the Germanic Races into Europe. 37 



Ocean as far as the Alps, and overflowing and sweeping round 

 them, already occupied the valley of the Po, and extended 

 nearly to the head of the Adriatic. " The narrow band of 

 coast occupied by the Ligurian and Venetian tribes," says Dr 

 Arnold, when referring to the approaching Gaulish invasion 

 of Rome, " was as yet sufficient to conceal the movements of 

 the Kelts from the notice of the civilized world. Thus, im- 

 mediately before that famous eruption which destroyed Her- 

 culaneum and Pompeii, the level ridge which was then Vesu- 

 vius excited no suspicion ; and none could imagine that there 

 were lurking close below that peaceful surface the materials 

 of a fiery deluge, which were so soon to burst forth, and to 

 continue for centuries to work havoc and desolation." 



But though that celebrated eruption which took place in the 

 first century of the Christian era is the earliest on record, it is 

 well known to the geologist that the pent-up fires of Vesuvius 

 and Solfatara had long before overflowed the Phlegrsean fields ; 

 and, in like manner, the philologist recognises, on no less in- 

 disputable evidence, the traces of earlier Keltic intrusions than 

 that which, in the fourth century of Rome, swept like a wast- 

 ing torrent over Central Italy. The attention of the members 

 of the Canadian Institute has recently been directed to the 

 well known Keltic element now universally recognised as 

 forming so important a constituent part of the Latin tongue. 

 This Professor Newman assumes to be an essentially intrusive 

 element ; but in doing so he recognises it as derived from 

 Italian races, which, if not aboriginal, are known to us as the 

 primitive inhabitants of well-defined areas of the Italian pen- 

 insula at the very dawn of history. Among these Keltic 

 Italians, the Umbrians and the Sabines are specially remark- 

 able, and the essential Celtic* character of the Sabine clan- 

 ship, out of which the later Roman clients, and the whole 

 system of Roman patron and client, patres and plebs, were 



* For the purpose of discriminating between the undoubted modern Keltisin 

 of the Gael, Kymri, &c, of the British Isles and Bretagne, and the assumed but 

 disputable Keltism, in this sense, of some ancient ethnological elements — e. g. f 

 the Celtiberians of Spain — the term Keltic is employed here in reference to all 

 ancient and purely continental elements, that of Celtic to all modern and British 

 elements. 



