THE CELTIC FAMILY. 17 



but a branch of the Cymbri of Jutland ; and that the Pictish Cimbri conquered 

 Wales and Cornwall on the fall of the Roman Empire, and are the ancestors of 

 the present Welsh population of Britain. 



At the invasion of Caesar the Belgae, a branch of the Teutonic stock, were 

 already numerous in the maritime parts of England. Subsequently the establish- 

 ment of Roman colonies, the invasion and conquest by the Saxons, and still later 

 by the Normans, have all contributed to form that extraordinary people whom we 

 call the English or Anglo-Saxons. Inferior to no one of the Caucasian families in 

 intellectual endowments, and possessed of indomitable courage and unbounded 

 enterprise, it has spread its colonies widely over Asia, Africa and America ; and, 

 the mother of the Anglo-American family, it has already peopled the new world 

 with a race in no respect inferior to the parent stock. 



While the Celtic appears to be but partially blended with the English blood, 

 the present French nation partakes of it much more largely. The Romans, the 

 Germanic tribes, the Goths, the Burgundians and the Franks, who successively 

 established themselves in France, amalgamated with the native population, thus 

 forming a new race singularly different from that of the adjacent islands, wherein, 

 as we have already seen, the social cond tion of the Celts has always been much 

 more isolated. " It is thus," says Bory de St. Vincent, " that the Celts and Gauls 

 have become the modern French, of whom the Franks of the middle ages are not 

 the parent stock, as those assert who trace their genealogy to the latter barbarians. 

 It is from their Celtic ancestors that the French derive their vivacity, their incon- 

 stancy, their impetuous courage devoid of perseverance, a vanity often puerile, and 

 remarkable quickness of perception, together with that levity which is the jest of 

 a neighboring country."* 



We may in this place remark, that the Caucasian, Germanic and Celtic 

 families already described, and the Hindoo family to be hereafter noticed, consti- 

 tute the great chain of what are called the Indo-European nations. " It is now 

 well known," observes Dr. Prichard, " that a greater or less degree of affinity 

 exists between the dialects of some nations in the south-eastern parts of Asia, and 

 the most extensively spread and most civilised languages of Europe. By this 

 affinity is not meant a resemblance of some particular words in the vocabularies 

 of several nations, such as a casual intercourse may have occasioned, but that sort 

 of analogy in the primitive words and grammatical structure, which requires a 



* L'Homme, I, p. 125. 



