of South Britain, turned the head of Leland-But Mr. Chalmers' nerves are of finer texture, in proportion as his intellect in general is more robust and his feeling of elegance more obtuse. One quality of primary importance, though certainly of rare occurrence in these pursuits, our antiquary possesses in a supreme degree; we mean, the philosophical incredulity of his country. To all the enthusiasm, and more than all the perseverance, which belonged to the greatest of his predecessors, Mr. Chalmers superadds a practical mode of acquiring information, as disinterested as it is original :Whenever his penetrating understanding has reason to be dissatisfied with the superficial reports of former writers, he scruples not to employ workmen to make sections of ancient encampments, or surveyors to trace the obscure vestiges of Roman ways, through the glens and over the mountains of the Vespasiana. This is a mode, which, as it has few examples, will certainly have fewer imitators, unless the wealthy and the great should, in some fit of caprice, prefer the amusement of disinterring urns to that of unearthing foxes.

With respect to the original population of the British sles, Mr. Chalmers, whose contempt is very properly directed to the cavils of modern scepticism, which is more prone to believe the guesses of Cæsar and Tacitus, with respect to a race of Autocthones, than to attend to the united voice of reason and revelation, having assumed the truth of the Mosaic history concerning the dispersion of mankind, proves, in coincidence with that inspired record, the gradual migration of the European tribes from East to West; and after demonstrating by irrefragable arguments drawn from etymology, of which he is a great master, that the aboriginal language of this island and of Ireland was the same, impresses upon his readers the irresistible conclusion that the latter was peopled from the former by the impulse of successive migrations. This is the language of common sense. During the era of canoes and coracles, the balance of probability between a navigation of 20 and of 500 miles is not to be computed, and mankind are no longer supposed by sober men to have sprung out of the earth or issued out of the clefts of oaks. With respect to the Roman period, the compaigns of Agricola on the borders of Caledonia are known, from the masterly narrative of Tacitus, to every schoolboy; and the magnificent remains of his encampments since the days of Gordon and Horsley have been familiar to every antiquary. But the successive campaigns of Lollius Urbicus and Severus, 'carent quia vate sacro,' have hitherto been supposed to be followed by no permanent settlements in the provinces which they overran, saving that Mr. Pennant, who traversed the same ground with the rapidity of a tourist, occasionally hints at discoveries, which point to those important periods. It is the merit of Mr. Chalmers to have laid open to the curiosity of the present age, the particulars of a new Roman province in Britain. In this discovery, the

suspected and hitherto suspicious Itinerary of Richard of Cirencester was his guide a document purporting to have been found in Denmark, and introduced to the notice of the public by the late Dr. Stukeley, in a manner so precipitate and self-contradictory, that had it been his purpose to discredit the authenticity of a memoir which he vehemently espoused, it would scarcely have been advisable for him to comment upon it in a different manner. By the appearance, however, of such a prodigy, the antiquarian world were astonished and divided. The historian of Manchester, whose mind, ever vehement and impetuous, was a stranger to suspicion, seized and employed the newly-discovered treasure. The more sober of his brethren were confounded between the internal marks of authenticity and the false lights thrown upon it by the editor. At length it began to be noticed that some of the Itinera of Richard threw light on Roman ways and remains in South Britain, not otherwise accounted for: but it was reserved for the sagacious industry of Mr. Chalmers to establish the authenticity of others within his own country, by discoveries of remains unquestionably Roman, in situations pointed out by the monk. Had this coincidence occurred only once or twice, we should have thought it fortunate but the itinera, the stations, and other remains, unite throughout the province of Vespasiana like the ends of a tally, and he qui centies jecerit Venereum' is something more than a lucky guesser. Such, however, is the discovery which our antiquary has made, and such the position which he has proved.

'Not only in Fife, which formed a considerable part of Vespasiana, but every where beyond the wall of Antonine, the brave descendants of the Caledonian people, who had dared to act offensively against Agricola, were restrained, under Lollius Urbicus, by the same means which had subdued and civilized the Caledonian clans within Valentia. Itinera ries' (he should have said itinera) were carried through the ample range of Vespasiana; a road, as we know from remains, and as we have seen from examination, penetrated the greatest part of its long extent from the wall to the Varar; and fortresses, we shall immediately find, were erected near the commanding passes from the highlands to the low country.'-p. 169.

We proceed to our author's logical and convincing proofs that the Picts and Caledonians were merely tribes of the same people, and that towards the close of the fourth, and at the commencement of the fifth centuries, Ireland was the country of the Scots. This opinion, in which Mr. Chalmers is fortified by the authority of Camden, and contradicted only by writers more remarkable for number than weight, is thus made out :

'Claudian regarded Ireland as the country of the Scots at the commencement of the fifth age. A century and an half afterwards Gildas also mentioned Ireland as the proper country of the Scots-a sentiment which Bede delighted to repeat. Add to those proofs what appeared to

Camden to be historical demonstrations of the following points: 1st, That ancient Scotland was an island' (meaning, of course, an entire island; 2dly, That ancient Scotland and Britain were different countries; 3dly, That ancient Scotland and Ireland were not different countries. These proofs seem not to have been attended to by Gibbon, when he so absolutely decided that, as early as the reign of Constantine, the Northern region' (of Britain)' was divided between the two great tribes of the Scots and Picts.'

Here we could have pardoned a little more exultation over an adversary like Mr. Gibbon, who affected to treat all antiquarian research with contempt; and who, in the very act of proudly maintaining the dignity of history, is invaded in his own province and foiled by a topographer.-p. 196. Our author has aimed another blow at the blandishments of historical eloquence!'-To these charms in a great and popular writer, we are probably not quite so insensible as Mr. Chalmers; yet how must every honest man prefer his unglozing integrity, his rugged and undeviating veracity, and his resolute pursuit of facts and probabilities, to the air of insincerity and disguise, the indistinct and clouded narrative, and the perpetual affectation of reserve, which pervade the elegant and elaborate work of the other! περι πανίος την ἀληθειαν.

Next awaits us a learned disquisition on the Picts, their lineage, their civil history, and language, with a review of the Pictish question. On this interesting and controverted subject we can only touch labris primoribus. In opposition to those writers, and there have been writers of name, who contended that the Picts were of Teutonic origin, Mr. Chalmers traces their genealogy from the great Celtic stock, through the Gauls to the Britons, and from the Britons to the Caledonians, thus changing their names, but not their nature. The Caledonians were merely the inhabitants of the Celyddon, coverts or woodlands; the Picts, Pithi, Peithwi, &c. for so the name denotes, or people of the open country. The following remarks on this subject are worthy of a philosopher :

'In tracing the origin of a language, it is only necessary to ascertain the descent of a people. When it is once settled that the Picts were merely Cambro-Britons, who appeared at various periods under a new and lasting name, the inquiry with regard to the Pictish language must soon terminate in the conclusion that the speech of the Britons and the Picts was the same. As language is the true genealogy of nations, so the genuine history of nations is the most certain means of tracing the analogy of languages.'

After having proved that the names of the Pictish kings, of which he has exhibited the entire dynasty from the collections of Father Innes, are significant in the British tongue, but totally unintelligible in any of the Teutonic dialects, Mr. Chalmers adds, The

most ancient repertory of the Pictish language is the topography of North Britain.' And here he manfully enters the lists with two learned and ingenious highlanders, the late Dr. John Macpherson, and the well-known author or editor of Ossian, who maintained that the Picts did not speak the British language. What these authors seem to have meant was, that the language of the Picts was not Erse or Irish, the dialect with which alone they were familiar; and the consequence which they wished to deduce from it was, that they spoke a dialect of the Teutonic; whereas Mr. Chalmers has laboured to demonstrate by many remains in the modern language of the lowlands, and has successfully demonstrated by a multitude of examples drawn from the names of rivers, mountains, &c. that the Pictish dialect was pure British. With respect to the mixture of British words, which he conceives himself to have discovered in the modern dialect of the lowlands, we profess ourselves to be somewhat dissatisfied. Mr. Whitaker made the same attempt with equal powers of learning, and with no greater success. Many of the examples which both have adduced we know to be Teutonic, and for the remainder we shall be happy to rest upon our arms, and to be spectators of a friendly contest on the subject betwixt our author and Dr. Jamieson. But whatever the event of that combat may be, let it be understood that Mr. Chalmers has made out his grand position. His local appellatives alone will prove that the language of the Picts was British; and the controversy thus settled we think is not likely to be moved again.

The line of distinction, which our author has so accurately drawn between the Cambro-British and Erse or Irish dialects, leads to one important conclusion on the controverted subject of the poems attributed to Ossian. It is now demonstrated that the language in which the portions of those compositions which have been produced as originals were written, was not the language of Caledonia till two centuries after the age of Severus and Caracalla, and consequently their pretensions to the antiquity ascribed to them by the editor are done away. Whether they are genuine remains of an era posterior to the invasion and peopling of the highlands by the Scoto-Irish, or mere modern fabrications, or a mixture of both, are distinct questions.

The topography and history of the Strath-clyde Britons, who, after being civilized by their Roman conquerors, maintained, on their retreat, a precarious independence from the mouth of the Clyde to the source of the Eden during a period of more than three centuries, are detailed by Mr. Chalmers with his usual force and clearness. Here the Welch archæology is of great service. The Catrail, a prætenture of this people, probably intended to fortify them against the Saxons of Lothian, is traced through an extent of 45 miles with great exactness, and the memorials of our long-lost Arthur' preserved in

cal appellatives alone within this district, occupy little less than a quarto page in the enumeration. Of this dynasty, Alcluid, Castrum Arthuri, or Dunbritton, now by an easy corruption become Dunbarton, was the strong and magnificient capital. No part of our national history has been more lost in obscurity, none suffered more from perverted learning and want of clearness in our historians than this. Even Archbishop Usher, who has laboured this period, appears better qualified to accumulate authorities than to remove or even to point out difficulties and contradictions. Mr. Chalmers, with equal industry and much more perspicacity, has, in the compass of a single chapter, condensed the matter of folios. We consider this chapter as one of the most masterly in the whole work.

Chapter III, entitled the Saxons in Lothian, runs parallel with the former, and is chiefly memorable for the outset, which contains a short but luminous view of the successive migrations of the Celtic and Teutonic tribes ; a subject which has employed and confounded the understandings of our best antiquaries. Here our author confidently asserts the Suio-Gothic dialect to be free from any tincture of the Celtic tongue, though the German abounds with words derived from that language. Yet Mr. Chalmers thinks, and we think with him, that the massy stone monuments found in Scandinavia, and which have been published by Wormius, Baron Dahlberg, &c. are truly Celtic. It follows therefore, that the Celtic Aborigines of that country had either migrated or perished before their Gothic successors arrived on the shores of what Mr. Chalmers chooses to call the Northern Mediterranean. In these chapters, we cannot forbear a smile at the vehemence of his prejudices and prepossessions quicquid vult valde vult; and though a lowlander, as we presume, and therefore of Teutonic origin, he has undertaken to support the copiousness, harmony, &c. of the Celtic languages against the Gothic. The Saxon in particular, he assures us, is a 'poor, barren, unpoetical dialect,' and Ida brought with him no scald, that could compare with Aneurin or Taliesin, with Merlin or Llywarch, who deplored in sublime strains, the misfortunes of their country from the invasion of strangers. Such poets as the British, Europe could not indeed in that age supply, whether we consider their invention or energy, the flow of their versification, or the copiousness of their language.' To be able to pronounce with such confidence on the comparative merit of two languages in general, requires a critical acquaintance with both, which, for aught we know, Mr. Chalmers may possess in the British and Saxon; but to institute such a comparison between the poetry of the two, demands the exercise of a talent, which assuredly he does not possess.

Chapter VI, contains a masterly abridgment of the Scoto-Irish history from their first descent on the south-west coast of modern