IT is convenient to take the ethnology of France next in order to that of Spain, because we have already seen that, when we examine the earliest populations of the two countries we shall find that the Iberic stock was common to the two. Although I find no Gauls in Iberia, the Iberians in ancient Gaul were numerous; indeed, they occur in Gascony and Bearn at the present moment.

The predominant stock, however, of Gallia, as is well-known, is the Keltic, still existing, along with its ancient language, and other characteristics in Brittany.

The Iberians belonged chiefly, though not wholly and exclusively, to Aquitania. In the reign of Augustus this term denoted a political, in that of Julius CÆsar, an ethnological area. The province reached from the Pyrenees to the Loire; the Aquitania of the true Aquitani from the Pyrenees to the Garonne.

In the present towns of Bazas, Eauze, and Auch, we have the names of the ancient Vas-ates, Elus-ates, and Ausci; besides which, the Soci-ates, the Tarus-ates, the Garumni, the Bigerriones, the Preciani, the Gari-tes, the Sabuz-ates, the Cocos-ates, the Lector-ates, and the Tarbelli occupied the present provinces of Gascony and Bearn in general. It is usual to say that these names are Iberian. This is scarcely the case. The remarkable peculiarity of them is as follows: the termination -at is Gallic, and probably the sign of the plural number, whilst the radical part is not evidently Gallic, and, probably, not Gallic at all; or (changing the expression) whilst the Gallic inflexion is common amongst the old names of Gascony, the Gallic roots (-magus, tre-, con-, &c.) are rare; from which I infer that the geographical nomenclature of south-western France was Iberic in respect to its roots, but Gallic in respect to its form; so that the words in question are Iberic names taken from Gallic informants. Nothing, however, of great importance depends on this.

In the parts about Baignerres there was a Roman colony, that of the ConvenÆ; partly Gallic, partly Iberic, and partly Legionary.[4]

As were Gascony and Bearn, so were Rousillon and the greater part of Languedoc—Iberic; for the Iberi extended to the Rhone.

Along the frontier of the Iberian area there was certainly intermixture between the Aquitanians and the true Gauls, and there were also Gallic settlements, such as Hebro-magus, within the Iberian area itself. Nevertheless, Southern Gaul was Northern Spain, and Northern Spain Southern Gaul.

Provence and DauphinÉ differ from Gascony and Languedoc in having had a Ligurian rather than an Iberian substratum; in having received Roman influences earlier and more largely, in having been the area of the PhocÆan colony of Massilia, or Marseilles, in and around which city there must have been a notable tincture of Greek blood.

Who were the Ligurians?

The PhocÆan Greeks founded the colony of Marseilles; and it was not long before the parts along the coast, and to some distance inland, became imperfectly known. When Prometheus gives to Hercules the details of his travels westwards, he says that, “You” (Hercules) “shall reach the fearless people of the Ligyes, where, with all your bravery, you shall find no fault with their warlike vigour. It is ordained that you shall leave your arrows behind. But as all the country is soft, you shall be unable to find a stone. Then Zeus shall see you in distress, and pity you, and overshadow the land with a cloud, whence a storm of round stones shall rain down. With these you shall easily smite and pursue the army of the Ligyes.” Such is the gist of a quotation from a writer so early as Æschylus, in his drama of the “Prometheus Unbound,” as given by Strabo.

These Ligyes are the Ligurians, better known as a people of Italy, and as the coastmen of the Gulf of Genoa. Southwards and eastwards they extended as far as the Arno, and westwards to the Rhone; where (as already stated) they came in contact with the Iberians. So that the ancient Ligurians were a population common to both Gaul and Italy, just as the Iberians were common to Gaul and Spain. Herodotus places Marseilles in the country of the Ligyes.

The fact of this tract being known so much earlier than the interior of Gaul, known too to the Greeks who first, and more than others, used the term Kelt, confirms the view of its non-Gallic origin. At any rate, it makes it either Iberian or Ligurian, and, consequently, only so far Keltic (in the modern sense of the term) as the Ligurians were KeltÆ.

This is the point now under notice. I think that the Ligurians were Kelts.

In the first place, the name seems to have a meaning in the Keltic tongue; since Prichard suggests that it may have been derived from Llygwyr,[5] which means in Welsh coastman.

In my mind it is a native name also; a point upon which Prichard expresses a doubt, since he writes that, “it does not prove that the people were Kelts, since the designation is one more likely to have been bestowed upon them by a neighbouring tribe than assumed by themselves.” Who, however, could have bestowed it? Scarcely any population of the interior, since it is Greeks from whom we get it, and the coast was the part with which they were chiefly acquainted. Had the name been a late one, and derived from Roman sources, Dr. Prichard’s inference would have been legitimate. As it is, however, we have nothing but Ligurians and Iberians from the Pyrenees to the Arno, and as it cannot be both Iberic and Keltic (in the modern sense of the word), it must, if Keltic, be Ligurian.

Against it lies the evidence of Strabo, who separates the Ligyes from the Kelts as a distinct race; differing, however, but little from the Kelts in their mode of life. Now with this qualification, and with the belief that the Kelts whom he contrasted with the Ligyes were, to a great extent, Iberian, I lay but little stress on the evidence of Strabo.

Against it, also, in the eyes of more than one good writer, is a very questionable etymology; which I will give in full, as a lesson of caution. Pliny says that the river Po in the Ligurian language was called Bodencus, or bottomless. Prichard suggests, in a note, that the true reading may have been Boden-los, and asks whether anybody will venture hence to conjecture that the Ligurians were Germans? Sir Francis Palgrave, taking Prichard’s suggestion as a bon fide reading, does this; and that with a great degree of confidence. Yet the termination -nc is found in the country of the Allobroges, or DauphinÉ, e.g., Lem-incum, Durot-incum, Vap-incum, and is also Gallic, e.g., Aged-incum. It is British as well—Habita-ncum.

The reasons, then, against the Keltic origin of the Ligurians are thus exceptionable. Yet those in favour of it are weak. One thing, however, they must have been: a. Kelts; b. Iberians; or c. members of a wholly new, and now extinct, stock. I incline to the first of these views rather than the second, and the second rather than the third. At the same time, they were a well-marked variety; otherwise the Romans would not so invariably have separated them from the Gauls of both Gaul and Italy.

The primary population, then, of Gaul (supposing the Ligurians to have been Keltic) was of a twofold character:—

1. Iberic, in Aquitania, and

2. Keltic (in the modern sense of the term) elsewhere—the Keltic falling into three divisions:—

a. The Belgic—

. The proper Gallic—

?. The Ligurian (?).

The history of the displacement and intermixture is complex. Along the Ibero-Gallic frontier, or in the parts north of the Garonne, and west of the Rhone, there must have been small and partial quarrels, sufficient to create intermixture, and a gradual change of the boundaries from the earliest times. Perhaps, too, it may be added that the Gauls encroached on the Iberians rather than the Iberians on the Gauls.

Along the valley of the Rhine, or the Germano-Gallic frontier, there was the same mutual encroachment, but to a far greater degree, and the wars, of which the conquest of Ariovistus is a sample, introduced German, and, perhaps Slavonic blood into Gaul in more quarters than one.

At present—

Alsatia contains the least amount of Keltic blood of all the provinces of France, inasmuch as it is German in language, and French in respect to its political relations only. The fifth century is the date of its conquest, and it was by Germans of the High German division from Suabia and Franconia that it was reduced. Before this it was Romanized. What was it before its reduction by Rome? Many at once answer “German,” because its occupants were the Triboci, whom Tacitus calls “haud dubie Germani.” For reasons given elsewhere,[6] I believe that they were Germanized Gauls rather than true Germans.

Lorraine, originally Keltic, and afterwards Romano-Keltic, is less German than Alsatia, but more so than Champagne. Its name, Hlothringen, is German. I cannot, however, say whether the German blood in Lorraine was introduced from the north or from the south; by the High Germans of Alsatia and Franche-ComtÉ, or the Low-Germans of Clovis.

In Franche-ComtÉ the particular descent is from the Sequani, the tribe which, of all others equally far from the German frontier, was most Germanized. For when CÆsar was in Gaul, the Sequani called in the Suevi and Marcomanni of Ariovistus, and gave up one-third of their land as the price of his tyrannical protection. Now the army of Ariovistus was mixed, and there is reason for believing that even Slavonians were to be found in it. At any rate it infused German blood into the Sequani more than into their neighbours. The process, however, of Romanizing went on all the same, until the fifth century, when the invasion that gave their names to the present province and to Burgundy took place. From which time forwards the ethnology of Franche-ComtÉ, or the country of the Franks, is that of—

Burgundy.—Here the Kelts were the Sequani, and the Germans, certain High-Germans of Franconia. Sir James Stephen, in his valuable “Lectures on the History of France,” draws a broad distinction between the German blood introduced by the Burgundians, and the German blood introduced by the Franks of Clovis; exaggerating, however, in my mind, the rudeness of the latter, as well as the cultivation of the former. Speaking of the Germany of Tacitus, he says, that it better suited the author to “pourtray the more striking characteristics of the Teutonic tribes collectively, than to investigate the more minute peculiarities which distinguished them from each other. Yet we cannot doubt that, even in his day, they were far more widely discriminated in fact, than in his delineation of them, as, beyond all controversy, they were so in the age of Clovis.

“Thus, for example, the Burgundians, before their irruption to Gaul, were remarkable for their skill as artizans; and in the poems in which, not long after that event, they were described by Sidonius Apollinaris, we have the best attestation of their resemblance to the kind and simple-hearted German of our own days. Thus also the Gothic people, almost immediately after their settlement in Aquitaine, manifested a singular aptitude for a yet higher civilization. For, if St. Jerome was correctly informed, Ataulph their king seriously projected the substitution of a new Gothic for the old Roman empire; a scheme in which the character of Julius was to be ascribed to Alaric, that of Augustus being reserved for the projector himself. Euric, the successor of Ataulph, filled his court at Toulouse with rhetoricians, poets, and grammarians; and coveted (and not altogether in vain) the applause of the Italian critics for the pure Latinity of his despatches.

“The Franks, on the other hand, were a barbarous people, and their history is in fact a barbaric history. At their entrance into Gaul they were worshippers of Odin, and believed that the gates of the Walhalla rolled back spontaneously on their hinges to admit the warrior who had dyed, with the blood of his enemies, the battle-field on which he had himself fallen. From their settlements on the lower Rhine they had sometimes marched to the defence of the Romano-Gallic province, but more frequently and gladly to the invasion of it. Their appetite for rapine was insatiate, unrestrained, and irresistible. In war they were the prototypes of the Norman pirates of a later age, or of the West Indian buccaneers of more modern times. In peace they were the very counterpart of the North American Indians, as depicted by the early travellers in Canada; a comparison which almost every commentator on Tacitus has instituted and verified.”

Now I have great doubts about the superior civilization of the conquerors of Burgundy, Alsatia, and Franche-ComtÉ; but these arise from a view, perhaps, peculiar to myself, of the nature of the Frank confederacies. I believe the word Frank to have distinguished the Germans who were independent of Rome from those who were in allegiance to the empire, and, consequently, that it might be borne by different divisions of the German stock, and by wholly unconnected alliances. More than this—if it separated the Romanized from the independent Germans, it separated, to a certain extent, the rude from the refined, the Pagan from the Christian. Now, of these two classes, the rude independent Pagans were the more likely conquerors of Burgundy and Franche-ComtÉ; in which case the differences of their civilization is likely to have been inconsiderable. It is true that they may have been Christianized by time—but so were the Salians of Clovis. On the other hand, their contact with the undoubtedly Christian Goths of DauphinÉ and Languedoc, had a truly civilizing tendency.

It was the Franks of Franche-ComtÉ, and not the Salians of Clovis, amongst whom we find the dynasty of the Merovings: Ptolemy, at least, places the ?a???????? in the country of the Burgundians, anterior to their passage of the Rhine and their conquest of the Gallic provinces beyond it. Hence, the true Meroving was the Burgundian princess Chlotilda, the wife of Clovis, rather than Clovis himself.

In Savoy the foreign intermixture has been but small; the population being, in the more mountainous parts at least, simply Romano-Keltic—and then more Keltic than Roman.

DauphinÉ, Provence, Languedoc, and Gascony carry us to the Ligurian and Iberian areas.

Between the second and third Punic wars the Ligyes of Gaul were reduced, rather later than the Ligurians of Italy. They seem from the first to have been a warlike nation. Æschylus, as has been seen, arms them against Hercules; and their brothers in the Apennines defended themselves with valour and obstinacy. The Salyes were their chief tribe. How far they extended inwards is uncertain. It is only safe to say that Provence was Ligurian, and DauphinÉ Gallo-Ligurian before it became Romanized: and that the remainder of the ethnological history of the Ligurians of Gaul is nearly the same as that of the Gallic Iberians.

Next to the Spanish peninsula, the southern provinces of France were the most deeply tinctured with Arab influences of any part of Europe.

In the parts between the Loire and Garonne, Poitou, Santonge, Limoges, and Perigord, exhibit, in a modern form, the names of the ancient Pictones, Santones, Lemovici, and Petrocorii, all of which were Gallic, though, perhaps, not so typically Gallic as the Parisii, Carnutes, Turones, and Bituriges of the Isle of France, the Orleannois, Touraine, and Berri. In these parts the admixture of Roman and Keltic blood, has been less disturbed by subsequent admixture of Arabs and Goths than elsewhere; not that even here it is pure. The Franks of the Netherlands, Lorraine, and the Franks of Burgundy and Franche-ComtÉ must have seriously tinctured the blood even in these parts. Champagne, too, may be in the same category.

French Flanders, Artois, and part of Picardy are just more Romano-Keltic and less German than the French provinces of Belgium. Normandy has its peculiar and characteristic Scandinavian elements.

If France, then, be essentially and fundamentally Romano-Keltic, it is the parts of which Orleans is the centre, where the mixture is in the most normal proportions; as is shown by even the names of the provinces. Brittany, Normandy, Flanders, Lorraine, Franche-ComtÉ, Burgundy, Provence, Gascony,—each of these indicates something either more or less Roman and Keltic than the typical and central parts of the middle Loire and Seine. Thus,—

1. Brittany is more Keltic, and consequently less Roman.

2. Normandy, is not only Romano-Keltic, but Scandinavian.

3. Flanders, more or less German.

4. Lorraine, the same.

5. Franche-ComtÉ and Burgundy, Frank and Burgundian, i.e., German.

6. Provence, inordinately Roman; the basis being Ligurian, and the superadded elements Gothic and Arab.

7. Gascony—Roman on an Iberian basis.

It is now time to consider the physical and moral characters of the ancient Kelts. It is just possible that, from the admixture of German and other blood, the average stature of the Italians may have increased; so that the difference between a Gaul and an Italian may have been greater in the time of CÆsar than now. That the stature of the French and Germans has decreased is improbable. Be this, however, as it may, the evidence not only of the second-hand authorities amongst the classics, but of CÆsar himself, is to the effect that the Gauls when compared with the soldiers that were led against them, were taller and stouter. “The generality despise our men for their shortness, being themselves so tall.” Thus writes CÆsar. A good series of measurements from ancient graves, would either confirm or overthrow this and similar testimonies. For my own part, I am dissatisfied with them. The habit of magnifying the thews and sinews of the conquered, is a common habit with conquerors, and CÆsar had every motive for giving their full value to his Gallic conquests great as they really were. Again,—we may easily believe that both the slaves who were bought and sold, and the individual captives who ornamented the triumph were picked men; as also would be those who were “butchered to make a Roman holiday” in the amphitheatres.

Again,—differences of dress and armour have generally a tendency to exaggerate the size of the wearers; and hence it is that the Scotch Highlanders, amongst ourselves, are often considered as larger men than they really are. All who have investigated the debated question as to the stature of the Patagonians, have recognized in the bulky, baggy dress, a serious source of error in all measurements taken by the eye only.

Nevertheless, the external evidence is to the great stature of the ancient Gauls: evidence which the present size of the French slightly invalidates. As far, too, as my knowledge extends, the exhumations of the older skeletons do the same.

As to their hair, whether flaxen, yellow, or red, it was light (??????), rather than dark. Livy applies to it the term rutilatÆ suggesting that it was reddened rather than simply red, and Diodorus Siculus expressly states that it was so; artificial means being used to heighten the natural hue.

A long list of Keltic gods can be made out, if we allow to the Keltic Pantheon every deity whose name can be found in inscriptions, or whose cultus has been attributed to the Galli. But it is not safe to admit this.

It is by no means certain that even the Galli of northern Italy held a common religion with those of Gaul; and still less is it certain that the numerous tribes like the Scordisci, and others of the Tyrol, Styria, and Carniola, were Gallic; although both Roman writers call them Galli, and Greek, GalatÆ. Neither are inscriptions conclusive. I doubt, indeed, whether they be even prim facie evidence. We find them generally, as may be expected, in the neighbourhood of the towns. Of these many were military posts. Now the cohorts that occupied them were Dacians, Moors, Germans, Spaniards, Pannonians,—anything, in short, but Romans. What then are we to say, when an inscription to such a goddess as Isis is dug up,—as has actually been the case in Britain? Not that Isis was a British divinity, but that the garrison consisted of her worshippers. In the way of detail, however,—

Hesus and Teutates, as Gallic gods, rest on the authority of Lucan. Taranis, whom he also mentions, has a further claim to notice. By supposing him to be the God of Thunder, we find his name in the present Welsh taran.

Belenus rests on the authority of Ausonius; and as he was worshipped in the Italian town of Aquileia, he may fairly be considered as common property to the Galli of Gaul, and the Galli of Italy. At the same time, Tertullian assigns him to the Norici, who were, probably, other than Gauls; whilst his name has a look suspiciously Slavonic, since bel may be the first syllable in bjelibog, the white god.

Ogmius seems to be a true Gallic name, and we learn from Lucian that his attributes were intermediate to those of Hercules and Mercury.

Peninus was, perhaps, the name of a locality rather than a deity; although Livy writes Deus Penninus. The name evidently contains the Keltic word pen, and signifies probably some sacred mountain-top amongst the Pennine Alps.

Andorta was a goddess of victory, and Epona one of horses; the latter belonging to the Gauls of Italy.

All these may fairly be considered Keltic; though the evidence for none of them is conclusive. The names that are supplied by inscriptions—names which, like the previous ones, I take from Zeuss without having examined the details—exhibit a remarkable preponderance of the termination -enn-, or neh-. Thus we have Nehal-ennia, Ruma-nehÆ, Vacalli-nehÆ, Maviat-inehÆ, Gesat-enÆ, Etrai-enÆ, Aserici-nehÆ, and Leher-ennius. I can throw no light on the termination. Two other names ending in -ast, Arbog-ast and Morit-ast, seem Slavonic; and, as such, are probably referable to some garrison.

Dusius has a better claim than any word hitherto mentioned, since it exists in the present word deuce.

It is little, then, that the minute ethnologist can add to the current description of the ancient Druidism, for by that name it is convenient to express the Paganism of Britain, in which Gaul, to a certain degree, shared. The Druid as the priest, and the Bard as the poet—such are the native names in the Gallic religion and literature. That certain deities were analogous to the Roman Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter and Minerva, is expressly stated, but what names each bore, and how close the parallel ran is unknown. “Deum maxime Mercurium colunt: hujus sunt plurima simulacra, hunc omnium inventorem artium ferunt, hunc viarum atque itinerum ducem, hunc ad quÆstus pecuniÆ mercaturasque habere vim maximam arbitrantur. Post hunc, Apollinem et Martem et Jovem et Minervam. De his eandem fere quam reliquÆ gentes, habent opinionem: Apollinem morbos depellere; Minervam operum atque artificiorum initia transdere; Jovem imperium coelestium tenere; Martem bella regere.”

Their social constitution was a system of chiefs, retainers, and slaves; nevertheless, the full development of such a form of government is not easily to be reconciled with the existence of towns or cities, and such centres of regular industry as we know the ancient Gauls to have possessed. Whatever it may have been in the Belgic area, there are good reasons for believing it to have been considerably modified in the southern and central parts of Gaul.

The Gauls knew the use of the Greek alphabet, they cultivated land, they built towns. It is impossible, in the face of this, to allow them a capacity for civilization less than that of the Iberians, or even than the Italians themselves, so far as these last were not improved by Greek and Etruscan influences.

That, contrasted with the Germans, they displayed a great mobility of temper, is likely enough. To the literature and political power of Rome, after the reduction of Gaul to a province, they contributed largely—less, perhaps, than the Spaniards who gave to their conquerors Seneca and Lucan as writers, and Trajan and Adrian as rulers, but still largely: for Cornelius Gallus, in the palmy days of Roman literature, and Ausonius in its decline, as well as others, had Gallic blood in their veins.

Their aptitude for war can scarcely be measured by the early Gallic aggressions on the Republic. He is a bold man who would say that the Teutones and Cimbri were Keltic at all, whilst, in respect to the Galli of Brennus, the Insubrians, the Cenomani, and other Gauls of the second Punic war, they were Cisalpine rather than Gallic Kelts. Still, they were Kelts—though Kelts beyond the pale of the Keltic fatherland. The same applies to the Boii.

I must now change the subject to remark that those differences of blood and pedigree, corresponding with (but, by no means, necessarily, creating) a difference of habits and civilization which the previous investigations have afforded, are only good up to the thirteenth century; so that it must not be supposed that those peculiarities (whatever they were), which the Ligurian and Iberian bases, the earlier admixture of Romans, the subsequent influence of the Goths, and the final introduction of Arab and Spanish elements evolved, exist at the present moment. If it were so, the difference between the northern and southern French would be greater than it really is. I do not say whether this is little or much. I only say that, had the original influences and intermixture taken their course, the present French of Languedoc and Provence would show certain characteristics which they have now lost, or, if they retain them, exhibit in a slighter degree. But in the thirteenth century, the north of France was turned against the south. There are good writers who put so high a value on the admixture of Arab and Hispano-Arabic influences as to have persuaded themselves that Provence and part of Gascony were on the high road to Mahometanism when the Albigensian crusade arrested their career. One would willingly believe that there was some reason for one of the most horrible campaigns of history, which might, as far as a murderous fanaticism can be put under the shadow of an excuse, palliate its atrocities. The physical historian, however, looks only to its more material effects; and these were to replace a vast proportion of the French of the southern by the French of the northern type and lineage; for this is the effect of wars of extermination, or (hoping that such have never existed in the full extent of the dire import of the word) of those conquests that either lust or fanaticism teaches to simulate them. I shall quote Sir James Stephen to show that the Albigensian Crusade was of the kind in question. He has given, with painful eloquence, the sickening details of the wars under Simon de Montfort:—

“The church of the Albigenses had been drowned in blood. Those supposed heretics had been swept away from the soil of France. The rest of the Languedocian people had been over-whelmed with calamity, slaughter, and devastation. The estimates transmitted to us of the numbers of the invaders and of the slain, are such as almost surpass belief. We can neither verify nor correct them; but we certainly know, that, during a long succession of years, Languedoc had been invaded by armies more numerous than had ever before been brought together in European warfare since the fall of the Roman empire. We know that these hosts were composed of men inflamed by bigotry, and unrestrained by discipline,—that they had neither military pay nor magazines,—that they provided for all their wants by the sword, living at the expense of the country, and seizing at their pleasure both the harvests of the peasants and the merchandise of the citizens. More than three-fourths of the landed proprietors had been despoiled of their fiefs and castles. In hundreds of villages, every inhabitant had been massacred. There was scarcely a family of which some member had not fallen beneath the sword of De Montfort’s soldiers, or been outraged by their brutality. Since the sack of Rome by the Vandals, the European world had never mourned over a national disaster so wide in its extent, or so fearful in its character.”[7]

From the beginning of the thirteenth century to the present time everything has had a tendency to amalgamate the component ethnological elements of France—to make it a country of one nation, rather than the area of many varieties. Its civil history, however, is the source for our knowledge of all this.

* * * *

The ethnology of Belgium is comparatively simple. Its elements are the same as those of Northern France,—Keltic, German, and Roman; for the analysis (as has perhaps been observed) grows simpler when we passed the Seine. And this was but natural, as the scene receded from the great centre of conquest and the great points of international contact.

In Belgium the Roman element is somewhat less, the occupation being somewhat more imperfect; whilst the Keltic basis is referable to the Belgic variety—a point in which Picardy, French Flanders, Artois, and part of Champagne agree.

In Belgium the German element is more uniform, i.e., it is more exclusively referable to a single division of the German stock. No Goths, no High-German Burgundians are here; but Franks of the Lower Rhine the followers of Clojo and Clovis; Franks from the Ysel or Salian Franks; Franks whose chief locality in the country that they conquered was the parts about Tournay in Hainault; Franks who, if they differed at all from the Franks of Charlemagne, whose line subsequently replaced that of Clovis, did so but slightly; Franks, too, of the Platt-Deutsch division of the German stock, whose nearest representatives are the Dutch of Holland, and the Low-Germans of Cleves, Juliers, and Berg. I believe that whether the kings of these Germans ruled from Tournay or from Aix la-Chapelle, the section to which they belonged was the same, herein differing from those writers who, because Charlemagne was an Austrasian, contrast his descent somewhat strongly with that of Clovis.

To begin, however, with the earliest ethnological history of Belgium, I remark that the same question which presented itself in the case of Alsatia re-appears here. Were the oldest known occupants of the country Gauls, or Germans, or Germanized Gauls? I believe that they were the latter, though not to any great extent; for it must be remembered that Treves, Juliers, and Berg, where the modification was considerable, lie beyond the Belgic frontier. Still, as Tongres (a locality which the express evidence of Tacitus makes German) is in Belgium, and as CÆsar calls the Nervii, PÆmani and others, Germans (by which I understand that they belonged to a Germanic confederacy) the existence of a considerable and early intrusion of the tribes beyond the Rhine must be admitted. So that the Romans, when they reduced Belgium, reduced a country which, like Alsatia, although Gallic, was also Quasi-Germanic.

But they reduced it, and they Romanized it; and as we find the more active emperors coercing the Batavi, Chamavi, and other populations beyond the Rhine, we may reasonably suppose that they Romanized it throughout.

The analogue to the Burgundian conquest of Burgundy and Franche-ComtÉ began in the fourth century, and not with the invasion of Clovis, as is often imagined. Constantius and Julian had to defend the frontier by land, and Carausius the Menapian by sea. And Julian was the last emperor who defended it successfully. At the beginning of the fifth century a Frank chief, not less formidable than Clovis, although less famous, Clojo, invaded Gaul, and penetrated as far as the Somme. Hainault, Brabant, and West Flanders he seems to have permanently reduced; and what Clojo left undone, Clovis completed.

In the reign of Charlemagne, the process of Germanizing went on, but soon after his death it came to a close; so that about four hundred years is the time that must be allowed for the displacement of the Romano-Belgic language of Belgium, i.e., of Antwerp, South Brabant, Limburg, West Flanders, and Hainault; to which may be added French Flanders, Artois, and the northern part of Picardy—for to this extent it seems to have gone when it attained its maximum. And, then, a reaction took place, and the French has encroached ever since. Artois, French Flanders, and Northern Picardy have been wholly recovered in respect to their language to France, and the Belgian provinces partially. Such is the evidence of the Flemish language in Belgium, of the parts wherein it is still spoken, and of the traces of it in as far south as the frontier of Normandy.

But it is not the only native language of Belgium—I say native, because the French as it is spoken at Brussels and the towns is, to all intents and purposes, as foreign a language as English is in Argyle or Inverness. In Namur, Liege, and Luxembourg, the speech is what is called Walloon, the same word as Welsh, and derived from the German root wealh, a foreigner. By this designation the Germans of the Flemish tongue denoted the Romano-Belgic population whose language was akin to the French, and whom a hilly and impracticable country (the forest districts of the Ardennes) had more or less protected from their own arms. Now the Walloon is a form of the Romano-Keltic, so peculiar and independent, that it must be of great antiquity, i.e., as old as the oldest dialect of the French, and no extension of the dialects of Lorraine, or Champagne from which it differs materially. It is also a language which must have been formed on a Keltic basis, a fact which (as stated elsewhere) is a strong argument against the doctrine of the BelgÆ of CÆsar and Tacitus having been Germans.

The Walloons, then, are Romano-Keltic; whereas the Flemings are Germans, in speech and in blood—either Romano-Kelts Germanized, or else absolute Germans; for upon the extent to which the Flemish language is a measure of German descent, I venture no opinion. We must remember, however, that as the Franks came from the other side of the Rhine, and from a not very distant locality, the number of females who accompanied them may have been considerable. Still, I think, that intermixture was the rule, and purity of blood the exception.

In stature, the Flemish Belgians are larger men than the French, and, in the country districts, more frequently fair-complexioned. In certain families, too, there is a mixture of Spanish blood.

The Walloons are less bulky than the Flemings, dark-eyed and black-haired.

The particular Germans who reduced the Flemish parts of Belgium, as well as the north-western parts of France, were the Salii of Saal-land on the Ysel in the parts about Zutphen and Deventer. But not alone. The Chamavi of Hamaland were with them; and, probably tribes of Holland and the Lower Rhine besides. Even there they were not altogether indigenous, as will be seen when the ethnology of Holland comes under notice.

In the foregoing account Luxembourg, and Limburg, although politically belonging to Holland, have been considered Belgian.

* * * *

Switzerland, from having a Keltic basis, comes next in order. The ancient Helvetia is at the present moment partly German, partly French, partly Italian, and partly Romance; that is, if we look to its languages and dialects only. Now as the last three tongues are derived from the Roman, we may express the character of the Swiss tongues in more general language, and reduce them to two great classes, the Gothic and the Latin. This, however, will not give us the ethnology of the country, since the blood is far more mixed than the speech. The analysis of this is complex.

In the time of CÆsar the term Helvetia coincided with the modern country of Switzerland sufficiently closely for all practical purposes of general, perhaps for those of minute, ethnology also.

The Helvetii, also, of CÆsar were Kelts; so that the basis of the population is Keltic—although the variety of that stock was probably a very marked one.

The famous Helvetian migration is one of the earliest and greatest facts in the Swiss history. Orgetorix, a Keltic name, is the king. The boundaries, on three sides, are well marked, but not on the fourth. The Jura range separates them from the Sequani of Franche-ComtÉ, the Rhine from the populations of Baden and Wurtemburg (which CÆsar calls German), and the Rhone and the Lake of Geneva from Savoy, which was part of the Roman Provincia. The boundaries in the direction of the Tyrol are undescribed, probably because they were unascertained. An excess of population is the motive for their emigration. It is undertaken with due foresight. Two years beforehand, they buy up all kinds of vehicles and beasts of burden, and sow as much corn as the ground will allow them. Alliances are sought with the neighbouring powers. The Rauraci, Tulingi, Latobriges, and Boii, are asked to burn their towns and join the expedition. The parts about Thoulouse are their object. It is abortive. CÆsar defeats them and breaks it up; the numbers of its component members being afterwards found to be as follows:—

Of these, the number of warriors was 110,000, the rest being old men, women, and children.

But as the historian of these movements is the conqueror of Gaul, we must expect, ere long, the reduction of Helvetia to a Roman province. It takes place as a matter of course. It is CÆsar who effects it; and the process of Romanizing begins. The Roman language, however, I think, extends itself into Switzerland from three points; from Gaul, from Italy, and from the Tyrol. Such, at least, is the inference from the present dialects; since in Tessino and the Valteline we have the Italian; in Geneva and the Valais, the French; and in the Grisons, the Romance.

This last requires notice. If we follow the Rhine from the Lake of Constance, we are carried up into the narrow valley in which it rises, and here the dialect is neither French nor Italian, but a separate substantive tongue which, like them, is derived from the Latin, and accordingly, it is known as the Romance or Rumonsch of the Grisons or GraubÜnten. The Inn must then be traced upwards in like manner, when in the valley of its head-waters, and the water-shed between it and the Rhine, the Romance will be found again. It is reduced to writing and spoken in several dialects and subdialects; so as to have all the appearance of a language of long standing.

Now this, I imagine, represents the Latin of RhÆtia—i.e., of the Tyrol and Vorarlberg—rather than that of Gaul, and it was from the Tyrol and Vorarlberg, conquered in the reign of Augustus by Tiberius and Drusus, that it was introduced.

In few countries reduced by Rome must the blood on the mother’s side have been more aboriginal than in Helvetia, and in few countries is the extent to which the speech is Latin less a measure of the Latinity of the descent.

Until the fifth century Switzerland was Keltic and Latin, even as France was; and then mixture set in, partially. The Germans of Suabia and Franconia, Germans of the High-German division, Germans by whom Alsatia, Bavaria, Baden, Wurtemburg, Burgundy, and Franche-ComtÉ, were Germanized—some perfectly, some partially—extended their conquests to the present cantons of Schwytz, Uri, Unterwalden, and the other cantons of the German language; the populations of which are Keltic, Roman, and German, those of the rest of Switzerland being simply Keltic and Roman.

Switzerland, then, is the third country in which the basis is Keltic, and the superadded elements Roman and German.