Slavonians to the other Indo-European Nations. IT 
family as springing from the same origin, but altered by difference 
of climate and mixture with Indo-Europeans. 
The Indo-European Family is geographically broken into two 
sub-divisions : — Western and Oriental. The latter (comprising the 
Hindoo, Affghan, Persian, and Armenian nations) is supposed to be 
the parent stock of which we Europeans are merely offshots. To 
Western Asia we must look for the cradle of our race, although 
the conquests of Semetic Assyrians and Arabs, the denationalizing 
force of Islam, the invasion of Turanian hordes, both Turks and 
Tartars, have there impaired the pure Indo-European element. 
At what time or for what cause the great Migration into Europe 
began is hidden in the Unwritten History of Mankind. It was, 
probably, not simultaneous, but successive, parted by long intervals 
of time. We may doubt whether the Kelts or the Teutons first left 
the plains of Asia. The Kelts were certainly the pioneers in the 
West. From them spring the Irish, the Highlanders, and the chief 
elements in the French, Swiss, and Northern Italians. They 
peopled South- Western Europe, driving Northward to the vast 
plains of Muscovy the aboriginal Turanian tribes, some of whom, 
however, took refuge in the isles and mountains, leaving a trace of 
their existence in the Basques, the Cantaberians, the Sardinians, and 
Corsicans. Thus it has been reserved to this century to explain the 
fulfilment of Biblical prophecy: — "God shall enlarge Japheth, 
*' and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem ; and Canaan shall be his 
*' servant."'!^ 
The Teutons, probably, did not enter Europe in a body. Of the 
passage of the Germans little can be detailed ; but the Eddas, if we 
accept them as historical, throw much light, though of a mythical 
and uncertain nature, on the Gothic invasion of the Scandinavians. 
In the Northern Caucasus the Aser, as they called themselves, 
slowly developed their nationality, and by degrees parted with their 
Eastern characteristics. Thence they migrated North-West, in an 
age almost historical, passing through the lands of the Giants and 
the Dwarfs, whom we may conjecture were the Slavonians and 
* Gen. ix. 27. 
c 
