjectured that the Caledonians were Germans from * Probably cider, ale, metheglin.

VOL. III.