370 PHYSICAiL CHARACTERISTICS OP THE 



as I conceive, to be displaced in central Europe, by the movements 

 of the Germanic nations from beyond the Baltic into their later home 

 in the Rhine valley. 



In the time of Herodotus, the Greeks knew vaguely of a people 

 called Ke'Xrai, occupying the remotest regions of Europe, bordering 

 on the Atlantic. At later dates allusions are made to them by 

 Xenophon and Aristotle ; and the latter indicates an increasing know- 

 ledge of them in his day, by the references to their customs and most 

 characteristic traits which occur in his philosophical works. But the 

 very imperfect knowledge of this ancient people manifested by the 

 most observant Greek writers, suffices to illustrate the extreme isola- 

 tion of the nations within the period of authentic history. Transal- 

 pine Europe was still a terra incognita ; and the KeXrai, whose 

 language is the key to much of the earliest topographical nomencla- 

 ture of Central Europe, from the Atlantic to the head of the Adriatic 

 Gulf; and who must have been a numerous and powerful people long 

 before they made their hostile incursions into Italy : were, nevertheless, 

 known only to the Greeks through some obscure rumours, probably 

 of Phoenician voyagers. Slight, however, as are the early notices of 

 the Keltai, they reveal to us the presence at the dawn of authentic 

 history of that remarkable people who seem to constitute a link be- 

 tween the prehistoric and the historic nations of Europe. If we do 

 indeed look upon them for the first time in the beginning of their 

 decline, when younger nations were already intruding on the ancient 

 Celtic area, and effecting the first encroachments which finally resulted 

 in their dismemberment and denationalisation : it suffices to illustrate 

 the great age of nations. Upwards of two thousand years have since 

 elapsed ; and still the fragments of that once powerful branch of the 

 European family of nations preserve their ancient tongue, and struggle 

 to assert for themselves an independent nationality. To the Romans 

 they had made themselves known as haughty conquerors, while yet 

 the imperial city on the Tiber was but the nucleus of an infantile 

 state ; but the earliest authentic details regarding them, as the occu- 

 pants of what is regarded as their native territory, are derived from the 

 narrative of Caesar's conquests; and the subsequent reduction of the 

 tribes of Gaul and Britain by the Legionaries of Rome. 



Unfortunately the ethnologist has at every step in his researches, 

 to deplore the indefiniteness of nearly all the notices of the barbarian 

 races with which the Greeks or Romans were brought into contact ; 



