conquered and occupied it. But the great masses of the populations, which have successively planted 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: while 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 determined. 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 civilised 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 colonised by the Phenicians. But the greatest 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 CHAP. I. BOOK I. branches of the inland hordes of Europe, though the habitual visits of the maritime nations of antiquity, the Phenicians and Carthaginians, and their Spanish settlements, were not likely to have occurred without leaving some colonial and permanent results. 3 3 It is highly interesting to an Englishman, who has sprung from the uncivilised races of antiquity, to contemplate the deities and sculptures of Egypt now collected in the British Museum. He there sees the venerated productions of the earliest civilised 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 civilisation; 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 it soon changes 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. Indeed she would rather be, in the comparison, no less inferior to us in the present state of our arts, sciences, manufactures, commerce, cultivated mind, and national greatness, than our Barbaric ancestors would have been deemed by her in the period of her Rhamses Sesostris, and Amenoph, and of the other great monarchs with whom their gigantic temples and decyphered inscriptions have lately brought us acquainted. CHAP. II. The Kimmerian and Keltic Nations were the earliest Inhabitants of - II. FROM the languages already remarked to have CHAP. 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 BOOK I. the present Polish and Russian, and in their adjacent dialects. THE languages, classed under each of the above heads, are so visibly related together, as to make so many distinct families, issuing from the same parent stocks; but each stem is so dissimilar to the others, as to mark a different source and chronology of origin. The local positions in Europe, of the different nations using these tongues, are also evidence of their successive chronology. The Keltic or Kimmerian is in the farthest part of the west, in the British islands, and on the western shores of France. The Scythian or Gothic languages occupy the great body of the European continent, from the ocean to the Vistula, and have spread into England. In the eastern parts of Europe, most contiguous to Asia, and also extending into Asia, the Sarmatian or Slavonic tongues are diffused. So that we perceive at once, that the Kimmerian or Keltic nations, to have reached the westerly position, must have first inhabited Europe: that the Scythian or Gothic tribes must have followed next, and have principally peopled it; and that the Sarmatian, or Slavonic people, have been the latest colonists. Other nations have entered it, at more recent periods, as the Huns and the Romans; and some others have established partial settlements, as the Lydians in Tuscany; the Greeks at Marseilles, and in Italy; the Phenicians and Carthaginians in Spain. But the three stocks, already noticed, are clearly the main sources of the ancient population of the European continent, in its northern and western portions. THE most authentic accounts of ancient history confirm the preceding statement. THAT the Kimmerians were in Europe before the Scythian tribes, we learn from the information of Herodotus, the father of Grecian history. He states, apparently from the information of the Scythians themselves, that the Kimmerians anciently possessed those regions in Europe which the Scythians were occupying in his time.' And these Scythians were then spread from the Danube, towards the Baltic and the north. It cannot now be ascertained, when the Kimmerians first passed out of Asia over the Bosphorus, which they named; but that they were in Europe, in the days of Homer, is obvious, because he mentions them in his Odyssey2; and he appears to have lived, at least eight hundred years before the Christian æra. That he was acquainted with the position of the Kimmerians, in the north-eastern parts of Europe, is three times asserted by Strabo.3 THAT the Kimmerians were inhabiting these places, about seven hundred years before our Saviour's advent, we have direct historical evidence e; because it was above this period, if not before, that they were attacked by the Scythians in these settlements. Overpowered by this invasion, the Kim 1 Herod. Melpom. s. 11. I have adopted the Greek orthography of the K, Kippeptor, because it expresses the proper pronunciation of the word. 2 Kippɛpor avopov, Od. A. v. 14. He places them on the Pontus, at the extremities of the ocean; and describes them as covered with those mists and clouds, which popular belief has attached to the northern regions of the Euxine. The Turkish name Karah Deksi, the Greek Maupo Oaxaσoa, and our Black Sea, imply the same opinion. Bayer says, that he has had it from eye-witnesses, that all the Pontus and its shores are infested by dense and dark fog. Comm. Acad. Petrop. t. ii. p. 421. 3 Strabo, Geog. p. 12. 38. 222. 4 Herodotus states this invasion to have occurred in the reign of Ardyes, the son of Gyges, lib. i. s. 15. Ardyes reigned from 680 CHAP. II. |