THE western extremity of the Pyrenees, where France and Spain join, gives us a locality rendered famous by the historical events of San Sebastian, and the legends of Fuenterabia, with the provinces of Bearn and Gascony on the French, and Navarre and Biscay on the Spanish, side of the mountains. Here it is where, although the towns, like Bayonne, Pampeluna, and Bilbao, are French or Spanish, the country people are Basques or Biscayans—Basques or Biscayans not only in the provinces of Biscay, but in Alava, Upper Navarre, and the French districts of Labourd and Soule. Their name is Spanish (the word having originated in that of the ancient Vascones), and it is not the one by which they designate themselves; though, possibly, it is indirectly connected with it. The native name is derived from the root Eusk-; which becomes Eusk-ara when the language, Eusk-kerria when the country, and Eusk-aldunac when the people are spoken of; so that the Basque language of the Biscayans of Biscay is, in the vernacular tongue, the Euskara of the Euskaldunac of Euskerria.

It is not for nothing that this difference of form has been indicated. In the classical writers we find more than one of the old Spanish populations mentioned under different derivatives from the same root, and sometimes a doubt is expressed by the writer in whose pages it occurs, as to whether there were two separate populations, or only one denoted by two synonymous names. Thus, side by side with the Bast-uli, we find the Bast-itani, and, side by side with the Turd-uli, the Turd-etani. Now respecting these last, Strabo expressly says that whether they were different populations under the same name, or the same under different ones is uncertain.

That the Euskara is no new tongue may be inferred from the fact of its falling into dialects; which Humboldt limits to three, whilst others extend them to five or six.

a. The Biscayan proper is spoken in the country of the ancient Autrigones and Caristii, and it has been proposed to call it the Autrigonian. It has, less correctly, been called Cantabrian, and this is the name which the national taste best likes; for a descent from the indomitable Cantabrian that so long and so successfully spurned the yoke of Rome, and who transmitted the same spirit and the same independence to the Asturian, is creditable enough to be claimed. Nor is the claim unfounded; since, in all probability, the ancient Cantabria included some of the ancestors of the Euskaldunac.

b. The Guipuscoan is the western Biscayan.

c. The Laburtanian is the Euskarian of France, spoken in the parts about St. Jean de Luz; and which, in the district of Soule, is supposed to fall into a sub-dialect.

The Euskarian language has always been the standing point to those inquirers who have argued backwards, from the existing state of things, towards the reconstruction of the ethnology and philology of antiquity; first and foremost of whom, both in date and importance, is Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose essays on the subject form two of the most classical monographs in comparative philology. The method he employed was much more of a novelty then than now. We may guess what it was beforehand. It was the analysis of local names. In this he was successful. Roots like ast-, ur-, and others, found in the ancient names of Spanish and Portuguese localities, far beyond the present pale of the Euskarian tongue, he referred to the Basque, and found them significant therein; thus uria=town or city, and ast=rock or mountain—whereby Asturias means the mountainous country, and Astures the mountaineers.

His inference was (as might be expected) that the Euskarian was as little a modern and local tongue as the Welsh; indeed, that it was so far from anything of the kind, as to be one of the oldest in Europe, and not only old, but widely-spread also. The whole of the peninsula, France as far as the Garonne and the Rhone, and even portions of Italy, were, according to Humboldt, originally Basque; or, as it is more conveniently called, Iberic or Iberian, from the ancient name of Spain—Iberia.

So that now we talk of the ancient Vascones, Varduli, Autrigones and Caristii as particular divisions of the great Iberic stock, under their ancient names, the Euskaldunac being the same under a modern one; whilst the Basques and Navarrese are Euskaldunac, under French and Spanish designations.

The present Euskaldunacs must be a population of as pure blood as any in Europe, lineal descendants from the Autrigones, Varduli, and Vascones, and closely related to the Asturians. At any rate they are the purest blood in the Peninsula. This we infer from their language, and the mountaineer character of their area. They are the Welsh of Spain.

With the pure Euscaldunac let us now contrast the most mixed portion of the Peninsular population; which is that of the water-system of the Guadalquiver, and the parts immediately south and east of it—Seville, Cordova, Jaen, Grenada, and Murcia, if we take the modern provinces; the country of the Turdetani and Bastitani, if we look to the ancient populations—BÆtica, if we adopt the general name of the Romans, Andalusia in modern geography.

The mountain-range between Jaen and Murcia, the Sagra Sierra, was originally the Mons Oros-peda, a fact which I notice, because the element -peda, occurs with a mere difference of dialect in the ancient name of the mountains of Burgos, Idu-beda. So that here, if nowhere else, we have a geographical name common to the northern and southern parts of the peninsula—an Iberic gloss in two distant localities. It was the Iberians of these parts who were the first to receive foreign intermixture, and the last to lose it, the Iberians of the BÆtis, or Guadalquiver, favoured above all other nations of the peninsula in soil, in climate, and in situation. Strabo expatiates with enthusiasm almost unbecoming to a geographer, on their wealth, their industry, their commerce, and their civilization; and all this is no more than their physical condition prepares us to expect. Cities to the number of two hundred and upwards, docks, anachyses (or locks), lighthouses, canals, salt works, mines, agriculture, woven articles, fisheries, an alphabet, and a literature attest the civilization of the ancient Turdetanians as known to the writers of the reign of Augustus; at which time, however, the country was so Romanized that the Iberic tongue was already superseded by the Latin throughout the whole level country; Cordova and Seville,—the pre-eminently Roman towns of Spain,—having been founded by picked bodies of Romans and natives. Hence, in respect to its date, the Spanish of Andalusia is the oldest daughter of the Latin.

But the Romans were as little the first intruders who introduced foreign blood and foreign ideas into Southern Spain as they were the last. Their predecessors were the Phoenicians—sometimes direct from Tyre and Sidon, oftener from the Tyrian colony of Carthage. It was through the accounts of the Phoenicians that the earliest notices of Iberia found their way into Greece; it was through the Phoenicians that the Hellenic poets first heard of the columns of Hercules. It was through the Phoenician—Punic or Tyrian, as the case might be—that the mining and commercial industry of Turdetania was developed. Through them, too, probably (but not certainly) came the alphabet. I say probably, because the shape of the letters is Greek or Italian rather than Phoenician. As the Phoenician settlements seem to have been factories rather than colonies, and as their marriages must have been with native women, their influence was moral rather than physical, i.e., they introduced new ideas rather than new blood. Their contact with the Turdetanians may be spread over some seven centuries—from about 900 to 200 B.C.

New ideas, too, rather than new blood was what was introduced by the Romans; the great change which they effected being that of the language from Iberic to Latin. At the same time, it is by no means safe to say that the Turdetanian civilization was wholly of foreign origin—half Roman and half Phoenician. The inland cities could scarcely be the latter. Yet they existed when Rome first began its conquests. So high do I put either the actual civilization of the southern Iberians, or (what is nearly the same thing) the capacity for receiving its elements, that I doubt whether it stands on a lower level than that of Northern Italy itself minus its geographical advantages of contiguity to Greece. Their remote position was a great disadvantage, and so was the comparative smallness of their sea-board, arising from the unindented character of the peninsular coast.

Between the garrisons of Rome and Carthage we may safely assume some intermixture of native African blood—Numidian, GÆtulian, or Mauritanian—Amazirgh, Kabail, or Berber. It is safe, too, not exactly to exclude Greek influences from Turdetanian Iberia altogether, but to hold as a general rule that, from the monopolizing character of the Phoenician commerce—especially the Carthaginian branch of it—the Greek and Phoenician influences were in the inverse ratio to each other.

The chief negative fact connected with ancient BÆtica is, that none of its geographical localities end in -briga, a remark, of which we shall soon see the import.

The Roman power in Spain was broken by those populations, who gave to Spain the important foreign elements of the fifth century. These are said to be the Alans, the Vandals, the Suevi, and the Goths. Concerning the first of these there is a doubt. The true Alani were a people from the parts between the rivers Volga and Jaik to the north, and the range of Caucasus to the south—people whose nearest neighbours were the Circassians and Russians, or, at any rate, their ancient equivalents: people whose affinities were Asiatic; and whose nearest kinsmen were the Huns, the Avars, the Khazars, and the Turks. Now I do not say that the presence of such a population in Spain, in the first ten years of the fifth century (about A.D. 408) is impossible; perhaps, indeed, it is probable. The Huns, with whom the Alans were allied, were then hanging, like a cloud charged with thunder, over Europe, about to carry carnage and desolation as far westward as the plains of Champagne. And the Alans will help them. So I do not deny that they may have invaded Spain. I remark, however,—as good authorities have done before me—that, except in Spain, the Suevi are almost always in alliance with the Alemanni; a nation with a name so like that of the Alani, as for confusion to be likely. Such confusion, I think, existed here: in other words, I believe that the invaders of Spain were the Suevi and Alemanni—not the Suevi and Alani. If the view be wrong, we must admit an intermixture—inconsiderable, perhaps, in amount—of Turk blood.

The Vandals—for reasons given elsewhere—I believe to have been no Germans at all, but Slavonians under a German leader, the ancestors of the present Serbs of Silesia and Lusatia: since the express statement of Idatius is that they were Vandali Silingi. Now the Silingi can easily be shown to have been the old Silesians. The existence of Slavonic blood in Spain was first indicated by the present writer; and as Andal-usia took its name from the Vandals in question, the local ethnologist may be well employed in seeking for Slavonic elements in a quarter where they have not hitherto been suspected. As the Vandals, too, of Andalusia were the Vandals of Genseric, Gelimir, and the kings of northern Africa, it must be Slavonic rather than German blood, which is not unreasonably supposed to exist amongst some of the mountaineers of Algeria. Whether the Vandals occupied Andalusia to the comparative exclusion of the Goths is uncertain.

The Suevi of Spain must have been but little different from those Burgundian Germans who conquered Germany. They formed part of the same confederacy, and only differed from their allies in proceeding further southwards.

The Goths belonged to a different branch. Their epoch is from A.D. 412 to A.D. 711. As the Gothic empire was an extension from that of southern Gaul, Catalonia may be the province where the Gothic blood is most abundant. Niebuhr considers that they pressed the Suevi before them into Portugal and Asturias.

Two other elements require notice, both early, but one insignificant in amount, and the other obscure and problematical; the Greek and the Keltic.

From Marseilles, Greek colonists founded Emporia on the coast of Catalonia, and a few other places of less importance.

But who were the KeltÆ of Spain? the population whose name occurs in the word Celtici and Celtiberi, Keltic Iberians, or Iberian Kelts? Three considerations come in here.

a. First, the external evidence, or the testimony of ancient authors as to the presence of Kelts in Spain and Portugal.

b. Secondly, the internal evidence derived from the remains of language, the presence of certain customs, and physical appearance.

c. The À priori likelihood or unlikelihood of a Kelt-iberic mixture.

The last is considerable.

The evidence that gives us Kelts at all in the Peninsula gives us them for three-fourths of its area; indeed, Andalusia is the only part wherein reasons of some sort or other for their presence, cannot be discovered. We find traces of them in the valleys of the Ebro, the Guadiana, the Tagus, and the Douro, and we find them also on the high central table-lands that form the water-shed. Such being the case, what must be our view of their chronological relations to the Iberi? Are they the older occupants of Spain and Portugal, or the newer? If the newer, the displacement must have been enormous. If the older, whence are we to bring the Iberians? So great are the difficulties of this alternative, that the fact itself requires extraordinary caution before we admit it at all. Let us deal with the evidence in this cautious spirit.

The external evidence is clear and decisive. To go no further than Strabo, we have Kelts in the north, Kelts between the Guadiana and the Douro, and Kelts in the interior.

At the head-waters of the Guadiana, Posidonius places the Keltiberians, in which parts they “increased in numbers, and made the whole of the neighbouring country Keltiberic.” This is the country on each side of the Sierra de Toledo, or New Castile, the very centre of Spain, and, as such, an unlikely place for an immigrant population, whether we look to its distance from the frontier, or to its mountainous aspect. They are carried, at least, as far north as the mountains of Burgos, and to the upper waters of the Douro on one side, and the Ebro on the other. So that Old Castile, with parts of Leon and Aragon, may be considered as Keltiberic. This is the first division.

In the south of Portugal comes the second, i.e., in Alemtejo, or the parts between the Tagus and the Guadiana. Here are the Celtici of the classical writers.

The third section is found in the north of Portugal, and in the neighbourhood of Cape Finisterre. Here Strabo places the Artabri, and close to them Celtici and Turduli of the same nation with those of the south, i.e., those of Alemtejo. His language evidently suggests the idea of a migration. Such is the Keltic area as determined by external evidence, and it cannot be denied that it is very remarkable. It is of considerable magnitude, but very discontinuous and unconnected.

The internal evidence is wholly of one sort, viz., that which we collect from the names of geographical localities. One of the common terminations in the map of ancient Gaul is the word -briga (as in Eburo-briga), which takes the slightly different forms of -briva, and -brica—Baudo-brica, Samaro-briva. Now compounds of -briga are exceedingly common in Spain. They occur in all the parts to which Celtici or Celtiberi are referred, and in a great many more besides. Hence the internal evidence—as far, at least, as the compounds in -briga are concerned—gives us a larger Keltic area (or more Keltiberians) than the testimony of authors; indeed it gives us the whole of the peninsula except Andalusia, a fact which explains the import of a previous remark as to absence of compounds ending in -briga south of the Sierra Morena. It is rare, too, in Catalonia—perhaps non-existent.

Tested, however, by the presence of the form in question, Valentia on the west, and all Portugal (the ancient Lusitania) on the east, were Keltiberic—as may be seen by reference to any map of ancient Spain.

But there are serious objections to the usual inference from this compound. It is nearly the only geographical term of which the form is Keltic. And this is a remarkable instance of isolation. The terminations -durum, -magus, and -dunum, all of which are far commoner in Gaul than even -briga itself, are nowhere to be found. Neither are the Gallic prefixes, such as tre-, nant-, ver-, &c. Hence, it is strange that, if Spain were Keltic, only one Keltic form should have come down to us. Where are the rest? I am inclined to believe that the inference as to such a Spanish name as, e.g., Talo-briga, being Keltic, on the strength of such undoubted Gallic words as Eboro-briga, is no better than the assertion that the Jewish name Samp-son was in the same category with the English names John-son and Thomp-son would be. Such accidental resemblances are by no means uncommon. The termination -dun is as common in Keltic, as the termination -tun is in German. Yet they are wholly independent formations. At the same time I cannot deny that the internal and external evidence partially support each other.

But there is another series of facts which goes further still to invalidate the belief in the existence of Kelts in Spain. It is this. Instead of the Kelts of Iberia having been Kelts in the modern sense of the term, the Kelts of Gallia were Iberians. This is an unfortunate circumstance. Writers, speakers, journalists, and orators, Ribbonmen and Orangemen, who neither know nor care much about the Natural History of Man, talk about the Keltic stock, or the Keltic race, with a boldness and fluency that, except in the case of the antagonist term Anglo-Saxon, we meet with nowhere else. To read some of the dissertations on Irish misgovernment, or Welsh dissent, one might fancy that an American of Pennsylvania was writing about the aboriginal Indians, or the enslaved negroes—so much is there made of race, and so familiar are even the non-ethnological part of the world with the term. Men know this when they know nothing else.

Great, then, is the actual and practical currency and general recognition of the word; so great that its historical truth, and its theoretical propriety are matters of indifference. Be it ever so incorrect, the time for changing it has gone by. Nevertheless, I think (nay, I am sure) that the word is misapplied.

I think, that though used to denominate the tribe and nations allied to the Gauls, it was, originally, no Gallic word—as little native as Welsh is British.

I also think that even the first populations to which it was applied were other than Keltic in the modern sense of the term.

I think, in short, that it was a word belonging to the Iberian language, applied, until the time of CÆsar at least, to Iberic populations.

The name came from the Greeks of the Gulf of Lyons—the Greeks of Massilia, or of Emporia, more probably the former. Now, as there is express evidence that a little to the west of Marseilles the Ligurian and Iberian areas met, the likelihood of the word belonging to the latter language is considerable.

It is increased by the circumstance of two-thirds, if not more, of the Keltic portion of Gaul being Iberian. Posidonius places the centre of the Keltic country in Provence, near the spot where the Roman settlement of Narbo was built: an Iberian locality. The Kelts of Herodotus are in the neighbourhood of the city called Pyrene; a word which carries us as far westward as the Pyrenees, although its meaning is different. As far as they extended beyond the present provinces of Roussillon and Languedoc, they extended westwards; beyond—according to Herodotus—the Pillars of Hercules, and as far as the frontier of the extreme KynetÆ. Aristotle knew the true meaning of the word Pyrene, i.e., that it denoted a range of mountains; and he also called Pyrene “a mountain of Keltica.” By the time of CÆsar, however, a great number of undoubted Gauls were included under the name CeltÆ: in other words, the Iberian name for an Iberian population was first adopted by the Greeks as the name for all the inhabitants of south-western Gaul, and it was then extended by the Romans so as to include all the populations of Gallia except the BelgÆ and Aquitanians. The word CeltÆ also passed for a native name—“ipsorum lingua CeltÆ, nostra Galli appellantur.” Upon this Prichard reasonably remarks, that CÆsar would have written more accurately had he stated that the people whom the Greeks called ???ta? were Galli in the eyes of a Roman.

But the Greek form for Galli is G??-ata?, a form suspiciously like ???t-a?. I admit that this engenders a difficulty, since it shows the possibility of the two words being the same. At the same time it can be explained. The at in G??-ata? is non-radical. It is the sign of the plural number, as it is in Irish at the present moment; whereas the t in ?e?t-a? is a part of the root.

And now I have given the additional reason for believing that the so-called Kelts of Spain were no Kelts at all in the modern sense of the word, but only Iberians; and I further suggest the likelihood of the word meaning mountaineer, or something like it, in which case the Kelts of South Gaul must be supposed to be (as they are made by Herodotus and Aristotle) the Pyrenean Iberians, the Celtiberi and Celtici being also the Highlanders of the great central range of Spain, of Gallicia, and of Alemtejo. This, however, is only a suggestion.

Perhaps the point is not very important. Whether we look to the amount of their civilization, to their national temper as shown in the defence of their independence, or to the extent to which they contributed to the literature of the Latin language, there are no very striking differences between the Gaul and the Iberian. Personal heroes like Viriathus and Vercingetorix occur on both sides; whilst Gaul resisted CÆsar by instances of endurance behind stone walls scarcely inferior to the display of obstinate valour at Numantia.

The Gothic conquest of Spain was succeeded, in the eighth century, by one of equal, perhaps, greater, importance. The line it took was from south to north; so that its direction was different from that of the Goths. It was also made by a southern population. The Arabs who effected the first invasion under Musa, were the Arabs of an army; i.e., almost wholly males; probably, too, they were pretty pure in blood. Afterwards, however, larger swarms came over from Africa; and it cannot be doubted that, along with these there were females and families of mixed African as well as of pure Arab descent. The areas which were successively appropriated by these invaders are not exactly those that we expect, À priori. Murcia, or the March, was less modified by the conquest than Valencia and other countries northwards. It was held in a sort of imperfect independence by Theodemir, and under the name of Tadmor, into which that of the Gothic king was metamorphosed by the Arabs, long continued to be the most Gothic part of south-eastern Spain.

In contrast to Grenada, and in consonance with what we expect from their geographical position, were the northern provinces of Asturias, Biscay, Navarre, and Galicia—Galicia, in respect to its ethnology, belonging almost as much to Portugal as to Spain. Into Asturias the arms of the Arab conqueror never penetrated: so that the original nationality was preserved in the kingdom of Oviedo, under the successors of Pelagius or Pelayo. Were these brave and independent mountaineers Goths or Romans? or were they original Iberians? And if of mixed blood, in what proportion were the different elements? They seem to have been second in purity of blood to the true and Proper Basques only. They were somewhat more Romanized than the latter, as is shown by their language; but both were equally free of Gothic admixture. This view rests partly on the previous details of their history, and partly on the names of the kings who succeeded Pelayo. They are not Gothic, like Euric, Wallia, or Roderic, nor yet Latin, like Pedro; but truly and properly Spanish (with the exception, perhaps, of Frivila), as Alonzo, Ordonio, Sancho, &c.; Spanish in the same way that Edward and Richard are German, or Arthur and Owen, Keltic. Pacheco, perhaps, is the truest Iberian designation. It occurs in CÆsar, as Paciecus. When the Arabs conquered Spain, their peculiar civilization was but partially developed. It grew up, to a great degree, within Spain itself.

The Arab elements belonged to the same class with the Phoenician, though to a different section of it. So did the Jewish, which were introduced earlier, and, if not of equal amount, were, at least, of longer duration. The Jews brought with them the oldest civilization in the world. But they were important physical influences as well. They came with their families, and, consequently, were less thrown upon the necessities of intermixture than the majority of the Arabs. The intermixture, however, was in both cases considerable. As long as the Arian kings of the Gothic stock held their sway, the Israelite was tolerated and something more. His industry was protected, and his earlier familiarity with letters and the civilizing influences of commerce respected. The prejudices against intermixture were chiefly on his side. Orthodoxy, however, introduced persecution. Some of its earliest enactments forbid Christian wives and Christian mistresses to Jews, a sure proof of the previous prevalence of an opposite custom. In the Mahometan parts of the Peninsula, the toleration was considerable throughout. Lastly must be noticed the great extent to which the pride in his real or supposed purity of blood characterizes the Hidalgo. This would not have been the case if purity of blood were the rule, and an Arab or Jewish cross the exception. The reign of Ferdinand and Isabella was signalized by the double ejection of the Jews from the Peninsula in general, and the Arabs from their last possession, the kingdom of Grenada. Such ejectments are never complete. Each, however, of these was one of remarkable magnitude.

The Normans, who settled on so many of the coasts of southern Europe, made a smaller impression on the Iberian peninsula than elsewhere. Still they must be recognised as an element.

Such is the basis of the Spanish stock, and such the chief superadded elements—Iberic in the first instance: then Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Gothic, Vandal, Alan (?), Jewish, Arab, and Norman, to say nothing about the cases of French and other settlers from the modern kingdoms of Europe. These elements are differently distributed over the several provinces; and at the present moment each has some peculiar characteristics.

The most regular features, and the most purely brunette complexions are found in Andalusia, conjoined with a gay, pleasure-loving disposition; not given to the sterner virtues, but with considerable intellectual capacity, as shown both in art and literature; and, in Andalusia, the foreign elements are at their maximum—chiefly oriental, but partly (in the belief, at least, of the present writer) Slavonic. Yet it is not safe to refer the one to the other. The soil and climate of Andalusia—the favoured valley of the most southern river in Spain—have also their peculiarities.

In Grenada the habits are ruder, and Grenada is chiefly a mountain range.

Murcia[3] has the credit of being the Boeotia of Spain. It has less than its share of Arab, and, perhaps, a considerable amount of Gothic, blood.

Valencia has been unfavourably described; the physiognomy of its population being the most Moorish in Spain, and the temper dangerous. It was from Valencia that the last branch of Arabs was expelled in the reign of Philip III.—the Little Moors or Moriscoes. Orientals as they were, the nobles to whom they were serfs, and whose land they cultivated, could ill afford to lose them. Contrary to what we expect from their stock, they were signalized by steady industry and perseverance in agriculture. The present language of Valencia is only Spanish so far as it is spoken in the Spanish peninsula. It is a distinct tongue from the Castilian; yet not French. It belongs to the ProvenÇal class—called also Limousin.

It is the same with Catalonia; the least Iberic, the least Arab, but, perhaps, the most Roman, and the most Gothic of all the Spanish provinces—Cat-alonia or Goth-land—commercial, manufacturing, and radical, with a political history of its own, and, for a time, an independent line of sovereigns—the Berengarii.

In respect to language, the standard Spanish is that of the Castiles; and it is upon the Castilians that our usual notions of a Spaniard are founded. Decorous, reserved, and unenterprising, the occupant of a misplaced metropolis, and of an arid table-land, which, for the most part, is too much a mountain for agricultural, and too little of one for mining industry, he is a type of the third variety of the Iberic stock—the Andalusian and Catalonian being the other two.

In the fourth, the mountaineer-character, with its usual spirit of independence, rude manners, and hardy mode of life, which attains its height in Navarre and Biscay, is shared in different degrees by the Galicians, Asturians, northern Arragonese, and the Spaniards of Leon; the physical appearance changing from dark to light, and from a regular contour to coarse angular features, with high cheek-bones. In Galicia, a province of hewers of wood and drawers of water, this is most remarkable. In Biscay, the comparative lightness of complexion has engendered the idea of a Norman intermixture.

Though it would be a dangerous overstatement to say that descent, pedigree, blood, or extraction go for nothing, we cannot consider the nature of the Spanish national character in general, as exhibited in the development of its science, art, literature, social institutions, and in its moral and material influence upon the history of the world, without seeing that many of the leading features of the drama that the Spaniards have played upon the theatre of both the Old and New World are referable to the effect of external circumstances—circumstances which, in our inability to work out the details of cause and effect, we must be content to call accidental. Who so likely to be isolated in the character of their literature, and deficient in comprehensiveness of thought, as the nation with the smallest sea-board and the most extreme geographical position in Europe? Who so probable to have spread their language over half America as the same? Who so fit to be good Catholics as the favoured of the Pope, the authorized converters of the heathen Indians, and the people whose national life was a crusade against the Mahometan on their own soil? Who, too, so born to the pride of purity of blood? There is much to account for all this, with which descent has nothing to do, although, perhaps, there is more than the explanation of all this accounts for.

A ballad literature, rising to the level of the humbler epics, and a truly home-grown drama, are the self-evolved, indigenous elements of Spanish literature. Their material influences are to be found in the histories of America, the Indies, the Philippines, Micronesia, Italy, and the Mediterranean Islands.

Portugal is Spain with a difference. More purely Iberic, and less Phoenician, from the first, it was also less Roman, less Arab, and very slightly Gothic. In Africa and India its influence has been greater, in America somewhat less than that of Spain. The extent to which the physical and moral characteristics of the Galicians and Estremadurans are intermediate and transitional, I am unable to state.

* * * *

A refinement upon the doctrine of the KeltÆ having been Iberian, and of the Celtiberi having been no Kelts at all, in the usual sense of the term, will be found when we come to the ethnology of Ireland. It consists in the possibility of one or both having been Gaels—Kelts, it is true, but not Kelts in the sense given to the word by the ancients.