180 Professor Low on the 



bility to suppose, that the early settlers brought with them 

 the practice from the countries from which they were them- 

 selves derived. 



Of the pristine inhabitants of Europe^ we know nothing 

 whatever ; but, with respect to its later inhabitants, the most 

 reasonable supposition is, that they were derived from Asia, 

 and that they had spread themselves, in the manner of colo- 

 nists, westward ; first, the Celtic and other allied people, 

 from the south of the line of the Caucasus ; and, secondly, at 

 unknown and posterior epochs, when population had extended 

 northward into the regions known generally and vaguely to 

 the ancients as Scythia and Sarmatia, the other settlers, who 

 gave origin to the Scandinavian, the modern German, and 

 other nations, commonly comprehended under the general 

 term Teutonic, or, less correctly, Gothic. These migrations 

 may be supposed to have followed one after another, slowly 

 westward, like wave succeeding wave; and the latter settlers, 

 pressing upon the former ones, either dispossessed them, or 

 became mingled with them. But whatever be the particular 

 history of these pristine movements, two races of men, at 

 least, w^ere found, in the course of ages, inhabiting Western 

 Europe, distinguished from one another by speech, by social 

 habits, and religious observances; the first of which the 

 Celtse may be considered as the type, and the latter usually 

 denominated Teutones or Gothi ; the one, it has been said, 

 apparently derived from the countries south of the line of 

 the Caucasus, the other from the ruder regions extending 

 northward. The southern emigrants were usually found in 

 patriarchal communities of tribes or clans, generally dis- 

 united, and at war with one another, or only combined for 

 the purpose of aggression or mutual defence, The people 

 were submissive to authority, and had an order of priests of 

 great influence and power, who taught the immortality and 

 transmigration of the soul, worshipped in groves, erected 

 altars and sacred enclosures of unhewn stone, of which innu- 

 merable remains are yet spread over Europe, — ^paid, like the 

 Persian Magi, a i-everence to fire, to the heavenly bodies, 

 and to certain plants, — and adopted the horrid rite of human 

 sacrifices, as practised by the Phoenicians and other Syrians. 

 On the other hand, the ultra-Caucasian or Scythian colonists 



