The people, whose scanty remnant thus spend the last days of their old age among the Welsh mountains, formerly belonged, both by possessions and kinship, to the most powerful in Europe. Not only were the Scotch and the Irish of the same origin with them, but on the other side of the channel, throughout Gaul, or France, Spain, and the middle and south of Europe, dwelt tribes of the Celtic race. Until about the time of the birth of Christ there was no people north of the Alps, which, with regard to power, agriculture, commerce, skill in the arts, and civilization in general, could equal, much less surpass, the Celts. Yet they were not strong enough to clip the wings of the Roman eagle, when it began to extend them over the Alps. The superior military skill and higher civilization of the Romans, triumphed over the various Celtic tribes, which were torn by internal dissensions, and could not once, even under the danger which menaced them, faithfully unite together. Shortly after the birth of Christ, therefore, the Roman hosts had already gained a footing in Britain, and, notwithstanding the violent and repeated attacks of the natives, soon made themselves masters of the country. They even fought their way to Scotland; where, however, the wild highlands, and their brave inhabitants, the Caledonians, arrested their victorious march. The Romans were now obliged to erect walls, ramparts, and towers, in order to prevent the highland Scots from uniting with the Britons, and to avert the speedy loss of the land which they had already won. Throughout Britain they laid the foundations of a civilization till then unknown there. They promoted agriculture, commerce, and trade; they made roads, and built towns and castles; and, as they had not immigrated in any great multitudes, they left the inhabitants in tolerably quiet possession of the soil of their forefathers. But the Roman power fell in turn. It was natural that their dominion in so distant and sequestered a land as Britain should decay sooner and more easily than elsewhere, especially as the British chiefs did not fail immediately to revive the old disputes. Their rude neighbours in Scotland, the Picts and Scots, no longer restrained by fear of the Romans, made serious and devastating inroads upon the northern provinces of England, where no slight degree of riches and splendour already prevailed. The Britons, moreover, under the dominion of the Romans, had, like their kinsmen across the channel, already begun to grow cowardly and effeminate. Long oppression had given the power of the Celts a death-blow: and they were consequently unable to withstand the powerful and undegenerate tribes of Germany, which now, in the great tide of emigration from the east and north of Europe, rushed into the old Celtic countries, and made themselves new abodes, either, for the most part, putting the ancient inhabitants to death, or reducing them to a state of thraldom.