Armenia and Central Persia, a race existed of the same name; and the prophet Ezekiel, about B.C. 600, speaks of Gomer as a nation then existing in the north quarter of Armenia, and the Armenian historians speak of Gamir (Gomer) as the ancestor of their race of kings. There certainly is, as Mr. Rawlinson observes, "the very closest possible resemblance between the Greek name Kiμμépio and the Celtic Cymry, and the presumption is in perfect harmony with all that enlightened research teaches of the movements of the races which gradually peopled Europe."

"The Celts had an unvarying tradition that they came from the East."... "Celts were undoubtedly the primitive inhabitants of Gaul, Belgium, and the British Islands.". . . The identity of the Cymry of Wales with the Cymbri of the Romans, seems worthy of being accepted as an historic fact, upon the grounds stated by Niebuhr and Arnold."... "The historical connection of these latter with the Cimmerii of Herodotus, has strong probabilities, and the opinion of Posidonius in its favour."

The chain of evidence seems to me complete. Appian says the Cimbri were Celts. Diodorus says that the Cimbri were Gauls or Celts; the Gauls were Galatæ, per syncope Geltæ or Keltæ: the names are synonymouse. The way in which Mr. Rawlinson, in the Essay from which I have quoted, brings the Cymric Celts from Armenia to Britain is most masterly; it

d De Bell. Illyr., p. 758.

e "Qui ipsorum linguâ Celta nostra Galli appellantur."-Cæsar de Bell. Gall., lib. i.

confirms all the traditions of the Welch, the views of Nennius, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and all our earliest histories, and to any one who has studied the question, seems most convincing; and if a variety of independent and undesigned testimony is requisite to the acceptance of historical facts, we have it as fully as it is possible to expect.

Max Müller seems to attribute to the Armenians a Semitic descent, and one might be disposed to imagine them, both from analogy of language and name, to be descended from Aram the youngest son of Shem; but the Armenians themselves, though locally situate in the countries generally occupied by Shem's descendants, distinctly disclaim the line of Shem as their progenitor, and claim to be descended from Togarmah of Japhet's posterity-in fact, from the younger brother of Ashkenaze.

An incident of minor importance, perhaps, yet not without its interest, is the remark of Cæsar 1, that the Britons fought from two-horsed chariots, as did also the Gauls, the wheels of the chariots being armed with iron scythes. Pomponius Mela and Strabo confirm this account, and Diodorus Siculus employs this remarkable expression: "they use chariots, as the ancient Greek heroes are reported to have done in the Trojan war." This reference to the Trojan war, and the identification of the mode of warfare adopted by the Trojans and Britons, coupled with the remark of Ammianus Marcellinus, and the British traditions, may f Science of Language, p. 230.

g See Universal History, vol. i. p. 135.

h Cæsar speaks of innumerable chariots; and no less than six different sorts are mentioned, and of excellent make.

not be devoid of a certain significance in helping to determine the question of our nationality; because there must have been something peculiar in the shape of these chariots to have induced Diodorus Siculus to have made that remark, and we know how slow nations were in olden time to give up national customs, or to adopt those of other people. A similar style of chariot was in use among those Asiatic nations which bordered upon Armenia.

We read of the nine hundred chariots of iron with which "Sisera, captain of Jabin, king of Canaan, mightily oppressed the children of Israeli." They were sufficiently different from the chariots of Egypt, to which the children of Israel had been accustomed during their sojourn in that country, to have been worthy of especial note and especial dread. Burder, in his work on Oriental customs, says that "Jabin's chariots being said to be chariots of iron, does not mean that they were made of iron, but that they were armed with it. Such chariots were called currus falcati, and in Greek δρεπανοφυραι. They had a kind of scythes of about two cubits long, fastened to long axle-trees on both wheels. These being driven swiftly through a body of men made great slaughter, mowing them down like grass or corn." These chariots are mentioned in Xenophon and Quintus Curtius'.

The introduction of chariot warfare, however, into Britain, was probably scarcely contemporaneous with the first colonization of this country, inasmuch as we do not find a trace of metal in the earliest British Judges iv. 1 Lib. iv. c. 9.

i

k Cyropædia, lib. vi.