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PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BRITONS.

84, and the insurrection of Carausius, A. D. 287. The success of the Belgo-German usurper, and his dependence on foreign auxiliaries, are best explained by the supposition that a part of his subjects were his countrymen by descent.

It appears to simplify history when we reduce the first inhabitants of our country to four main divisions—the Gaelic, Kymric, Gaulish, and Belgic, of one great Keltic family. The simplicity is fallacious. It is probable that these tribes differed from one another in habits, polity, and civilization; it is certain that we have no right to confound them with the Gauls of the continent, or to patch up a mosaic of notices from Greek and Roman authors in different centuries. The England of Queen Elizabeth could hardly be reproduced from a knowledge of the United States under President Buchanan. What we really know of our British ancestors is derived from the vestiges of their homes, from a few skulls and other bones, and from the evidence of fossil words, quite as much as from any historical record. The British physique, if we may judge from the better specimens of the human remains found in barrows, was that of a weak and impulsive, but not an unintelligent race. The average capacity of the skull is smaller than that of Saxon and Roman crania, but its form is less irregular; and, indeed, is often exquisitely symmetrical. The predominance of the middle or emotional compartment, and a certain deficiency in the back part, indicating a weak will, are its chief features: the frontal developement is commonly good, though not equal to the Greek type. Modern theory would view with suspicion the prehensile thumb, equalling in length the forefinger of the hand, as if something of a lower nature had not yet been worked out in the growth of the race. But our scanty facts must not be pressed; even in the island itself the extremes of civilization were far apart. Cæsar heard of tribes in the interior who were still unacquainted with tillage, and whose wives were common in the family; but the Belgic peoples among whom he penetrated, though they tattooed their bodies with woad,

'Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. i.,p. 12. 2 Cæsar, De Bell. Gall., lib. v., c. 14.

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BRITISH CIVILIZATION.

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were almost as civilized as the Gauls of the continent. The tribes highest in the scale seem to have made use of coined money, to have been able to work tin and lead mines, to make bronze, to cement stones by glazing them with fire, to manufacture wicker-work, to make war-chariots, to train horses and dogs, to ornament their arms, and to correct the deficiencies of a clay soil by dressing it with lime.3 These are rather higher arts

than belong to mere savages. But their artistic perceptions were weak; they had no architecture or sculpture; they traded with Gaul for ivory bracelets and necklaces, for amber and vessels of glass; and trinkets of this kind made up their entire commerce. Their homes were circles of huts hollowed out of the hills or heath, with wattled sides and thatched roofs, secured against a sudden attack by a palisade and ditch; only among the more advanced tribes the houses had low stone walls, conical roofs, and a single arched entrance, at once doorway and window. The teeth found in skulls are commonly sound in texture, but are often worn away, as if with exercise upon parched peas or grain, or with gnawing bones.* As they eat coarsely, they drank largely of the beer and mead which took the place of wine in the north. Huntsmen and fishermen they would be by necessity; their skill in training dogs seems to show that they took kindly to the sports of the field; and the implements of a game like ninepins have been found in the north, deep down, almost fossilized in a bog, as the players no doubt left them when

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I Hawkins (English Silver Coins, pp. 8, 9,) thinks the money was coined in Britain. Akerman thinks it was brought over from Gaul, Archæologia, vol. 33.

2 A plate of lead has been found in Yorkshire with the name of the Emperor Claudius, and the date A. D. 49. As this was only five years after his invasion, it is inferred that the mines had been opened by the Britons.-Universal Review, March, 1860. Again, the primitive Welsh word gof, a smith, is some proof of the capacity to work metals.-Sat. Review, Dec. 26, 1857. 3 Pliny, lib. xvii., s. 4.

4 Wilson's Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, pp. 187-188. Crania Britannica, Decade ii., p. 74.

5 Dioscorides, lib. ii., c. 110.

• Wilson's Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, pp. 563-564.

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DRUIDICAL RELIGION.

the final summons hurried them away to that battle-field which was to be their last. To complete the imperfect details of this picture of early life, we may reproduce in fancy the British chief, with his "glib" of matted chestnut hair and his moustache, with the broad chest, and long arms, and high cheek-bones of his race, and with the plaid thrown loosely about him, controlling his clan with traditional authority, which only the Druid and Bard could mitigate. Not, indeed, that all distinctions of rank must be supposed wanting. Gentle, free, and serf, were no doubt to be found in the British clans, as in those of Gaul at that very time, and in the Welsh afterwards. But for all practical purposes the chief was probably supreme, so long as he did not outrage justice or violate public opinion.

Cæsar tells us distinctly that the religious faith of Britain and Gaul was one, that it had originated in Britain, and that students from Gaul still went there, as to the holy island, for instruction. It is more probable that the colonists retained their traditions with less of change than the mother country, which Greek traders and Roman legions traversed. From what we know of it, their religion indicates a low stage of intellectual developement. They had reached the first article of a creed, the belief in a human personality that should outlast the body; but they held it in its lowest form, the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. While the Norseman supposed the gods to be in perpetual strife with the powers of nature, the Keltic tribes seem to have inclined to the sickly fatalism of the East, and worshipped the solar system. Traces of Fetichism are still perceptible in the Gaclic legends: the horse, dog, and pig, the most common animals, were also sacred; the iron swords with which they slew their enemies, the very combs used for the hair, were at once so precious

1 Mr. Nash, in his Taliesin, p. 134, disputes the belief in the Metempsychosis. But the evidence of Cæsar and Diodorus Siculus is express. I do not think it necessarily implies a purification through different animal forms; it seems rather to be the idea in Plato's Phædo of a soul that clothes itself in different bodies, and survives their decay.

2 Cæsar, De Bell. Gall., lib. vi., c. 14.

BRITISH MYTHOLOGY.

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as to be buried with them, and so wonderful that mystic powers were ascribed to them; the mistletoe was reverently collected with a golden sickle; the voices of birds and horses were ominous of coming events.1 They had a personal mythology; but its names for the most part are insignificant and doubtful, often apparently borrowed from Teutonic tribes. Belin seems to correspond to the Pol or Baldr of the Norsemen, and to typify the reproductive powers of nature: perpetual self-generated fire was his symbol in the religious liturgy, and it lasted down to a late period in the sacred fire of St. Bridget's Chapel at Kildare, and still survives in the Beltane fires of St. John's Eve. Caturix, the British Mars, has a name suspiciously like the German Hadurich: while Taranis the Thunderer, by his name and attributes, reminds us of Thor. Andraste is mentioned as the Goddess of Victory; and Arthur seems to have been an ancient name of one among several deities, who presided over war. Teutates, the father of the gods, Hæsus, and Ceridwen, were also of the celestial hierarchy; while Epona, the goddess of horses, attests the national predilections, and enjoyed the solitary distinction of becoming naturalised at Rome, in the language of grooms and young patricians. But the god most characteristic of the race was Oghum, at once Hercules and Mercury. He was painted in the second century of our era, by men acquainted with Roman art, as an old man clad in a lion's skin, with a club in the right hand, and a bent bow in the left. The ears of a crowd of worshippers were bound by chains of gold and

1 Campbell's Tales of the Highlands, vol. i., pp. lxxii-lxxx. Pliny's Hist. Nat., lib. xvi., s. 95.

2 Giraldi Cambrensis, Topographia Hiberniæ, c. 35.

3 Sat. Rev., Dec. 26, 1857.

4 Divinité Guerrière, says M. de la Villemarqué.-Barzas Briez. i., p. 83. I believe, however, the Arthur's Seats, &c., found all over Britain, were so named in the middle ages. Thus the triumphal arch built by Carausius on the bank of the river Carun, as late as the third century, came to be known as Arthur's Oven.-Nennius, c. 24.

5 Juvenal, Satire viii., 1. 155-7.

Lucian, Ed. Dind. p. 598-9, quoted by Zeuss, Grammatica Celtica, vol. i., p. 2. Deum maxime Mercurium colunt.-Cæsar, De Bell. Gall., lib. vi., c. 17.

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THE DIVINITY OF THOUGHT.

amber to his tongue. For the Kelts, as they told Lucian, believed that reason and persuasion were the real forces by which the world was governed, and that "winged words" were keener and truer than even the shafts of war. The legend happily completes our knowledge of the race, a people neither strong nor self-reliant, but with quick intellectual instincts and a timid faith in law. They shrunk before the unseen Powers, and propitiated them with the blood of men.1

1 Cæsar, De Bell. Gall., lib. vi., c. 16.

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