and ornaments of amber, have not as yet been found. Had cromlechs of this nature been the most ancient Celtic graves, we should certainly have expected to have found them in the countries first inhabited by the Celts. But what is more, in the west of Europe there appears not to have been any transition from the cromlech to the barrow they are totally different.”—P. 132.

An ingenious philological argument has also been brought by Dr. Wilson. He derives the Celtic word cromlech from "cromadh, (Gaelic,) or cromen, (Welsh,) signifying a roof or vault, and clach or lech, a stone." He adds that, as the name is Celtic, if the thing be Allophylian, "the old name of cromlech is of recent origin compared with the structures to which it is applied; and of this its derivation affords the strongest confirmation. It is just such a term as strangers would adopt, being simply descriptive of the actual appearance of the monument, but conveying no idea of its true character as a sepulchral memorial."†

We may, therefore, safely conclude, that the monuments of the stone period belong to an ante-Celtic race, and we shall probably not be far wrong in supposing, that the whole cromlech country from Denmark to Portugal was once occupied by an Allophylian race, of whom the Basques are the existing remnant. From Britain and Northern Gaul they were dispossessed by the Celts; from their Scandinavian settlements, apparently by the existing Danes.‡

But a farther question now arises, Were the Basques the earliest inhabitants of these countries, or did they in their turn dispossess some still more remote occupants? This partly turns on the degree of affinity supposed to exist between the Basque and the Finnish nations. Dr. Prichard § seems to admit an analogy, though a remote one, between their respective languages, and such an one is also said to exist between their skulls; but certainly in other respects it would be an insult to compare the two. The Fins were in the lowest state of barbarism in the time of Tacitus, and have certainly, to say the least, not developed since in the same proportion as the Teutonic and Celtic races. But the Iberians, unlike the Fins, have always had a certain civilisation. And still more, as Mr. Worsaae shows, where the Fins exist, or can be shewn to have existed, as in Norway and the greater part of Sweden, the cromlech does not occur. We may therefore follow Mr. Worsaae in saying,"The first people who inhabited the north of Europe were without

*Not from the imaginary Irish Jupiter Tonans, Cambrensis, 1849, p. 311; 1850, pp. 14, 158. Worsaae, p. 144.

+ P. 69.

"Crom." See Archæologia

iii. 22.

Two Allophylian Races.

477

doubt Nomadic races, of whom the Laplanders, or, as they were formerly called, the Fins, are the remains. They had no settled habitations, but wandered from place to place, and lived on vegetables, roots, hunting, and fishing. After them came another race, who evidently advanced a step farther, since they did not follow this unsettled wandering life, but possessed regular and fixed habitations. This people diffused themselves along those coasts which afforded them fitting opportunities for hunting and fishing: while voyages by sea and agriculture also appear to have commenced among them. This race, however, seems not to have penetrated the interior parts of Europe, which were at that time full of immense bogs and woods: they wanted metal for felling trees, and so opening the interior of the country, for which purpose their simple implements of stone were insufficient. They followed only the open coasts, and the shores of the rivers or large lakes. To this period belong the cromlechs, or giants' chambers, and the antiquities of stone and bone exhumed from them."—P. 134.

Dr. Wilson, in like manuer, considers that he has established two Allophylian or ante-Celtic races in Britain, with different skulls and different sepulchral rites, and that the latter were a great advance on the former, and probably entered Britain as conquerors. It is a great temptation to look on them as Fins and Basques respectively; but neither does he himself attempt to make out such a case, nor does he supply sufficient data for the purpose; especially since, if we rightly understand him, cremation was introduced by his second Allophylian race. (P. 72.)

Now, who were the men of the bronze and iron periods? At this stage of our argument we are strongly tempted to wish, either that we were writing on Scandinavian instead of British antiquities, or that we had Mr. Worsaae as a direct guide to the latter. It is with the greatest reluctance that we refrain from transcribing his account of these two periods in the north, so irresistibly clear and cogent is every word of his argument. But, unfortunately, from this point his investigations are of comparatively little service to British antiquaries, as from hence the course of immigration in Britain and in Denmark is, as we have seen, completely different. And we have now passed the most valuable portion of Dr. Wilson's book. His great point is, as we have said, in connecting archæology with geology and anatomy; in the latter stages, which we have now reached, his habit of scattering his conclusions up and down among his data renders it difficult to make out what his conclusions are.

The passage which approaches most nearly to a definite statement is the following:

"We have seen, in so far as the imperfect data already referred to

afford trustworthy indications of the physical characteristics of the primitive colonists of Britain, that the race of the later era differed greatly from their elder, and probably aboriginal precursors of the primeval period. We must depend not only on the united observations of British archæologists for adding to these ethnological data, but also on continental research for supplying the necessary elements of comparison by which we may hope to trace out the origin of the Brachy-kephalic race of Scotland, to whom it seems probable that the introduction of the primitive metallurgic arts must be ascribed; while it may be that we shall yet be able clearly to associate the full development of these prior to the working of iron, with the intrusion of the Celtic upon the elder Allophylian British races.”—P. 205.

From this we should have inferred that the Celts (Gaels) first introduced the use of bronze, and that the Brachycephali (the second or better Allophylian race) learned of them the use, though probably not the manufacture, (Wilson, pp. 205,† 233,) just as in the course of extermination of aborigines which has been carried on by Europeans in so many lands, some portion of the conquerors' civilisation is extended to the vanquished before he disappears from the earth. Yet some way after he tells us,

"In the present state of archæological inquiry, it would be presumptuous to assign dogmatically the precise races to which the arts of each period pertain. Still, the indications both of archæological and direct historical evidence manifestly point to the Celta as comparatively late intruders, and leave us to seek, with little hesitation, in their Allophylian precursors for the metallurgists of the Archaic period. In the Kumbe-kephalic Allophylia, we may expect to trace the rude primeval workers in stone with undefined sepulchral rites, and no distinct evidences of a faith or hope beyond the grave. Upon this meanly gifted race, the Brachy-kephalic Allophyliæ intruded, bringing with them, in all probability, the knowledge of metallurgic arts, yet effecting their aggressions by such slow degrees that, as we have seen, these arts appear to have reached our northern regions long before the rude aborigines were called upon to employ them in repelling their originators. From these as well as other arguments we infer, that when the earliest Celtic nomades first reached our coasts, they found the older natives already in possession

* Dr. Wilson has, in our eyes, wasted many words in disputing against a proposition in a passage of Mr. Worsaae's quoted above, implying that the bronze period marked the intrusion of a conquering race, whereas he supposes what he calls a "metallurgic transition," when bronze and stone were used simultaneously. Now, Mr. Worsaae (pp. 24, 25) most clearly admits a "metallurgic transition;" and, as far as we can discover Dr. Wilson's meaning, he admits the intrusion of the vdes xáλxto, (Brachycephali,) as conquerors. Both seem to us to mean precisely the same thing,-that bronze was introduced by a conquering race, but that the conquered learned to use, if not to work it, before their final extirpation.

"The weapons and implements," he acutely observes, "would in many localities long precede the knowledge of the art by which they were formed."-P. 205.

Bronze probably of Gaelic Introduction.

479

of weapons of bronze, and familiar with the most essential processes of the metallurgist."-P. 343.

Now we really cannot quite reconcile these passages. Our own guess it is not much more-would be that the Gael or Gwyddyl introduced bronze into Britain-where they discovered its use is another matter-and that whatever knowledge the second Allophylians had of it, was derived from them. The bronze celt and even the leaf-shaped sword, may have been used against the invading Gael, just as the musket of European civilisation may in our own times be seen in the hands of the native barbarians engaged in repelling that very civilisation in its further advances. In Scotland, especially, one can hardly conceive the Gael as greatly circumscribing the territory of the Allophylians till they were themselves sore pressed by the Cymry; so that there may even have been an interval of peace -such peace as we may imagine in such a state of societyduring which the savage Allophylian may have freely profited by the arts of the barbarian Gael.

We are led to this view, that the first Celtic invaders, that is the Gael, must have first introduced bronze implements, by the consideration that the cromlechs belong to the latest and most advanced portion of the stone period. We have seen that they are the work of that second Allophylian people which we have endeavoured to identify with the Basque or Iberian_race. But the cromlechs belong wholly to the stone period, though to its latest stage; no metallic articles being, to the best of our knowledge, ever found in them. It seems to follow, then, that the Basque population in Britain had no original knowledge of metals, but that they were introduced by the next race that entered the island, that is, by the Gael or earliest Celts.

If we are right in thus supposing the first Celtic invaders to have introduced the use of bronze, we have now landed on something like historic ground, and the further consideration of the use of iron, whether due to another Celtic race or to a Teutonic immigration, belongs to a subject which we have for the present postponed. The strictly primeval or pre-historic period is now over. Gael and Cymry are existing races, each possessing an existing language and literature, and we are now professing only to deal with those races of men to whose existence no other clue is provided beside the labours of the antiquary. But even with regard to these remoter and darker ages, we would fain have them believe that "lost," is not, as Sir F. Palgrave would teach us "lost," nor 66 gone, gone, for ever." We endeavour to deduce a theory from facts-facts that cannot lie, and which speak to us more clearly than all the triads and traditions of all the

Druids, Bards, and Ovates, that may have been created from Brute to the last Eisteddfod; we seek not for detailed history, but for truth of another kind, yet no less real than the facts that shine forth most clearly in the noblest contemporary narrative. A truer and deeper philosophy breathes in the following extract.

"How undeniable soever the proposition that the history of a country, that is, a narrative of events and actions connected and chronologically arranged, can be conceived which shall be independent of written materials, or, as they are called, immediate sources, it is not less certain that monuments and remains of antiquity, other than literary, have a just claim to be considered as indirect sources for the same historical result. Even if such may not avail to make us acquainted with new positive facts, if they fail to certify a list of sovereigns, or to fix a series of dates, they may yet serve, collectively considered, to give us a clearer perception of the religion, the culture, the external life, and other particulars of our forefathers, than can be supplied even by the written sources, to which latter no such high antiquity can be ascribed, in which old traditions are mixed up with newer, and which, as they have been committed to writing in later times, must have been liable to many corruptions of the text. The other remains of which we speak, form, some of them, a complement to the literary, extending our knowledge beyond the periods when the latter begin to deserve belief, and sometimes awakening and fortifying conjectures as to emigrations and connexions of nations, respecting which history is silent. But even the mute memorials have a still higher significance for us. They lead us back to the original population of our northern country; they make us live again our fathers' life. A grave mound, a lonely circle of stones, a stone implement, a metal ornament excavated from the covered chamber of death, afford a livelier image of antiquity than Saxo, or Snorre, the Eddas, or the Germany of Tacitus. And will not the explorer of the past contemplate a work of the art of the middle ages with an interest which no record can excite?

"Accordingly, there never has been a period since our history began to be cultivated and studied but these monuments have formed an object of attention and investigation, although often viewed in a false light, and though the subject has been treated in a tasteless and unscientific manner. But, again, the remains of the past requite the attention bestowed on them, by assisting other scientific purposes than the strictly historical. They assist to answer questions as to the natural history of our northern countries, their people, changes of climate, and the like."-Guide to Northern Archæology, pp. 25, 26.

The last clause brings us back to the most valuable portions of Dr. Wilson's book, on which we cannot help once more pronouncing our hearty commendation.