BOOK I. THE operation of this practical, but powerful intellect, may be traced in the wisdom and energy of their great political mechanisms and municipal institutions. It pervades their ancient laws; and is displayed in full dimensions, as to our Saxon and Norman ancestors, in that collection of our native jurisprudence, which Bracton has transmitted to us. The system of our common law, there exhibited, was admirably adapted to their wants and benefit; and has mainly contributed to form the national bulwarks, and that individual character, by which England has been so long enriched and so vigorously upheld. It is well known, that, of the two states which we have been considering, literary and scientific knowledge has been the earliest acquired by the civilised; and has always continued to be, with some partial fluctuations, their peculiar property; continually, though often tardily increasing, till they have reached that line of limitation, which their manners and institutions at last create. BUT the natural capacity and the intellectual activity, though with a different application, have been equal in both classes. Influenced by dissimilar circumstances, and directed to distinct subjects, the mental power of each may have appeared to be disproportionate, when it was only diversified; but its exertion among those called barbarians, in their forest-habitations, in their predatory expeditions, in their rude councils and national wars, was unceasing; and so finally effective, that the genius of civilised Rome, repeatedly endangered by their hostilities, was at last subdued by their superior energies. THESE two states seem to have been in all ages I. so contemporaneous, and to have pervaded the CHAP. world so equally together, and in such constant vicinity, that history has recorded no era, since the separation of mankind at Babel, in which either has been extinct. On the contrary, the settler and the wanderer; the restless and the tranquil; the Scythian and the Egyptian, have always co-existed. As far as history ascends, the world has been agitated and benefited by both. This fact confirms the idea, that the Nomadic were originally but branches of the civilised, as the migratory settlers on the Ohio and Missouri in our days are the effusions of other states, more advanced and improved: and, but that these men cannot now go, where civilisation from its commanding extent, and with its transforming effects, will not soon pursue them, their posterity would become the Scythians and Goths of modern times; and exhibit an example of the formation of new barbaric tribes. THE nations that appeared the earliest in the civilised state, were the Egyptians, Phenicians, Assyrians, Chinese, and Babylonians; and these have never been known in the Nomadic or barbaric state. In a later age, partly offsets from these, or from a kindred seed, the Carthaginians, Greeks, Persians, Hindus, and Romans emerged; of whom the Greeks and Romans began, at first, to act in their uncivilised condition. SOME of these nations - both of the earlier and the later improved-the Phenicians, Carthaginians, and Greeks, either visited Britain, or were acquainted with it; and the Romans ultimately conquered and occupied it. But the great masses of the populations, which have successively planted I. BOOK themselves in the British islands, have sprung from the Nomadic classes. The earliest of these that reached the northern and western confines of Europe, the Kimmerians and Kelts, may be regarded as our first ancestors; and from the German or Gothic nations who formed, with the Scythians, the second great flood of population into Europe, our Anglo-Saxon and Norman ancestors proceeded. The Sarmatic, or third Nomadic race, have never effected any settlements among us; nor reached those states of the continent from which they could have troubled us. England has seen them only as visitors and friends. THE migrations by land precede those by sea. The facilities of movement are greater, and the ocean is a scene of danger, that repels adventure, as long as other avenues of hope, or safety, are as accessible. But the chronology of these transplantations cannot now be ascertained. It is most probable, that population advanced contemporaneously, though not with an equal ratio, from both land and sea. The sea coasts, nearest to the first civilized states, were gradually visited and peopled, as Greece from Egypt and Tyre; and the islands of the Archipelago and the Mediterranean, as well as Africa and Spain, were colonized by the Phenicians. But the great waves of population have rolled inland from the east. Tribe after tribe moved over the Bosphorus into Europe, until at length the human race penetrated its forests and morasses to the frozen regions in the north, and to the farthest shores of the ocean on the west. Our islands derived their population chiefly from branches of the inland hordes of I. Europe, though the habitual visits of the maritime C HA P. It is highly interesting to an Englishman, who has sprung from the uncivilized races of antiquity, to contemplate the deities and sculptures of Egypt in the court-yard and entrance hall of the British Museum. He there sees the venerated productions of the earliest civilized nation reposing in the metropolis of the descendants of one of the earth's most distant nomadic tribes. When Egypt was in her splendour, England was barbaric and unknown, and scarcely suspected to be existing at the supposed end of the habitable world. England has now reached one of the highest summits of human civilization; and Egypt has sunk into our ancestors' darkest state, without their free and hardy virtues. Osiris and Isis transported from the worshipping Nile to the Thames, to be but the gaze and criticism of public curiosity! The awing head of Memnon in London!! There is a melancholy sublimity in this revolution of human greatness, yet soon changing into a feeling of triumph in the recollection, that were Egypt. now in her proudest state, she would not be, in any thing, our superior. 種 BOOK I. CHAP. II. The Kimmerian and Keltic Nations were the earliest Inhabitants of the West of Europe.- A brief Outline of their Migrations and Expeditions. Settlement of their Colonies in Britain. · Welsh Traditions on this Subject. FROM the languages already remarked to have prevailed in Europe, we have clear indications of the three distinct and successive streams of population, to which we have alluded, because we find two separate families of languages to have pervaded the northern and western regions; with a third, on its eastern frontier; each family being peculiar to certain states. These three languages may be classed under the general names of the Keltic, the Gothic, and the Slavonic; and from the localities in which we find them, and from the names of the ancient nations who are first recorded to have inhabited those localities, they may be also called the Kimmerian, the Scythian, and the Sarmatian. Of these, the Welsh, the Gaelic, the Irish, the Cornish, the Armoric, the Manks, and the ancient Gaulish tongue, are the related languages which have proceeded from the KIMMERIAN or KELTIC source. The Anglo-Saxon, the Francotheotisc, the Mæso-gothic, and the Islandic of former times; and the present German, Suabian, Swiss, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Orkneyan, English, and Lowland Scotch, are ramifications of the great GOTHIC or SCYTHIAN stock. The third genus of European languages, the ancient Sarmatian, or modern Slavonic, appears in |