Having thus demolished, or at all events
greatly impaired, the authority of Gildas, the
next step of Dr. Nicholas is to ascertain,
whether his extraordinary statement as to the
all but total extermination of his countrymen
gains any corroboration from subsequent facts
with which he, and the men of his day were
unacquainted. If the Ancient Britons over the
greater part of England were exterminated in
the sixth century, how could they be numerous
in any part of England in the seventh, eighth,
ninth, and tenth centuries? It is, in answer to
this question, that the Philoceltism of Dr.
Nicholas becomes apparent. He denies the
extermination, and proves that, although the
Celtic language disappeared, in consequence of
the gradual adoption by the British masses of
the superior Saxon or Anglo-Saxon tongue, the
Celts themselves remained. In the time of
Athelstan, the Saxon king, five hundred years
after the arrival of Hengist and Horsa (if these
were the names of real people, and did not
signify horse and mare, from the devices on the
banners of the invaders), communities of Cymry
(Celts) speaking Celtic, and observing their
own usages, were in existence in the very heart
of the kingdom of Wessex. In the reign of
Egbert, four hundred years after the days of
Hengist and Horsa, it appears from the "will
of King Alfred," published in Oxford in 1788,
that the counties of Dorset, Devon, Wilts, and
Somerset, were all considered as belonging to
the Weal-cynne (Welkin), the dominion or
kingdom of the Welsh, or Ancient Britons.
"Throughout the country, even in the central
parts," says Dr. Nicholas, "such as Bedford,
Banbury, Potterton, Bath, we find so late as
between the years 552 and 658, mighty battles
fought by the Britons proper of those districts,
who rose to avenge the oppressive exactions of
their conquerors, as is proved by the Saxon
Chronicle under those dates. During all this
time," he adds, "West Wales, or Cornwall
and Devon, great part of Somerset, Wiltshire,
Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire,
Shropshire, Cheshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire,
Westmoreland, Cumberland, and the south of
Scotland, as well as the whole of Wales, the
patria intacta of the Cymry, were in the
possession of those Britons who had hitherto kept
themselves unmixed with the Teutons."
Regarding the manner in which the Britons
were disposed of—a hundred and twenty-five
years after Gildas wrote of their extermination
—a curious instance is recorded in
Camden's Britannica, and quoted by Dr.
Nicholas. In the year 685, "Egfrid, King
of Northumbria, makes a grant of the district
of Cartmel with the Britons thereupon, to the
see of Lindisfarne." Cartmel is in Furness,
Lancashire; and it appears, as Dr. Nicholas states,
"that when an Anglo-Saxon king obtained
the power of absolute disposal of the native
inhabitants of a whole district, he exercised the
power not by their extermination, not by their
consignment to bondage, but by bestowing them
as a holy gift to the Church, thus handing them
over to the best protection then existing." In
short, the researches of modern authors are
sufficient to prove, that the Britons made a
gallant fight against both the Saxons and the
Danes; that their conquest was not easy; that
neither the Saxons nor the Danes ever sought to
exterminate, but only to subdue them; and
that as time wore on, and Saxon rule became
more firmly established, the two races blended
together, and the Celts became so Saxonified
and the Saxons so Celtified by constant inter-
marriage, that Danes, Saxons, and Celts gradually
fused into one people, called the English. The
last conquest of England added to, and did not
diminish, the Celtic element, inasmuch as the
Normans, who came over with William, were
of Celtic origin. This fusion of race was fortunate
alike for Celts and Saxons, and produced
not only a noble people, but a noble language.
The Celts are martial, quick-witted, imaginative,
musical, generous, and rash, but lack continuity
of purpose, and sustained energy; while
the Saxons are solid, plodding, industrious,
prudent, slow to anger, sure to complete what
they once take earnestly in hand, while they are
deficient in wit, fancy, and imagination. The
Celtic poetry of Shakespeare, Scott, and Burns,
are combined in the English character with the
Saxon energy, and sound sense of such men
as Watt, Stephenson, Cobden, and Palmerston;
while the language that has sprung from the
two, promises to be the language of the world.

One of the arguments which Dr. Nicholas
uses in support of his proposition, and which he
might have extended with great advantage, had
he been as well acquainted with the Irish and
Scottish varieties of the Celtic language as he
appears to be with the Cymric, is that the
names of nearly all the ancient towns and cities,
and all the rivers in Great Britain, are Celtic.
In point of fact, the names of all the great
rivers and mountain ranges of Europe are
Celtic, which, however, proves nothing more
than the antiquity of the Celtic race, and
goes little towards making out the non-
extermination of the British Celts in the sixth
century by the Saxons or Angles. A better
argument in support of the proposition that
the Celts and Cymri were not exterminated,
but were gradually amalgamated with their
successive military conquerors, is to be found in
the very considerable admixture of Celtic words,
both Welsh and Gaelic, in the English language,
especially in those words that are to a greater
extent colloquial and popular than literary, and
in the great variety of Celtic surnames borne
by the English people as distinguished from
those Scotch, Welsh, and Irish surnames, whose
Celtic origin is better known.

The compilers of our best English dictionaries,
from the days of Samuel Johnson to our own,
have greatly neglected the Celtic etymology of
the language, and have been content to trace the
roots of words either to the Anglo-Saxon, the
Danish, the Latin, the Greek, and the French,
without troubling themselves to ascertain the
origin of words of which these were not the
sources. The words "boy" and "girl," which
are both Celtic, may serve as instances of this