Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/13

 One of the earliest lessons taught us in our boyhood has left it indelibly impressed upon our recollections that ancient Gaul was divided into three parts, differing from each other in language, institutions and laws. Of these three parts, we were then taught that the Belgæ inhabited one, the Aquitani another, and that a people who called themselves Celts, but who by the Romans were called Gauls, inhabited the third. "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgæ, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum linguâ Celtæ, nostrâ Galli appellantur. Hi omnes in linguâ, institutis, legibus inter se differunt."

From this commencement of his Commentaries, we might have expected that Cæsar would have next proceeded to inform us in what respects more especially these nations differed from each other. But in this expectation we are left disappointed, as whatever further particulars are given of them respectively, are given incidentally, so that it is from scattered and obscure notices of them only, we are enabled to form any conclusion as to the distinctions between them. True it is that we have no just reason to complain if we do not find all the precision of a philosophic historian in the narrative of a soldier recounting his exploits, especially as others who were professedly authors, Pliny for instance, and even Strabo, in giving us the same tripartite division of Gaul, enter still less explicitly into these particulars. But as the interest of the question is one more peculiarly of our times, it becomes the more requisite for us, from their omissions, to seek its solution from other considerations,—how far the inhabitants of the countries known to Cæsar as Gaul, may be connected with any people of the same nationalities representing them now.

I am not aware of any writer having entered at length 1