penetrate even to the obscure depths of
existence wherein the humble animalcule is
destined to dwell.

CELTIC BARDS.

CERTAIN tombs of a dead people are among
the monuments of Europe in the west and
north, and they are found in northern Asia
as far eastward as the river Yenisei. In
Denmark, these tombs have been studied,
and have yielded up some of their secret.
They are of three kinds, and belong to three
ages, which may be called the ages of stone,
bronze, and iron.

The stone men produced cromlechs and
giants' chambers. St. Iltut's hermitage in
Brecknockshire, Arthur's stone in Glamorganshire,
the cromlechs of Anglesey and various
Welsh counties, the Pict's houses of the
Orkneys, Wayland Smith's cave at
Ashbury, Berks, and Kit's Coty House on Blue
Bell Hill near Rochester, are among the
records which prove that they found their
way to Britain. The graves of the stone age
are found in Denmark, chiefly in groups at
certain points upon the coast; they are found
also in the southwest of Sweden, but not
found in Norway; they are to be met with
not only in parts of England and Holland,
but also in North Germany, and at the west
and south of France, Portugal, and Spain.
Wherever they occur, the plan of these graves
is the same. They are built of large stones
carefully smoothed inside, forming a chamber;
around which the earth is piled into a hillock,
and a stone circle formed round the foot
of the hillock, sometimes with stones that
appear to have been brought from a considerable
distance. All of these graves are found
to contain unburnt bones, with arrow-points,
lances, knives, and axes made of flint; bone
utensils, bone or amber ornaments, and vessels
of clay filled with loose earth that probably
contained the food supplied to the dead man
for his last journey. The builders of these
tombs did not burn their dead, and did not
work in metal.

The men of the bronze age buried their
dead in stone chests, with stones piled over
them, and clay built over all into a mound.
Sometimes their graves are surrounded
with small stone enclosures; but they differ
from the graves of the stone age in containing
clay vessels or urns, enclosing the remains
of corpses that were burnt. Some hills of
this age may contain fifty urns, and there
were many little variations in the way of
burial; but all the tombs agree in testifying
that the builders of them burnt their dead.
They contain also bronze weapons, the
peculiar kind of axe called the Celt, knives,
swords, battle-axes, daggers, shields, the war-
trumpet,—sometimes with enough in it of
its old life to sound a ghostly war-note at an
antiquary's lips,—hair-pins, combs, bracelets,
and gold cups. The graves of the bronze
age are to be found upon the sides of those
more ancient hills raised by the stone men
over their dead. In the tombs of neither
of these periods is any writing to be found.

The graves of the bronze age extend over
a wider space than those of the age preceding
it. The men therein buried, by help of the
metal in their tools, could penetrate a country,
could make boats, and thereby disperse
themselves abroad. But, inasmuch as the stone
and bronze antiquities are frequently found
intermixed, it is evident, that one race did
not exterminate another. The men of bronze
settled upon the land of stone, and the stone
people melted away, as the Australian natives
are now melting away in the presence of the
colonist, or as the Australian oak has died
out, and the kangaroo departed from the
district around Melbourne, while the English
orchard- trees, and English dogs and horses
multiply. The bronze age lasted into the
eighth century, and seems to have begun in
Denmark five or six hundred years before the
Christian era. It is the age of the Celts; the
first occupants of Britain who have left a
trace upon our language or our soil.

The stone people are unknown to history.
Mr. Sullivan, a clever local antiquary, from
whose recent history of the people and dialect
of Cumberland and Westmoreland we are
now drawing information, supposes that they
were a Tatár tribe; and, since they themselves
could only hollow logs with fire and flint,
believes that they came to this country in
company with the Celts, after having
obtained metal weapons and having learned the
construction of some better kind of boat.
They retained here their distinctive customs,
and, as the remains show, did not form a
distinct colony, but were thinly diffused over
the land. Modern Irish, says Mr. Sullivan,
has certain peculiar relations to the
modern Tatár languages, and that is a fact
to be named in support of his opinion.
Somebody has remarked that there is one
name for Ireland and for Persia, lerne, or
Erin, and Iran; that there is nothing in the
world to be found exactly like the Irish
round towers, except towers found in Persia,
and that certain peculiar customs attached to
wells are common to both peoples. Out of
a few analogies of this kind very odd theories
can often be constructed.

Nevertheless it is worth while, whatever
we may think of the stone people, clearly to
understand that the Celts, who begin the
story of our language arid our literature,
were not a single tribe, speaking a single
dialect. The oldest Celtic remains show
that there was, from the beginning, a
distinction of tongue between the Celts of
Wales and those of Ireland, whom we may,
therefore, separate from one another under the
names of Cambro-Celts and Hiberno-Celts.
The first Celtic colonists of Ireland came
directly from the continent to Connaught;
their descendants are the people of Connaught,