the following sources:-the annals of Roman history, the chronicles of the holy fathers, the writings of the Scots and Angles, and the tradition of the ancient. Britons.

Whatever may be its historical value, it is quite evident that the idea of the British or Celtic descent from a Trojan ancestry did not originate with Geoffry of Monmouth, or even Nennius, from whom he may probably have copied; for Ammianus Marcellinus, who wrote 500 years before Nennius, mentions that the Celts had a tradition that they were descendants of the Trojans. It is said that "a few Trojans after the destruction of Troy, in making their escape from those Greeks who were dispersed abroad, took possession of these countries, which at that time were uninhabited." We should then enquire who were the Trojans, and what their descent, and whether all were Trojans who were engaged in that celebrated war. The learned Bochart thinks that Lesser Phrygia, of which Troy was the capital, was peopled by Ashkenaz, Gomer's eldest son, because names of men and places in that country retained the commemoration of their founder; and although this fact does not settle so intricate a question, yet combined with other circumstances it gives considerable colour to the suggestion.

Nennius fixes the date of the peopling of this country by Brutus or Brito in what he calls "the third age of the world" this he defines to be the period “between Abraham and David'," and he limits it more precisely to the time of the JudgesTM, to that time "when i Phaleg., lib. iii. c. 9.

1 ch. i.

koch. x.

m ch. iv.

Eli the high-priest judged Israel, and when the ark of the Lord was taken captive." Now according to the generally received chronology this happened B.c. 1141, or about forty years after Troy was taken, a date entirely consistent with possibilities, may we not say probabilities? Some have calculated that it would require about the length of time thus supposed between the first peopling of this country and the arrival of Julius Cæsar to bring the population up to the condition in which that Roman general found it. He describes it as "infinita multitudo."

But we meet also with this interesting historical fragment. Diodorus, quoting from Ctesias ", tells us that "Teutamnus (the twenty-sixth king of Assyria after Ninus), who reigned about the time of the siege of Troy, sent a considerable number of men to help the Trojans, under the command of Memnon son of Tithonus."

Is it not in every way consistent with such a statement that after the unsuccessful termination of their expedition these auxiliaries should have wandered further in search of other settlements and conquests, and is there any improbability in the suggestion that these rovers may have been our first colonists, when we find a tradition long existing, and when we find the same language and religion, as I hope to shew as I proceed, prevailing both in Britain and in Assyria and its conterminal countries. At any rate, such coincidents exonerate Nennius from having fabricated the tale, for surely no one would venture to suggest that Ctesias, Lib. ii. p. 136. edit. Wessellin.