Excerpt from The Literature of the Highlanders: A History of Gaelic Literature From the Earliest Times to the Present Day

The Celts and the Teuton started westward from the cradle or the human race, spreading themselves over Europe while other members of the same stock went eastward, extending themselves over wide tracts of Asia. From the Celts, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Teutons have sprung the chief nations in whose possession Europe still remains. It is interesting to think that the brothers who parted thousands of years ago, somewhere in teeming Asia, the one'going east and the other west, are now meeting again on the plains of Hindostan. Their movements during those thousands of years have encircled the whole earth. F iercely have they fought and disputed over every inch of the ground which one or other of their tribes at one time or other occupied. Theirs has always been the chief ruling power in the world. They begin to know one another again. From the extreme west of Europe, across the New World, the anglo-celt arrives in India and recognises the Hindoo as his brother.

The Aryans migrated into Europe in a somewhat advanced state of civilisation. According to Sayce their advent was from the north, a theory which subverts nearly all previously accepted opinions on the subject. Some of them, however, such as the Greeks first and the Romans afterwards, favoured by the mari time countries ih which they settled, made more rapid progressthan the others. It was largely their self-conceit that led the Greeks and Romans to describe all the nations beyond their bounds as barbarian. Our ancestors in these islands, whether Celtic or Teutonic, were never mere savages. They had a religion, if not radically the same, fully as enobling in its tendency as that of Greece and Rome. They evidently made some progress in the useful arts, while in the days of Rome's greatest splendour they were in possession of military weapons which were not much i11 ferior to her own. The form of government among the Celts was patriarchal, and this continued for a long time among the Gaels of Scotland. There was the king or chief, who was regarded as the father of the clan, tribe, or nation. With him was associated a council of chieftains or elders, and in important matters the mot of the whole people. But with all this political organisation they could not make such progress in civilisation as the Greeks and Romans, who mostly dwelt in cities. The Gaels who along with the Germans acted the part of pioneers 011 the plains of Europe, and living a rural life, could not compete successfully in the race for higher civilisation with the brother races who inhabited the maritime cities of Greece and Italy, and who, besides, obtained much of an earlier civilisation from Phoenicia and Egypt.

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