EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 



guages are of common descent. It is never safe 

 to use language as a direct criterion of race, for 

 speech and blood depend on different sets of 

 circumstances, which do not always vary to- 

 gether. We of the English race have much 

 Keltic blood in our veins, but very few Keltisms 

 in our speech ; while, on the other hand, with a 

 vocabulary nearly half made up of Latin words, 

 we have either no Roman blood in our veins, 

 or so little as not to be worth mentioning. Dur- 

 ing the past twenty-five years Frenchmen have 

 had a good deal to say about the " Latin race." 

 There could hardly be a more flagrant instance 

 of the perversion of a linguistic name to ethnolo- 

 gical purposes. In reality, even in Caesar's time, 

 the dominant tribes of Latium had become well- 

 nigh absorbed in the non-Latin, though kindred, 

 Italic races which had succumbed to them. After 

 Gaul had been conquered, it learned Roman 

 manners, but without receiving any very large 

 infusion of Roman blood. In point of race the 

 French are Kelts, with a considerable substratum 

 of Iberian and superstratum of Teutonic blood, 

 the former chiefly in the south, the latter 

 chiefly in the north. Between Frenchmen, Span- 

 iards, and northern Italians there is, indeed, a 

 close ethnic affinity; but this is because they 

 are all to a great extent Kelts, not because they 

 have all learned to speak dialects of Latin. 

 Now if we pursue the matter a little farther, 

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