477 
and, in fact, they are sometimes found interred in their 
graves. It has, therefore, been assumed that these swords 
were the weapons peculiar to the primitive populations of 
those countries which the Romans had not conquered, and 
of the Celtic populations of these islands before the Romans 
visited them. The same remarks apply to the so-called 
bronze celts, except that the latter have been found in our 
island more undoubtedly with Roman remains. It must be 
remarked, as at least partly explaining the difference in the 
circumstances of the finding of these articles, that the Romans 
were not in the habit of burying their arms with the dead, 
which, on the contrary, was a general custom among the 
Celtic and Teutonic races. 
Now it is a remarkable circumstance that, whenever we 
find the swords, or the " celts," along the whole line of the 
European limits of the empire, whether in Ireland in the 
far-west, in Scotland, in distant Scandinavia, in Germany, 
or still farther east in the Sclavonic countries, they are the 
same — not similar in character, but identical. It is certain 
that these countries were not occupied by peoples of the same 
race, nor is it at all probable that there was at any time (ex- 
cept through the Romans,) a direct intercourse between the 
people on the borders of Russia and those of Ireland ; and 
it seems to me that we should be led almost irresistibly, by the 
fact just stated, to the conclusion, particularly since we find 
them within the Roman empire, that these objects did not 
really belong to the countries where they are found, but that 
they must have been manufactured for them in some central 
position common to them all — in fact, that they were made in 
the Roman empire, and sold to the barbarians, just as now, at 
Birmingham and in others of our great manufactories, articles 
are made for exportation to suit the tastes of the Indian of 
America or the Negro of Africa. There are known 
facts which corroborate this view of the matter. 
