130 



THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



Saul on the south as well as one on the north of the Alps. Hence 

 the Latin authors have left behind them in their writings sundry 

 interesting notices with respect to the physical and mental 

 qualities of the Celtic tribes. One of these, dashed off with a 

 free pen, is by Ammianus Marcellinus, who nourished in the 

 latter part of the fourth century, and whose observations with 

 respect to Celtic peculiarities possess a special value from the 

 fact that he was a Roman military officer, who, it is believed, 

 spent a considerable period in Gaul. 



" 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 con- 

 tinual 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 with continual intoxication." 



Other ancient authors concur with Ammianus in representing 

 the Gallic Celts as having blue eyes and fair or red hair. The 

 people of Britain, again, were said to be of a feebler physical 

 type, and one tribe the Silures was reported to be swarthy in 

 colour, and to have dark, curly hair. Here, then, we are met by 

 a difficulty. The Celtic tribes are not to any large extent 

 characterised at present by blue eyes and fair or red hair. A 

 good many of them are dark ; and if the observations made by 

 Ammianus and o'thers were trustworthy as they appear to have 

 been then some change must have taken place among the Celts, 

 as among the Germans, within the last two thousand years. Dr. 

 Latham, following Eetzius, considers the Celtic skull as one of 

 remarkable length. He further describes the race as having 

 prominent cheek-bones ; while as to the colour of the hair and 

 eyes, he institutes two divisions: (1.) The Silurian type: 

 " Eyes and hair, black; complexion, dark with a ruddy tinge: 

 chiefly found in South Wales. (2.) The Hibernian type : eyes, 

 grey; hair, yellow, red, or sandy; complexion, light." The 

 race, as proved by a study of the languages peculiar to it, 

 should be divided into two sub-races : the one speaking dialects 

 akin to the Welsh, and the other those allied to the Gaelic. 

 There were at no remote date three dialects, falling under the 

 former of these divisions : the Welsh proper, the Cornish, and 

 the Armoric. Within the memory of the present generation, an 

 old woman was reported to be living in Cornwall who could 

 speak Cornish ; then it was said that she had died, and the 

 Cornish language had died with her. The Armoric is spoken 

 in Brittany, in the north-west of France. The Gaelic is divided 

 into three dialects : the Gaelic proper, current in the Highlands 

 of Scotland ; the Erse, in the wilder parts of Ireland ; and the 

 Manx, in the Isle of Man. The Celtic languages are becoming 

 rooted in parts of Canada. In England, in France, and in 

 other places there is much Celtic blood in regions where Armoric 

 has become extinct. With the exception of the Scottish High- 

 landers, nearly all the Celts are Eoman Catholics. In war they 

 are more dashing in assault than the cooler Teutons, but do not 

 bear up so well against long-continued difficulties and disasters. 

 Ancient authors charged them with fickleness, and it is re- 

 markable that the same complaint is made by the Apostle Paul 

 against the church at Galatia, which, as the name of the town 

 imports, was a Gallic one, though situated beyond the limits of 

 Europe, in Asia Minor. 



We come next to the Slavonic race. As residents in this 

 country have less opportunity of becoming acquainted with the 

 Slavonic race than with Teutons and Celts, we take from Milne- 

 Edwards of Paris, as quoted in Nott and Gliddon, the following 

 careful summary of its physical characteristics : " The con- 

 tour of the head viewed in front approaches nearly to a square ; 

 the height surpasses a little the breadth, the summit is sensibly 

 flattened, and the direction of the jaw is horizontal. The length 

 of the nose is less than the distance from the base to the chin ; 



it is almost straight from the depression at its root, that is tc. 

 say, without decided curvature, but, if appreciable, it is slightly 

 concave, so that the end has a tendency to turn up ; the inferior 

 part is rather large, and the extremity rounded. The eyes, 

 rather deep set, are perfectly on the same line; and when they 

 have any particular character, they are smaller than the pro- 

 portion of the head would seem to indicate. The eyebrows are 

 thin, and very near the eyes, particularly at the internal angle, 

 and from this point are often directed obliquely outwards. The 

 mouth, which is not salient (projecting), has thin lips, and is 

 much nearer to the nose than to the tip of the chin. Another 

 singular characteristic may be added, and which is very general, 

 viz., their small beard, except on the upper lip." This is said to 

 be the common type among all the subdivisions of the great . 

 Slavonian family. 



To this third division of the Aryan race belong not merely the 

 Russians and the Poles, but also the Bulgarians or, at least, a 

 portion of them the Servians, the Bosnians, the Montenegrins, 

 the Dalmatians, the Croats, the Vends or Slovaks, the Czechs or 

 Bohemians, the Moravians, the Lettic tribe, the Lithuanians, 

 and others. So large a portion of the Slavonic race is under 

 the Russian czar, and so slender is the cohesion of at least one- 

 of the two empires Turkey, in which many other Slavonic- 

 tribes reside that there has grown up the doctrine of Pan- 

 slavism. In TTO.V (pan) may be recognised the neuter of the 

 Greek adjective, or rather collective pronoun, signifying "all." 

 Panslavism, then, at the least, contemplates the gathering 

 together of all the Slavonic tribes under one head the Russian 

 czar ; and it may, in the wishes of some of its votaries, go 

 beyond this, and aim at using the hoped-for union for purposes 

 of domination over other races. The first Napoleon is reported 

 to have said that in a certain number of years (100 we think it 

 was), all Europe would be either republican or Cossack. By 

 Cossack he meant Russian; and Panslavism, in its most ex- 

 tensive signification, accepts the second side of the alternative, 

 and says with eagerness, " Then Cossack let it be." The so- 

 called Eastern question received no more than a temporary 

 solution in the arrangements which followed on the Crimean 

 war, and it remains to be seen whether the changes resulting- 

 froni the war between Russia and Turkey, and the Berlin 

 Congress of 1878, will afford any basis for a permanent settle- 

 ment of the matter in time to come. It is a weak point also in 

 the Austrian political system that the Bohemians, the Moravians, 



1 and many other Austrian subjects, are Slavonians ; at the sama 

 time, not a few of these are Roman Catholics like their emperor, 

 and therefore they are less disposed than they otherwise would 

 be to embrace Panslavism, and regard St. Petersburg as their 



\ pole-star. Even in the great Muscovite empire itself, difference 

 of religious belief between the Russians proper and the Poles 

 of whom the former mainly belong to the Greek Church, while 

 the latter are for the most part Roman Catholics has been 

 one of the most patent causes of alienation between these two 

 great sections of the Slavonians. 



The other Aryan races in Europe live along the shores of the 

 Mediterranean. According to Dr. Latham, they have long- 

 heads, high facial angles, dark eyes and complexion, and a 

 bodily frame more slender than bulky. As stated before, if 

 classified according to the languages which they speak, they 

 must be divided, as is done by Professor Max Miiller of Oxford, 

 into the Italic, the Illyrian, and the Hellenic races. 



In the case of the first, the test of language is somewhat 

 fallacious, since Latin spread among tribes not closely akin to 



' those who spoke it originally. Six more modern forms of speech 



i sprung from it, and are sometimes called the Romance languages. 

 They are the Portuguese, the Spanish, the French, the Pro- 

 vencal, the Italian, and the W^Ilachian. Only two of these 

 require explanation. The Provencal language was that of the 

 old troubadours, but it has now degenerated into a mere patois 

 spoken in the Grisons of Switzerland, and on the borders of the 

 Tyrol. The Wallachian tongue is current in Roumania, in parts 

 of Hungary, Transylvania, and Bessarabia, and to a certain 

 extent in districts of old Thrace, Macedonia, and even Thessaly. 

 The principality first mentioned constituted the major portion 

 of the province of Dacia, colonised by the Romans as an out- 

 post to defend the empire on that side from the barbarians ; and 

 the Latin introduced by those colonists has modified the speech 

 of the people there to this day. 



It has already been mentioned that many of the nations who- 





