to other Branches of Knowledge. 319 



Scandinavia, that they were the burial-places of a people 

 more ancient than the Celts. Similar remains discovered in 

 France, are supposed by MM. Robert and Serres to have 

 belonged to the Cymrian or Welsh branch of the Celtic race ; 

 and these anatomists suppose a second class of heads of a 

 larger shape, found in tombs containing metallic implements, 

 to have been those of a people allied to the Irish or Gaelic 

 branch. A third set of monumental relics are referred by 

 Retzius to a superior race, supposed to have been Swedes or 

 Saxons, or some branch of the Teutonic family. 



It is much to be regretted that the ancient nations of Eu- 

 rope, those races from whom Englishmen, Germans, and 

 Frenchmen are descended, v/ere so obstinate in their barba- 

 rism, that they despised the use of letters, and remained for 

 centuries in intercourse with the cultivated Massilians, and 

 with Roman colonies, without adopting this art ; and that all 

 the sepulchral remains of the northern regions are without 

 inscriptions, or a single name that may be a clue to their 

 various history. On the other hand, parts of Asia and 

 Africa, now the seat of barbarism, are covered, if we may 

 use the expression, with inscriptions. Numerous and long 

 inscriptions scattered over all India on rocks, the sides of 

 caves, and on various monuments, in Cabul, through the an- 

 cient empires of Iran and Assyria, through Hadramaut and 

 Oman, the remotest districts of Arabia, and through the 

 North of Africa, to say nothing of the more celebrated relics 

 of Egypt, prove that the use of letters was well known in 

 these countries at a time when Europe was barbarous. In 

 all those countries inscriptions, which have been gazed at 

 with stupid wonder by the descendants of the people who 

 composed them, and have been regarded as the workman- 

 ship of genii and imps, have been at length read and ex- 

 plained for the first time after twenty centuries. All tiiis 

 has been done within a few years. The discovery began, as 

 every one knows, with the deciphering of the Egyptian hiero- 

 glyphics. The effoi-ts of Dr Young and ChampoUion gained 

 the clue, unravelling mysteries in a field where it has been re- 

 served for a distinguished scholar of the present day (the Che- 

 valier Bunsen) to erect the edifice of the most ancient history 



