THE ENOLlsri PKOPLE. 171 



course it is not meant that those people have in- 

 tentionally or entirely kept \\\^ their purity of race 

 from any later foreign intermixture across so 

 many intervening centuries; on the contrary, it is 

 almost certain that even into the remotest valleys 

 or peninsulas every successive wave of population 

 must sooner or later have penetrated in some 

 force, and have gradually amalgamated with tlie 

 sedentary population. But it is more than proba- 

 ble, on the other hand, that wherever in si)ecial 

 districts, and more particularly in the country, 

 a short, dark type of humanity prej)onderates, 

 there the people of the newer stone age have left 

 their mark deeply upon the blood and figure of 

 the modern inhabitants. Newer races settled in 

 time among them, conquered them, and enslaved 

 them, turned them into serfs, and slowly mixed 

 with tliem by intermarriage; but the primitive 

 dark ty[)e asserts itself still by constant inherit- 

 ance, so that even in England j^roper, where we 

 ought all to be fair-haired and blue-eyed Anglo- 

 Saxons, according to the common notion of the 

 English Conquest, black curly locks and dark eyes 

 are almost or quite as common at the present day 

 as the true Teutonic flaxen hair and cerulean iris. 

 Tiie next great race to settle in England was 

 that of the genuine Aryan Celts. A fair Northern 

 race, coming down upon all Western Europe from 

 the direction of Russia, the Celts seem to have 



